You know the family is of outstanding stock, but the chances of junior living up to her older sister Kingston Heath’s reputation makes this an unlikely love affair.

The Heath is a raging beauty; confident and capable of strutting her stuff on any global stage. I’ve watched her with blushing admiration as she’s entertained a string of would-be suitors and left them all wanting more.

The Furrows, even despite her DNA, will need a degree of magic to hold her own.

Apparently, she resides in the equivalent of a little granny flat out the back of the family house, hence why I’ve never met her.

So, it’s only fair that as junior readies herself to step out, I’ll try to remember not to compare – as hard as that might be.

We meet with friends (she has her standards, after all) and it’s only fitting given her mysterious status that we arrive at her door from different directions.

To be fair, now that I’m here, I have seen her before, but she didn’t look then like she does now. WOW!

My colleagues have arrived courtesy of a walk through the Heath; I bowl up having used the almost unmarked front driveway. Regardless, here we are and while older sister is in plain sight to the west, I can’t take my eyes off The Furrows now. WOW!

Looking at this landscape it is hard to imagine market gardens were ever here. PHOTO: Gary Lisbon.

Ok, so enough of the journalistic licence, but you get my drift.

I’m staring at land where until recently market gardens laid. My first couple of visits here years ago were into a dusty overflow car park for Kingston Heath during big tournaments.

It then seemed featureless, bland and bore no resemblance to the Heath that lies immediately to its west, divided from the 12th fairway only by a drainage ditch.

The 12th tee on the main course now sits close to the 9th green on this amazing new development, but if you’d asked me whether or not nine new holes could fit in a parcel of land loosely the same area as that adjacent par-5, I could never have imagined how.

Well not if making it look like it “just fits” was a prerequisite, anyhow.

But here we are – and I’m blown away.

These nine holes appear as if they’ve been here for decades. Honestly.

So, the question is, how?

The man with the answers is Mike Cocking, the primary designer of OCM (Ogilvy, Cocking Mead), the design firm that “modernised” the main course, including building the nearby 19th hole.

That 19th was built as a “spare hole”, partly to help the club during its green replacement program, but has won enormous praise in its own right and doubtless played a role in the committee’s final decision to plump for The Furrows on the parcel of the property known as the “Madden Land” after one of its original farming families.

Cocking explains: “It was back in the late 1980s that the club embarked on almost a policy of buying land around the course when it became available.

There is little difference between The Furrows bunkering and the main course. PHOTO: Gary Lisbon.

“They then leased it out to continue its usage as a market garden and over the years since, things like using it for water storage, for nurseries or even a 20th hole have been raised as potential uses.

“But a few years back now, I give Matt McKenna a lot of credit for this when he was captain, he had a vision of what it (the land) could be, not just in terms of golf holes, but what it could mean to the club and its future.

“I remember looking at an image of Mike Keisers’ Sand Valley courses (in Wisconsin) and seeing a picture of three generations of golfers playing from the same tee.

“I think that sort of ticked a box that Matt and others at the club had about providing a place for kids to learn, for beginners – particularly women – not to feel overwhelmed (by the main course), for families to play together and as a new facility for club members.

“There’s also the increased demand for the existing 18 holes that has been generated in the past couple of years, so this provided a handy alternative.

“And this might be just me, but I also think it’s a great place – and they won’t necessarily agree with me - for some of the older members to find a place that better suits their games into the future.”

So, with golf committed and OCM on board, what were the key factors in deciding upon The Furrows as it stands?

There are still buildings to the eastern and southern ends of The Furrows, meaning any holes of length would potentially create more issues for errant shots.

The end of The Furrows loop. PHOTO: Gary Lisbon.

Connecting the course to the main clubhouse via holes around the main course’s first and 19th holes was an option, but ultimately considered too difficult to weave around traditional competitions.

Cocking said a “freeform” option – whereby a few tees and a few greens could be randomly linked as players chose – was also discussed, but deemed unsafe and impractical given the expected usage.

“Short courses have certainly been spoken about a lot in the past few years and have been successful around the world on public and private facilities,” Cocking said.

“So, Matt worked with everyone around the constraints and then we hit on what it has turned out to be.

“We had about 500 metres of land that’s about two holes wide, so if you think about 100 metres or so on each hole in both directions and then one across at the end, that’s essentially what we decided.

“We didn’t like the `army’ concept of out and back on either side and we also wanted to avoid having the backdrop as houses, so we criss-crossed them out and back, too.”

Interestingly, the physical sculpting of the course wasn’t as easy as one might expect given the nature of the land previously.

“It was certainly challenging,” Cocking said.

“A lot of people comment about how much contouring we have added, because the land was almost dead flat, just a slight pitch down in the direction of the (main course’s) 12th green.

“But despite what people think of the Sandbelt area, there’s not sufficient sand just lying there to sculpt as your heart desires; there’s maybe six feet of sand in some areas, but for a lot of it there were only a couple of inches.

“So, it’s a logistical challenge to strip that sand off, shape the soil or clay underneath, do the drainage and then return the sand and finally the soil.

“We wanted to add character to the land and introduce the same sorts of hollows and mounds you see out on the big course.”