Bill’s, Darlinghurst

I woke this morning with a slightly sore head and decided to allow myself a bit of a lie in.  I had been planning to have brunch with Scott, his wife Kerry and their two girls (2 1/2 and one month) but he rang to cancel, as they had had a rough night.  It’s conversations like that that make me glad my sons are all now adult.

I decided that I needed a good breakfast.  Also, the wi-fi in the B&B was down, so I had been unable to post to this blog yesterday, and had some catching up to do.  To kill two birds with one stone I returned to Bill’s (above), where I’m typing this from.  His (delicious) take on Avo on toast, a couple of lattes and a smoothie later and I’m feeling recharged and ready for the day.  I think I may head off to the SCG, then follow that with taking in the Australian Football League (A-League) game between Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.

The author at work…

The first test match of the Australian cricket season started in Perth on Thursday.  The Aussies are playing South Africa, two team in the middle of a rebuilding process.  Ever since South Africa returned to test cricket I have found matches between these sides to be compelling, played with an aggression and a refusal to back down that, until recently, just wasn’t seen in England teams.  Because this game is in Perth, 3 hours behind Sydney, the coverage here starts in the afternoon and continues well into the evening.  I didn’t catch any of the game on Thursday, though Australia had a good day, bowling the Proteas out for 242 and adding 100+ unbeaten for their first wicket.  My plan for Friday evening was to find a bar showing the cricket.  Nick had suggested that the suburb of Paddington, a 30 minute walk from Darlinghurst, might be a good place to find one and also a fun place to spend a Friday evening.  Leaving the B&B I finally bumped into Nolan, who owns the place and his girlfriend and they confirmed that Paddington would be worth a visit.

Paddington was, as promised, full of bars and restaurants and was alive with people out to enjoy a Friday evening.  Many of the bars were too trendy to have sport on TV but looked fun and were full of Sydney’s young professionals, dressed for a night out.  A really fun place.

I did find a bar with the cricket on and bought myself a beer.  I had to call home, to discuss a development in my ongoing dispute with the firm I have left and that call took a while.  When I returned to the bar a slightly inebriated Aussie, Mick, introduced himself to me and suggested I join him and his friend Jules, who were watching the game from a sofa in the corner of the bar.  Mick left soon after but Jules and I got talking about cricket.  Blokes aren’t normally good at conversations with strangers but sport is often a catalyst.  Jules, it turned out, was a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground and was a real cricket enthusiast.  We talked about the game, the current Australian side, the brilliance and transformation of Ricky Ponting, why it’s great that in Ben Stokes the Aussies have an Englishman to love/hate in the way they do Stuart Broad, the emergence of Bangladesh, the malicious influence of the BCCI on the game and on.

Once play finished for the day our conversation moved on, too.  Jules is an investment banker and we discussed the economy, Brexit and Trump.  He talked about Thomas Piketty, the controversial French economist, whose book Capital in the 21st Century discusses inequality in the modern economic system.  Piketty is a name frequently discussed at home, when my wife and eldest son (an economics student) discuss the economy (which they do more frequently than most!)  I don’t often find myself in conversations about “maximising utility” at midnight on a Friday.  In fact the only other person I know who would use that phrase is my eldest son.  During this conversation another of Jules’ friends, a TV reporter joined us, apparently straight from the studio.  By the time we finished, another 2 hours had passed and I decided to call it a day, grabbing a pork char siu bun for dinner on the walk home.  An evening that started with the frustrations of my work issues turned into a really good night, though a slightly more alcoholic one than planned.

I’m going to be fortunate enough to play several great courses on this trip.  A number of them are generally agreed to be in the best 100 courses in the world.  That’s an extremely high standard.  There are many superb courses I have played and enjoyed in the past that don’t get close to that level of acclaim.  I played the first of these yesterday.  New South Wales is almost unanimously regarded as the best course in the state of NSW.

NSW is not, however, without its issues.  The most common knock on the course you will hear is that it may be on a world class site for a golf course but that it is not the best course that could have been built on the site.  It has, it is said, a few poor holes.  Of the two most famous holes (the 5th, pictured above, and 6th) the 6th is a beautiful hole but fails to make the most of its setting.  With these criticisms in mind I was slightly unsure what to expect of NSW.

The club is set on the northern headland of Botany Bay, a few miles south of the city centre, the southernmost of a string of 4 golf clubs on the coastline.  To get there I had the choice of a $40 cab ride or the bus, the latter involving a 15 minute walk at the end.  I went with the bus and allowed plenty of time to arrive. I alighted on a bland suburban street and set off.  I soon, however, arrived at an apparent dead end.  Checking Google Maps on my ‘phone (how did we get anywhere before smartphones?) I realised that I should take a path heading off towards the sea:

It’s not often you approach a club through a National Park!

I arrived 30 minutes before Nick, my host, had suggested.  This gave me time to have a look in the proshop.  Like many others I know, I’m incapable of visiting a top golf club without acquiring some swag.  I’m conscious that, if I’m not careful, this could get out of hand in Australia, so I restricted myself to a hat with a circular brim (skin damage caused by the sun is a big issue in Australia and I have been layering on the suncream but wearing a hat that protects your neck as well as forehead seems sensible) and a pair of logoed socks.  Why the socks?  I had been told (correctly) that top Australian clubs don’t like socks with shorts that don’t cover the ankle.  Chcking the club website in advance I had seen that they also didn’t permit socks showing any logo other than a club logo.  The socks I had brought with me all had the logo of a clothing manufacturer.  I had, therefore, travelled down in trousers but with a pair of shorts so that I could acquire socks.  I am now the proud owner of a pair of NSW GC socks. I did note, however, that next to these on the rails were the same non-compliant socks I had left at the B&B!

Arriving early also gave me a chance to get a feel for the place.  The view from the 1st tee (right by the pro-shop) suggested I was in for a treat:

I was playing with Nick, a member at NSW who I had been introduced to by a friend who is a member of Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club and another guest from Atlanta, Bernie.  Bernie is a member of Alwoodley Golf Club and was in Australia for the Mackenzie Cup, an annual event played by a number of clubs with a connection to the great golf course architect Alistair Mackenzie, which this year is being played at Royal Melbourne.

I had been told that the first three holes at NSW were weak.  The first, however, was a pleasant and gentle introduction to the round.  Having struggled with my game on Wednesday I was delighted to strike the ball really well on the first tee.  The good news was that, although I didn’t score very well yesterday, I did hit the ball well enough to really enjoy the round.

On the basis of one play (I’m getting another crack at NSW tomorrow) I think the only really week hole on the course is the third.  It’s a sharp dogleg left with a blind tee-shot.  Nick told us the line, which is, in fact, over trees on the left, rather than into the obvious line of the fairway.  That makes it an awkward shot and both Bernie and I played further right than ideal, leaving long second shots (though I hit perhaps the best shot I have hit in Australia so far, a high, soft landing 200 yard shot with a utility, straight at the flag, only to three putt).  It’s an awkward hole because of the tee shot and the fact that the obvious tee shot leaves a very difficult long shot to an elevated green but not a bad one.  I wonder if simply cutting out trees to encourage a tee shot aimed further left might not make it a better hole.

From there on, however, NSW is simply brilliant.  Only two holes after the third, you reach perhaps the most photographed hole on the course, the 5th.  There’s nothing dramatic about the tee shot on this par 5, driving towards a ridge 230 yards or so from the tee.  In the breeze, none of us reached the ridge (though Bernie and I both saw our balls land near the top and roll back), so we all played 2nd shots blind over the ridge.  As you walk over the ridge, one of the most spectacular views in golf presents itself:

There’s a quote I read in the club history, which I was skimming whilst sitting in the clubhouse waiting for Nick, to the effect that if you think you have troubles and, on cresting the ridge on the 5th you are still thinking of your troubles, then you do, really, have troubles!

The next most photographed hole at NSW is the next, the par 3 6th.  We were playing from the back tees (just visible on the left of the photo above).  I have been asked for photos of people, so here are Nick and Bernie on the 6th tee, with the hole behind them:

The 6th isn’t, it is true, a great hole.  It is, I think, a good one though, not nearly as bad as the critics would have you believe.  No doubt, however, that this site deserves a great hole.  In fact, the government of NSW, who own the land, are requiring the club to move the green, due to its proximity to the coastal path which runs around the right side of the hole.  The club’s retained architect is Greg Norman, who might be said to be a strong example of the fact that a great golfer doesn not, necessarily, make a great architect.  He plans to move the green to right by the ocean, which will require some quite serious earthmoving.  It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

There remain a lot of very strong holes at NSW, making bold use of the undulations, going over rather than round ridges in a way that reminded me of Royal Hague.  The ground is sandy and firm and perfect for golf.  There’s no doubt it’s a tough course (we were playing in a wind that got up at times to a 3-club wind) but there are a host of thrilling shots to play.  I don’t want this blog to become a detailed hole by hole analysis of golf courses (I may occasionally put these elsewhere and link to them, so here’s one more picture, this time of the approach to the par 4 14th, a candidate I thought for best hole on the course:

I’m often concerned, in advance of a visit to one of the world’s great courses that I’ll be disappointed, that I won’t find the course as wonderful as the critics suggest I should.  I played NSW on a perfect day, 28 centigrade but with enough wind to make it feel cooler but also to make the golf challenging, in the company of two really nice guys and I played OK, so there were a lot of things going for it but I was blown away by this course.  There are criticisms that could be made, if you were feeling churlish.  The 3rd isn’t great, there’s an element of sameness to the tee shots on the par 5s and none of the par 3s is great.  All of that is outweighed by the brilliance of some of the par 4 and the bold, inspired use of the land movement.  It’s a course that clearly deserves a place in any list of the world’s best.  I’m absolutely delighted to be going back tomorrow.

 

Australia’s reputation, when it comes to beer is, let’s be honest, pretty poor.  Having Fosters as your most famous brewing export isn’t great but the USA has Anheuser-Busch’s excrementally poor Budweiser, compared to which the “Amber Nectar” is actually not that bad.  The US, however, also has a tremendously strong craft beer movement, which has been well established for over 25 years.  Sierra Nevada, one of the standard bearers for the US craft beer movement is now a supermarket beer in the UK.  Most British towns have a speciality beer shop which will feature beers from great craft brewers such as Stone, Dogfish Head and Lagunitas.  I had, until recently, assumed that Australia was still the land of Fosters, VB and Twoheys, with some light but inconsequential relief provided by the pleasant but anodyne Little Creatures.

Preparing for this trip, however, I became aware that there was, indeed, even here, a craft beer movement.  I have, therefore, made every effort to try Aussie craft beers.  Whilst those I had tried so far had not been bad, none of them had excited me, or want me to tell my beer loving friends about them.  Even at 4 Pines in Manly, I had a couple of very passable but not terribly interesting pale ales.

Tonight, I visited a bar on Oxford Street in Darlinghurst by the odd name of Bitter Phew.  Oxford Street itself is an experience, with its mix of fast food outlets, convenience stores and outlets catering to a mix of sexual tastes.  Not, necessarily, somewhere to take the mother in law.  I liked Bitter Phew as soon as I entered.  To get there you have to climb a dark, slightly forbidding staircase.  Inside, it is lit, but only just.  A narrow bar area extends into a slightly wider area with a few sofas and a couple of tables for larger groups.  An Australian take on some of the better US craft beer bars. The list of draft beers (poured, in the American style from a number of anonymous taps on the back wall) was, however, slightly disappointing, since only two or three of the 14 beers on offer were Australian.

As a result, I started with a schooner (the 330ml glass size seems standard here, and very welcome that is too) of a Pacific Pale Ale from 8 Wired, a really high quality New Zealand brewer, some of whose beers I have seen in the UK.  The beer was a text book example of the style.  For my second (and last, if my family are reading!) schooner, I chose a Double IPA from Hope Estate, a brewer based in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.  Double IPAs are a popular style with brewers in the US and UK but are very difficult (in my opinion) to do well.  The best (Stone’s Ruination, the excellent Magic Rock’s Cannonball) are very, very good, intensely hoppy and bitter but balanced with just enough malt.  Most, however, fall into the trap of being too much of everything and the result, so often, is an over-sweet, over malty soup.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find the Hope Estates version to be beautifully balanced, intensely hoppy, with typically southern hemisphere notes of tropical fruits but not too intense, nor overly sweet.  It carried its 9% abv extraordinarily well.  A delicious beer which I would positively seek.  I look forward to trying other beers from an obviously very able brewer.