But somehow Portsea managed it, all while ensuring a sustainable financial future and guaranteeing its place in the excellent but competitive Mornington Peninsula golf scene.

Portsea Golf Club began life as a nine-hole layout in 1924 and expanded slowly over time, taking more than four decades to reach a full 18 holes. The heavily contoured land is perfect for golf and the undulating course has remained an icon of golf on the Mornington Peninsula even given the emergence of a stream of newer options.

For any golfer travelling to the region to play, skipping Portsea was like visiting Paris and bypassing the Eiffel Tower. The short, occasionally quirky but truly compelling layout has attracted golfers from across Victoria, all over Australia and around the world for decades. Home to one of the country’s most popular and successful pro-ams each January, the club is a member’s paradise because knowing the varying personalities of the course in different conditions and capricious wind directions becomes an asset with every round filed in the memory bank.

Yet it was these members who needed to be convinced in the proposed plan to overhaul the way it had operated for nearly 90 years and embrace a 21st century outlook that would all but guarantee Portsea Golf Club survived into the 22nd century.

The process began at a time when the membership model was floundering and the committee of the day realised that unless the business model changed, a club with a 90-year history would go broke within ten more, says club captain Colin Watson. The plan was hatched to sell the parcels of land covering the area behind what is now the 4th green (formerly the 9th) and extending to incorporate the space taken up by the previous clubhouse. The sale of this land would fund the new construction, which – importantly within the business model – included an additional revenue stream in the form of the 4½-star accommodation.

Views, views, views ... the central clubhouse area is spacious, while the area can be opened up to the expansive al fresco area.