From the rolling hills of the Hunter Valley wine country, to Newcastle’s beachside suburbs and north to the holiday haven of Port Stephens, New South Wales’ Hunter region is a golfer’s playground.
If you are planning a golf trip to the Hunter, any time is a great time to take in the sights of wine country. But summer is perhaps the most vibrant and exciting time. Towards the end of January, vintage begins and the Hunter Valley becomes alive with both hand and machine picking in the vineyards. Warm days mean mornings on the course, afternoons exploring the vineyards and evenings cooling by the pool with a glass of local wine in your hand.
November through to March is also Day On The Green concert season when wineries, like Bimbadgen and Roche Estate, play host to local and international acts. The likes of Paul Kelly, Bernard Fanning, Missy Higgins and Ian Moss as well as Sting and The Killers are scheduled to perform this summer.
But golf remains a year-round attraction for visitors to wine country and the mainstay has long been the Cypress Lakes Resort.
The course celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and much has changed since American designer Steve Smyers signed off on the project. Back then, the clubhouse was a small building that still stands near the 1st green. By 1995, the hub of the layout was relocated to a luxurious resort building and luxury villas that now cover the hillside overlooking the course.
After several years of decline in the 2000s, a change of ownership in 2013 brought much needed investment into the course as well as the resort and both have been improving ever since.
The resort, now known as Oaks Cypress Lakes Resort, was named Australia’s Best Golf Hotel in 2018 and, again, in 2021. The course also made it back into the national ranking. It was ranked by this magazine as the No.97 Public Access Course in Australia for 2017, after disappearing from all ranking lists for nearly six years. In 2021, it was ranked No.66 and expectations are it will rise again when the ranking is published again in January 2023.
If you haven’t visited Cypress Lakes in recent years, you’re in for a really pleasant surprise. All of the layout’s bunkers have been renovated and some greens have been slightly tweaked as a result of that work.
There are plenty of highlights here. The opening quartet of holes – including a reachable par-5, two tough par-4s and a long par-3 – set the tone for a fun and challenging round, but it is Cypress Lakes’ penultimate offering that I have always enjoyed playing.
Your line off the tee is influenced by the pin position of the day as the 337-metre par-4 has two fairways – one low and another high – either side of deep bunkers cut into the slope between the two fairways. The ‘low road’ to the right is always my preference, despite having to possibly hit over the greenside lake to get near the flag.
Of course, if you are going to play Cypress Lakes, why not indulge yourself by staying at the resort. The one-, two- and three-bedroom villas are luxurious, with many overlooking the course. Other facilities include tennis courts, three swimming pools and fitness centre as well as two restaurants and bars.
Cypress Lakes’ nearest golfing neighbour is The Vintage, just a few minutes’ drive north into the heart of the Pokolbin wine growing area.
Designed by Greg Norman and Bob Harrison, The Vintage is an impressive layout where risk-and-reward elements of the design abound and its overall conditioning is always first class, which is why it is cemented in the Top-100 Courses and Top-100 Public Access Courses ranking of this magazine.
The course ventures into varying pockets of The Vintage’s expansive site. The opening holes are tight and tree-lined before moving across the property’s most undulating land for the latter half of the front nine. The back nine is more open and mostly flatter but with more water in play.
RIGHT: Kurri Kurri Golf Club. PHOTO: Brendan James.
Consistent throughout are the huge, flashy bunkers synonymous with the Greg Norman/Bob Harrison designs – including Sanctuary Lakes, The Glades, Brookwater and Pelican Waters – that opened for play in the 2000s.
The 7th and 8th holes are arguably among the best at The Vintage. The 503-metre 7th features an enormously wide fairway with only a couple of innocuous fairway bunkers and distant out-of-bounds along the left side as complications, so a long drive that bounds over the hill leaves a very real chance of reaching this par-5 in two blows. However, the neighbouring Bimbadgen Estate vineyard draws closer along the left side the nearer to the green play gets and any attempt at finding the surface in two hits needs to skirt this left side to counter the terrain. And once on board, the green features a bowl in the front section that can help or hinder approaches to certain pin positions.
The next is a white-knuckle par-3 that can be played as long as 190 metres from the tips to 121 metres from the forward green tees, depending on your skill or penchant for a challenge. The lake against the right edge of the green is impossible to delete from the mind as you address your ball, while a scheme of three bunkers on the left can, in places, present an only marginally better ‘miss’.
Another wine country layout worth playing is Hunter Valley Golf & Country Club, which covers easy walking terrain opposite Cessnock Airport at the southern gateway to the dozens of wineries in the area.
Work on the course started in the early ‘90s but the welcome mat was not thrown down to golfers until 1998. Since then, the course has had several name changes and owners but it stands today as part of an impressive Crowne Plaza Resort complex and the obvious investment made in the layout can be seen in the fantastic presentation of the course with well-manicured Santa Ana couch fairways and bentgrass greens.
Heading east out of the main wine-growing area of the Hunter Valley you will find the town of murals, Kurri Kurri. As you drive around this classic country town, it’s not hard to get a grasp of its history which is depicted in more than 55 murals on various buildings. There’s even a six by three metre mural on the side of the clubhouse at Kurri Kurri Golf Club, which pays tribute to the Hunter’s favourite golfing son, the late great Jack Newton. There are wonderful images of Newton’s Australian Open win and the iconic pose with the Auld Claret Jug and Tom Watson at the 1975 Open Championship, where he lost in a play-off. It’s a fantastic piece of artwork that really adds to experience of playing a round here.
The Kurri course, located just outside the town centre on the main road to nearby Maitland, is one of the real improving golf courses in the Hunter region.
Good quality bentgrass greens, well-grassed blue couch fairways and a simple but enjoyable design laid across rolling terrain combine to make Kurri a pleasure to play. In fact, the greens are the equal of many city clubs boasting more impressive maintenance budgets.
One of the stand-out holes is the 145-metre par-3 6th, which requires you to play across a sizeable lake that lies in the middle of the front nine holes. While the hole measures nearly 150 metres from the back markers, the water carry is no more than 100 metres, making it a slightly less daunting tee shot. The real defence of par here is the green, which is large and full of subtle slopes, placing a premium on club selection and accuracy to leave your tee shot in the right position on the putting surface.
Continuing the journey toward the coast, you will find Easts Leisure & Golf – incorporating Maitland Golf Club – an easy 15-minute drive from Kurri Kurri.
The Maitland course dates back to 1899 but has been upgraded over the years and most of the greens are large and receptive. It is not a lengthy course by modern standards but it does demand accuracy to avoid the hundreds of well-established gum trees, iron barks and oaks lining each fairway.
Raymond Terrace Rd, which borders the southern edge of the Maitland course, offers a short cut to the town of the same name, about 25 minutes’ drive away, and one of the lesser-known layouts of the Hunter – Muree Golf Club.
Muree is approximately halfway between the wine country layouts and the Port Stephens area courses, which makes it the ideal place to play while also experiencing the best attractions of both areas.
There are several standout holes at Muree but the par-3 12th is one of its most memorable. The tee of the 170-metre hole is cut into a hill, with a creek cutting diagonally across the front. A wall of trees stands guard behind the upturned dish green, which is also protected by bunkers left and right.
Port Stephens – incorporating well known holiday destinations like Nelson Bay, Shoal Bay, Fingal Bay and Soldiers Point – is renowned as a blue water paradise of unspoiled waterways and more than two dozen beaches. It is also a fishing haven and one of the best places on the New South Wales coast to go whale or dolphin watching.
The highest ranked course in this neck of the woods can be found en route at Medowie.
Pacific Dunes, designed by Sydney-based architect James Wilcher, opened for play in 2005 and has appeared in Golf Australia magazine’s Top-100 Public Access Courses ranking ever since.
Laid out on a gently rolling sandy landscape, Pacific Dunes has two distinct nines. The front nine is heavily bunkered and its fairways wind between tall timbers, several lakes and natural wetlands. The more open inward half also features several water hazards but is dominated by long strands of large Angophoras and Swamp Mahogany trees.
While Wilcher’s layout stretches to a lengthy 6,403 metres from the tips, the course still manages to incorporate some very good short par-4 holes and imaginative par-3s. One of my favourite short two-shotters at Pacific Dunes is the 297-metre par-4 3rd. In terms of risk-and-reward design, this hole is a gem and presents questions and options for long hitters and short hitters as you stand on the tee. The contouring of the slight dogleg right fairway and the placement of six huge bunkers create a visually daunting view from the tee. Long bombers can attack the hole by flying their tee shot over the bunkers, skirting thick scrub to the right, to find a small landing zone just short of the putting surface.
The back nine opens with another terrific short par-4. Water, rather than sand, defends par on this 288-metre gem as a creek bisects the fairway, about 160 metres from the back tee, before turning to follow the left edge of the fairway and flowing into a waterhole hugging the left fringe of the angled and bunkerless green.
From Medowie it is just a 15-minute drive to Tanilba Bay Golf Club, which is one of the most improved courses in the Port Stephens area in recent years.
Tanilba Bay is a relatively flat walk – until you reach the short dogleg right par-4 15th, which plays over the crest of hill – and features two ‘burns’ that meet at a T-intersection in the heart of the sand-based course.
These water hazards come into play on 10 of the 18 holes, while several billabongs throughout the journey must also be avoided. The most devious of these can be found just short of the green on the short par-5 17th, which is reachable in two blows for most solid ball-strikers if they are willing to take the risk of not hitting into the pond that is no bigger than a medium-sized greenside bunker. It should also be noted that this hazard cannot be seen from back down the fairway, so I recommend your approach here should be aimed right of the flag.
Tanilba Bay also boasts some pretty good dogleg holes with the sweeping left par-5 3rd and the adjoining par-4s, the dogleg right 5th and 16th – being the best of them.
Next stop on this Hunter tour is the hub of the Port Stephens holiday playground, Nelson Bay. It should be no surprise, given the tourist appeal of the town, that Nelson Bay Golf Club is one of the most popular courses in the Hunter region.
The club realised the need to expand, so a further nine holes was added to the 18-hole layout in 1998 to ease the load and allow more people to experience the course. Melbourne-based Pacific Coast design was commissioned and they created a fantastic additional nine holes that has easily been absorbed into the original 18.
These holes venture further into the adjoining bushland, where the designers created spectacular holes carved from the thick, rainforest-like vegetation. The designers were careful to incorporate the characteristics of the original 18 into their plans. And why wouldn’t they?
These holes offer plenty of variety and
some breathtaking experiences, from the opening tee shot at the par-4 1st, which is elevated high above the fairway and offers a brilliant vista, to the approach at the par-4 9th, with a picturesque pond and fountain behind the green.
Nelson Bay’s nearest golfing neighbour is the Horizons Golf Resort – the Graham Marsh and Ross Watson-designed layout that celebrated its 30th anniversary this year.
The design duo created the layout from wetlands adjoining thick bushland, while carving out lakes across the property to help raise and sculpt the 18 holes.
Only a few years after hosting the Australasian and European Tour co-sanctioned 2004 ANZ Championship, Horizons was in decline and the financial problems of then owner – Korean construction company, Le Mellieur – became more widely known in 2010 when the company went into receivership.
By then, the course had hit rock bottom and there were genuine fears it would disappear from the Hunter golfing landscape.
In its early days, Horizons gained a reputation for its impeccable conditioning, which often overshadowed the quality of the Marsh-Watson design. This made its fall from grace all the more shocking.
It wasn’t until 2015 that Horizons members Peter Rickard and Selva Saverimuttu took over the club and have worked tirelessly for the past seven years to return the course back to its original glory when it was easily ranked in the Top-100 Courses in country.
Horizon’s is not quite there yet but it is well on its way.
One welcomed change is the return of the routing to the original, as planned by Marsh and Watson, which sees a round close with the best par-5 on the course. The 493-metre 18th is the climax of a great sequence of holes, which lost their punch to some degree when featured in the middle of a round.
From a design standpoint, most holes at Horizons are worthy of mention but it is the collection of par-3s at Horizons that I always find interesting and challenging, with the penultimate hole being as testing as they come. It is a 153-metre journey with the tee shot needing to be played across the edge of beautiful wetlands to the right of the hole. With a lone bunker lying 10 metres short of the putting surface, players can be deceived on what club they should select for the tee shot. The narrow green is squeezed between a large bunker left and a steep railway sleeper-lined drop-off into the wetlands, which is the last place you want to be here.
If your Hunter region golf holiday starts or finishes in Sydney, you must find time to play a round at Newcastle Golf Club, about 35 minutes’ drive south of Horizons at Stockton.
Newcastle is one of Australia’s finest courses and was ranked earlier this year at No.29 in Golf Australia magazine’s biennial list of the nation’s Top-100 Courses. It has now been ranked in the best 30 courses in the country since the late 1990s, which coincided with the layout’s conditioning reaching previously unattained standards.
This presentation of beautiful couch fairways and firm, smooth-rolling bentgrass greens now fully complements the fantastic Eric Apperly design and construction work of Fred Popplewell Snr, which has stood the test of time since it opened for play in 1936.
Carved out of a forest of eucalypts and angophoras, the fairways at Newcastle bend, twist, roll and sidestep their way over a sand dune-based landscape unequalled in the region. Although the course is situated only a few kilometres from the busy industrial area and port of Newcastle, the density of trees separating the fairways give a feeling of complete isolation from one hole to another.
The golf on offer in the Newcastle region is quite diverse – from the rolling holes at Newcastle to the links of Belmont and every type of course in between – there is something to entice every golfer.
Shortland Waters Golf Club, Newcastle Golf Club’s closest neighbour as you head south towards the city, celebrated its centenary in 2021 with its newly configured par-71 layout at the pride of the party.
The club underwent a multi-million-dollar redevelopment (which was completed in 2019) with eight new holes being built, including six links-style creations on new land adjoining what was the original course.
Not far from the CBD is the Merewether Golf Club, a beautifully presented layout with strip-cut tree-lined fairways and receptive greens laid out on gently rolling terrain. The variety of the holes – in length, shape and change of elevation – is the strength of the course.
For example, the 397-metre par-4 10th hole with its obvious length will test players of all levels. A sweeping left-to-right dogleg, the fairway is also cambered from left-to-right so not only will drives feed right once finding the short grass, a fade is almost guaranteed with the slightly uphill approach because the ball is below your feet. The wide fairway and the absence of sand around the large elevated green makes the hardest rated hole on the course a fair one.
Heading into Newcastle’s western suburbs, and following the eastern edge of Lake Macquarie, you will find Waratah Golf Club.
Waratah is the oldest club in the region having been established in 1901. It has been on its current site at Argenton since 1921 and in the 101 years since, it has overcome a clubhouse fire (1956) and extensive earthquake damage (1989).
Laid out on a narrow strip of land, Waratah is a rarity in modern golf as it mirrors the Old Course at St Andrews with nine holes played out from the clubhouse and nine holes back from the furthest point of the course.
There have been significant improvements made to Waratah in the past decade as part of a long-term masterplan with several front nine holes being redesigned.
There are plenty of highlights at Waratah, from the difficult 415-metre par-4 4th with its smallish but well bunkered green, to the series of holes that run alongside the creek bordering the course, there are plenty that stand out.
The first of a great sequence of holes at the far end of the course is the 293-metre par-4 7th, which can produce as many birdies as bogeys and doubles. Dense groves of trees line a fairway punctuated by two fairway bunkers a short pitching distance from the relatively small green. The key to good scoring here is to not short-side yourself by missing the green – usually with a wedge – on the same side as the flag.
Perhaps my favourite hole is one of the most naturally designed on the course. The 538-metre par-5 10th is gentle dogleg left that sees the fairway narrow for the second half of the journey to the green. The best aspect of this hole is the fairway dips steeply about 50 metres short of the biggest green on the course, which can complicate club selection from back down the fairway.
A city by the beach is bound to have a seaside course in its ranks and Belmont Golf & Bowls Club certainly fits that bill. Located on the southern fringe of the greater Newcastle area, the course lies on an isthmus between the Pacific Ocean and picturesque Lake Macquarie.
In recent years, there have been plenty of improvements made to the original Prosper Ellis design including the establishment of new holes on the northern end of the layout and along the beach.
Belmont is a wonderful links that continues to rise through national course rankings as more golfers become more familiar with the layout.
WHERE TO PLAY
OAKS CYPRESS LAKES RESORT
Green fees: $95 (Mon-Thurs); $120 (Fri-Sun).
THE VINTAGE
Green fees: $109 (Mon-Thurs, inc. cart); $134 (Fri-Sun, inc. cart).
HUNTER VALLEY G&CC
Green fees: $55 (weekdays); $65 (weekend).
www.crowneplazahuntervalley.com.au
KURRI GC
Green fee: $27.
EASTS LEISURE & GC
Green fees: $36 (weekdays); $39 (weekend).
MUREE GC
Green fees: $32 (weekdays); $35 (weekend).
PACIFIC DUNES
Green fees: $65 (Mon-Thurs); $85 (Fri-Sun, inc. cart).
TANILBA BAY GC
Green fee: $36.
HORIZONS GOLF RESORT
Green fees: $75 (weekdays, shared cart); $95 (weekend, shared cart).
NELSON BAY GC
Green fees: $50 (weekdays); $55 (weekend).
NEWCASTLE GC
Green fee: $160.
SHORTLAND WATERS GC
Green fee: $37.
MEREWETHER GC
Green fee: $38.
WARATAH GC
Green fees: $32 (Mon-Tues); $42 (Wed-Sun).
BELMONT G&BC
Green fees: $60 (low season, Feb-Nov); $70 (high season Dec-Jan).
Related Articles
World Exclusive: Trump’s Indonesian Tee-off
Ford NSW Open heading to the Hunter Valley
.jpg&h=115&w=225&c=1&s=1)
