There’s only one thing better than the weekend and that’s a long weekend... or two. In the second part of this limited series, we recommend more three-day golfing adventures with plenty of highlights on and off the course.
GOLD COAST, QUEENSLAND
The Gold Coast has been one of Australia’s favourite golf holiday destinations for nearly 40 years.
The golf is obviously the primary attraction but there are so many things to do when you’re not on course, which has wide appeal for golfing couples, golf club groups, mate’s weekends or even the lone golfer away with their family.
The north end of the Gold Coast puts you in the neighbourhood of three of the highest ranked layouts in the region – The Links Hope Island and Sanctuary Cove’s Pines and Palms Courses.
The Links Hope Island, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, has always been a Gold Coast favourite because its links-like features offer a distinct point of difference with all the other courses on the Coast.
Designed by Peter Thomson and Mike Wolveridge, Hope Island is a strategist’s course, with the design team influenced by some of the game’s best designers including Dr Alister MacKenzie, in presenting a series of routes on each hole. But to reap the rewards of good ball-striking, precise angles of attack are required into the greens.
Consequently, and especially on some of the short par-4s, the length of a hole doesn’t really matter. What does matter at Hope Island is making the correct club selection on the tee, selecting the right line, and executing accordingly.
Some holes have been redesigned in recent times.
The par-4 9th hole was taken out of play to make way for a new practice range and was replaced by a challenging medium-length par-3 demanding a full water carry from the tee to find a semi-island green, well protected around its edges by a slew of bunkers.
This reduced the par of the course to 71 and led to the redesign of the par-3 3rd hole to become a classic risk-and-reward short par-4.
While these changes have created two memorable additions to the front nine, the best hole at Hope Island remains the strong par-4 13th, which is known as ‘’Wetlands’. Measuring 369 metres from the tips, the fairway doglegs left around a lake to a green featuring a ridge running through the middle of it. The real features of this hole, though, are the fairway bunkers – circular, crater-like pits – and the many greenside bumps, mounds and hollows that have become synonymous with Thomson and Wolveridge designs.
And if the condition of the Hope Island course was to be described like a golf shot it too would be somewhere between sweet and spectacular. Since new owners took over the course nearly a decade ago, the conditioning and overall presentation has been consistently first class.
The same can be said for Hope Island’s nearest golfing neighbour, Sanctuary Cove Golf and Country Club and its two layouts – The Pines and The Palms Courses – which have both had extensive work carried out on them in recent times.
Of course, the Palms was extensively rebuilt with new holes created alongside holes redesigned by Ross Watson. But it was no simple course redesign.
While 15 of the 18 holes covered existing course land, these holes bear little resemblance to the original course designed by the late Fred Bolton in the late 1980s. Watson’s incarnation extracted the best possible holes from the land and saw the Palms gain a place in Australia’s Top-100 Courses ranking for the first time.
At 6,004 metres from the tips, the Palms is not taxing in terms of length. But that does not make it any less challenging as you will find the undulating green complexes fun to negotiate, while getting the strategy right from the tee is a must.
Putting on the Palms is a real test of nerve and skill. If your approach shots come to rest on the wrong level or section of a green, relative the pin position, on any of the 18 greens, you face the likelihood of a three-putt. The undulations across many of the putting surfaces are dramatic but the greens are large enough to accommodate these slopes.
Despite dramatic improvements made to the Palms layout during the past decade, the star of the show at Sanctuary Cove is the Pines course.
The Arnold Palmer signature design, which is the only one in Australia, has been a mainstay of Gold Coast golf since the late 1980s and is generally regarded as one of the most challenging courses in Queensland.
The lion’s share of pine trees on the property flank the doglegging fairways over the opening seven holes, and the setting feels like you have been dropped onto an American parkland course. Three holes into the back nine, you emerge from the pine trees to an open section of the layout and are confronted by one of the most talked about holes at the Pines.
There are four different tee positions on the 154-metre (201 from the tips) par-3 13th so choose wisely before teeing off. The green lies on the far side of a lake and demands a tee shot carries all the way over water. Boulders wedged into the bank of the lake are not only cosmetically appealing but are capable of deflecting balls back into the water … or onto the green if you’re lucky.
A $5 million dollar facelift of the Pines course, which included rebuilding all 18 greens and converting the putting surfaces to Bermuda TifEagle ultradwarf (the same grass used on the Palms). The renovation has the Pines looking in outstanding shape.
These days, to play both courses, you need to be a member, a member’s guest or a guest staying in the neighbouring Intercontinental Sanctuary Cove Resort.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
LOCATION: Gold Coast, Queensland.
HOW TO GET THERE: Hope Island and Sanctuary Cove are at the northern end of the Gold Coast, about 45km north of Gold Coast Airport via the M1 motorway
GREEN FEES: Links Hope Island – $140 (18 holes, Monday to Thursday inc. cart), $150 (18 holes, Friday to Sunday inc. cart); Sanctuary Cove – Palms Course, $100 (18 holes, Intercontinental resort guest inc. golf cart), Pines Course, $180 (18 holes, Intercontinental resort guest inc. golf cart).
WHERE TO STAY: The InterContinental Sanctuary Cove Resort (pictured below) has 251 recently refurbished rooms and premium suites, spread across three accommodation wings and surrounded by 4.2 hectares of tropical gardens. When you’re not on course you can lounge beneath swaying palm trees and take a dip in the resort’s iconic one-acre Lagoon Beach Pool.
As a guest of the resort, you have the unique opportunity to play on The Pines and Palms. Simply book your game in with their concierge team.
The resort has a stay-three and play-three package, which includes three nights’ accommodation for two, rounds at Hope Island and on both Sanctuary Cove layouts, daily breakfast and carts on all courses. Visit www.sanctuarycove.intercontinental.com more details.
WHERE TO EAT/DRINK: If you’re staying at the Intercontinental, you can’t miss the experience of wood-fire dining at The Fireplace, which offers locally sourced produce seasoned with herbs from the restaurant’s own garden. For the foodies, the degustation menu is highly recommended.
Sanctuary Cove’s marina village is home to the iconic Sanctuary Cove Tavern, where you can get high quality classic pub meals and, of course, a fantastic selection of beverages, right in the heart of the village.
WHILE YOU’RE THERE: Depending on your personal preference – and accompanying guests – hit the theme parks or sip cocktails by the pool … it’s your call.
WEBSITES: www.linkshopeisland.com.au ; www.sanctuarycovegolf.com.au.
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YARRAWONGA, NSW/VICTORIA
Yarrawonga – on the southern side of the NSW-Victorian border beside the mighty Murray River and Lake Mulwala – with its ideal climate and big river views has long been a haven for tourists, especially visiting golfers.
A narrow two-lane bridge links Yarrawonga with Mulwala, on the northern shore in NSW, which is home to the Yarrawonga Mulwala Golf Club Resort.
In the 96 years since moving to Mulwala, the club has grown to become the largest public access golf resort in Australia. It is widely recognised as the pick of the resorts along the Murray, just three hours’ drive north of Melbourne.
At the heart of the complex is a first class-clubhouse – boasting a health and fitness centre, bistro, bar, movie theatre and massage facilities – which now stands where the dairy farm homestead once presided over the surrounding paddocks.
Over the past 65 years, those paddocks have been developed into 45 holes of fun and challenging golf.
There’s the Peter Thomson and Mike Wolveridge-designed Murray Course, and the neighbouring Lake Course as well as a shorter nine-hole layout, known as the Executive Course. Both the Murray and Lake layouts are well entrenched in Golf Australia magazine’s ranking of the Top-100 Public Access Courses in the country.
The par-72 Murray Course has been highly acclaimed for many years and ranks among the best courses along the golf rich Murray River. The opening four holes are among its finest and lead you to the north bank of the river, which a round highlight awaits.
Standing on the 5th tee, there is no missing the flowing waters of the Murray off to your left. The 470-metre par-5 runs along the riverbank with only a row of river gums and wattles as well as a deep gully separating the left of the fairway from the water. The fairway ebbs and flows like a raging torrent, toward a slightly elevated green guarded by an enormous gum tree and a small bunker front left. By the time you reach the 6th green you will have good feel for the course as it continues to wind its way through huge river gums.
The Lake course is very different in design to the Murray course. It is more open but still features some big gums, lakes, and plenty of bunkers. This course incorporates some older-style holes – crafted by designer Sam Berriman (who designed Horsham and Keysborough on the Melbourne Sandbelt) – with newer holes created by Thomson and Wolveridge.
It is one of the old Berriman-designed holes that you will get your heart racing as you near the turn. The 283-metre par-4 8th is a picturesque hole dominated by a lake, which is easily reachable from the elevated tee. This pretty hazard also must be cleared with your pitch shot approach to the small green.
Water is also in play on two of the best holes on the back nine – the 531-metre par-5 13th and the 156-metre par-3 14th. The par-5 twists and turns right and then left with out-of-bounds not far from the left of the fairway. A lake then looms up on the right as the fairway rises to the elevated green.
The following par-3 plays alongside the other side of the lake and if you keep your tee shot out of the hazard, you’ll still need to negotiate the bunkers right and left of the putting surface.
While water dominates at 13 and 14, it is sand that will be your curse at the 322-metre par-4 15th. This is a trademark Thomson and Wolveridge hole with the strategic use of bunkers, on the fairway and around the green, as well as mounding.
This hole provides a nice snapshot of some of the hazards you will face across the river at Black Bull golf course, which was designed by Thomson and Ross Perrett, and is part of the Silverwoods residential development that also now includes a luxury boutique Sebel hotel next to Lake Mulwala.
Black Bull is a fine course that offers relatively wide fairways, big greens, expansive bunkering, and subtle mounding.
One of the appeals of a round here is the open space. The spacious fairways, punctuated by bunkers of varying shapes and sizes, expose players to breezes coming off Lake Mulwala. These winds add to the challenge of avoiding several man-made lakes and streams that come into play on nearly a dozen holes.
It is water and sand that combine to really ramp up the challenge when you enter the ‘Bull Ring’ – a stretch of three difficult holes starting at the 4th hole that pays homage to Black Bull’s Angus cattle farm origins. The Bull Ring is Black Bull at its toughest and if you can get through here relatively unscathed you can aspire to making a good score for the day.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
LOCATION: Yarrawonga and Mulwala, on the NSW Victorian border.
HOW TO GET THERE: Yarrawonga is three hours’ drive north of Melbourne.
GREEN FEES: Yarrawonga Mulwala – $64 (18 holes), $245 (Monday to Friday pass); Black Bull – $65 (18 holes, weekdays), $75 (weekends).
WHERE TO STAY: Yarrawonga Mulwala GC Resort has nine styles of accommodation to suit the budget conscious as well as those looking for a taste of luxury. From suites to villas to apartments, all are set in beautiful surrounds.
There are several stay and play packages available with the best for weekend escapes being their Golf Weekender package, which includes two nights’ accommodation (Friday and Saturday), two breakfast vouchers, two evening meal vouchers and two rounds of golf. Check out the club’s website for rates and booking details.
Black Bull also has accommodation readily available at the adjoining Sebel Yarrawonga – a 4.5-star boutique hotel, which offers studio and luxury apartments as well as three dining and bar venues … right on the edge of Lake Mulwala.
WHERE TO EAT/DRINK: If you’re staying at Yarrawonga Mulwala GC Resort, the Border Bistro in the clubhouse has an extensive menu and for lovers of steak you can’t miss with the scotch fillet. There are also theme nights like the pot and parma special on Friday nights or Mexican Mondays, if your weekend getaway extends beyond Sunday.
The Naked Tree is a must when in Yarrawonga, whether it’s pancakes for breakfast, an Outback burger and chips for lunch, coffee during the day or high-end cuisine at night … you will love it.
A short walk along Belmore St and you will find the best Indian restaurant in Yarrawonga – Lakeside Indian. No need to look at the menu, just get the seafood curry.
WHILE YOU’RE THERE: There are some excellent wineries and cellar doors to explore a short drive away in Rutherglen, including All Saints, Stanton & Killeen, Campbell Wines and De Bortolis.
WEBSITES: www.yarragolf.com.au ; www.silverwoodsyarrawonga.com.au
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