Holiday at home: Hunter with a big game

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.

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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.

Newcastle Golf Club. PHOTO: Brendan James.

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.

Waratah Golf Club. PHOTO: Brendan James.

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.

Belmont Golf & Bowls Club. PHOTO: Brendan James.

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).

www.cypresslakes.com.au

THE VINTAGE

Green fees: $109 (Mon-Thurs, inc. cart); $134 (Fri-Sun, inc. cart).

www.chateauelan.com.au

HUNTER VALLEY G&CC

Green fees: $55 (weekdays); $65 (weekend).

www.crowneplazahuntervalley.com.au

KURRI GC