14th Hole, Beach-Like Stretches 14th Hole, Beach-Like Stretches Images: Getty Images

Next day I’m onto Stuart Appleby’s Sands at Torquay, a rolling green beast that winds through eclectic, aesthetic housing. Appleby has sculpted (well, I don’t think he actually used a mattock or anything, but he’s come up with the plan) a course with wide landing areas that lead up to huge rolling greens, every landing zone guarded

by the pots of a Sandbelt-bred boy. There are more bunkers than in Saddam City. They haven’t called it The Sands because of the buckets.

After the round I email Appleby (I did a story about him a few years ago) to ask somewhat facetiously: “Couldn’t fit any more bunkers in?” His reply comes almost immediately and is more philosophical than you might give the lug credit for: “Why is man so relaxed when he’s standing on sand in his boardies, yet when he dons golf shorts, it becomes something to fear? When you’re in a bunker, think of it as a short trip to the beach.” Ha. Yeah, sure mate. Next time I’ll take a boogie board.

Aside from the parts bordered by dunes and ti-tree – and the every-variation-of-beige-coloured houses – the land around The Sands is unprepossessing. It’s flat and rural and sort of swampy. This makes the actual golf course,

with its tightly-mown Santa Ana couch fairways and giant white “beaches”, all the more attractive. It’s like a velvet green tongue running through the tundra.

Highlights? On the par-three 17th, with the westerly straight into us (as it is on all four holes home, a fact that stuffed many a pro in the recent surf Coast Shootout), I hit a pure driver from 180m. The ball heads straight into the pot pin-high. I flop out pleasingly to four and a half metres and make the downhill putt for one of the great pars. On the tough 14th with the breeze, I drive the ball 284m; then airmail the green with a wedge. And on the signature par-four 11th I hit a three-wood over the black dead Moonahs, followed by a hard hook which almost kills two members of the group in front, neighbours of my playing partners Graeme and Karin. Sorry, folks. Overall pars are hard-won, but it’s a fine, fun battle in The Sands’ Sunday par comp.

One tip: given the motherlode of bunkers – this after they removed a few last year – it’s imperative to get yourself a course guide with yardage, telling you how far away they are. It’s something all courses should have. It’s one of the differences between amateurs and pros. The play-for-pay boys have a caddy with a laser-scope who goes out on Mondays to measure how far away bad things are. We choppers blithely blast away with whatever stick will send the ball furthest. That’s just silly.

And so I’m off to Leura Park Estate, a vineyard and cellar door across the road from Curlewis GC [see breakout]. Leura Park is something of a Sunday institution on the Bellarine. Each weekend groups come to taste wine, eat well and enjoy the great fortune of living within a hired bus ride of this most-excellent Sunday afternoon frivolity.