I met Sean whilst he was living in St Andrews (Fife) for a year, working as a caddie on the Old Course.  Like many Australians, he had chosen to spend some time living in Europe and, as a golfer he had chosen caddying at St Andrews as his thing.  We had played together when a bunch of golf course architecture enthusiasts had gathered in East Lothian to enjoy a tour of a new course being built there, the Renaissance, designed by Tom Doak (the architect responsible for Barnbougle Dunes) with Tom himself showing us around and to play Musselburgh, North Berwick and Muirfield.

It seemed appropriate on so many levels, then, that we had decided to play another Doak course, St Andrews Beach.  SAB is on the Mornington Peninsula, the spur of land to the east and south of Melbourne which forms the eastern wing of the land forming Port Phillip Bay, with the city of Melbourne sitting at the top of the bay and the Bellarine Peninsula forming the western wing.  The Mornington Peninsula is known for its wine (it has a somewhat cooler climate than Melbourne) and its golf courses.  SAB was designed and built as a top end members club but the business model was flawed and the club failed costing its members very significant amounts of money.  The course, however, was complete and now functions as a public course, with cheap memberships (dirt cheap by Aussie standards) available.  Unlike the smarter Victorian clubs, SAB has no vast mausoleum of a clubhouse.  It has, instead, a large hut, which functions as both pro shop and cafe/bar.

Sean is a policeman, though he now works as a prosecutor, and is married to another copper.  He’s a pretty straightforward bloke and we had got on really well when we had met in the UK.  Within a few minutes of meeting up again, it was clear that we were still going to get on really well, almost ten years later.  This was, of course, helped by the fact that he turned up wearing a Tottenham Hotspur golf shirt.

Peter the pilot and Terry, who had been at dinner on Thursday, had been interested in joining Sean and me but the course was fully booked and we had been paired with two other golfers.  Sean picked me up at 7.30 and we arrived at SAB at 8.45 with our tee time at 10.12.  We had a coffee and hit some balls.  The range at SAB is not grassed, other than the hitting area.  Instead, you hit balls into an enormous sandy waste.  Any high, mighty shot is rewarded with the same sandy puff that in a game usually denotes a horrible lie in a bunker.  I have no idea how they recover range balls.

We returned to the hut to be introduced to our playing partners, two members of SAB, Peter and Andrew a father and son.  After a few practice putts (on a practice green that, in very British tradition, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the greens on the course), we set off.

I have now played three Tom Doak courses and seen pictures of several more.  It seems clear to me that this is an architect who likes visual impact.  SAB (as I will discuss as we go on) is a bloody good golf course.  It is also one spectacular bit of eye candy followed by another (Barnbougle Dunes, you will have gathered, is no different).

The view from the first tee

SAB is on fantastic land for golf.  Indeed, it seems to me that almost the entire southern end of the Mornington Peninsula could be turned into golf courses.  Tom Doak is, without doubt, one of the best architects working today.  This land and his skill should have created a course we’d enjoy playing and it certainly did.  Although SAB is surprisingly difficult to play (a slope rating of 135 is high) it is great fun, as well.  Most of the difficulty is around the greens.  Wide fairways feature many imposing bunkers but most of them can be carried or avoided by a half-decent player.

Bunkers to be carried on the (brutally difficult) 10th

SAB is a course that flatters the golfer from tee to green, with dramatic shots that most of us can carry off.  It then beats us up around the greens.  I walked off feeling that I had played really well but having only scored 30 points, if I’d been playing Stableford.  It’s a course on a large scale, it’s very difficult to lose a ball, anyone can get a ball round it but only a very skilled player can score well and it’s on a spectacular piece of land.  These are a lot of things in its favour.  Depending on the publication, SAB does pretty well in Australian course rankings, as high as 10th in some, pretty much always in the top 15.  I think that’s fair.  It isn’t as dramatic as Barnbougle, NSW or Lost Farm.  It doesn’t have quite the strategic brilliance of RMW or Kingston Heath.  Indeed, if I were to quibble, it would be this.  At RMW on almost every shot, I knew that the best result on any shot would almost certainly come from taking on a hazard.  I spent the round at SAB doing just that and, frequently, realising later that no benefit accrued from the riskier shot.

Nonetheless, SAB is a superb golf course and playing it is a life affirming experience.  At $315AUS membership is a steal, even though members still pay a $40 green fee.  After a beer with Peter and Andrew, Sean and I set off for St Kilda, where we grabbed a beer and a burger and discussed life, the universe, Donald Trump and Brexit.  I then had a new experience, as my first ever Uber ride took me back to the AirBnB, to get ready for my evening’s adventure.

After lunch on Friday I headed over to the Metropolitan Golf Club for an afternoon game with Andrew and his friend Jamie.  Metro, where Ben (who was at dinner on Wednesday evening) is manager is another of the sandbelt courses.  I had been told that the conditioning of the course at Metro would be as good as anything I saw in the sandbelt and that wasn’t far off the mark.  I don’t think Metro was in any better codition than Kingston Heath but a major professional event is being played at KH next week and it was in just about perfect condition.  Similarly it is difficult to imagine how the condition of Mtero could have been any better.

One particular feature of Metro which I really enjoyed was the transition from green to greenside bunker.  There simply isn’t one.  The bunkers eat into the greens and the greens are cut, as greens, right up to the edge of the bunkers.  A fantastic presentation which should be widely copied, I think.

The front 9 at Metro is very good indeed.  However, some holes were lost several years ago due to the building of a school at the back of the current 6th green and changes have been made as a result.  As we walked to the 12th tee I was met by the sight of cross bunkers which looked entirely different to anything I had seen on the previous 11 holes. It was as if we had, accidentally, walked onto the wrong golf course.  The hole is not a bad hole (indeed, looking at an aerial later, it is clear that it is a modern version of the famous Bottle hole template) but it just doesn’t belong on this golf course.  The 13th, a short par 3, is similarly alien to its surroundings.  After the game (I got up and down from the front left bunker at the last for par to snatch a tie with Andrew but Jamie took the honours – one thing that will result from this time in the sandbelt is a much improved sand game) Andrew showed me the massive tome that has been prepared by Crafter and Mogford, the firm of golf course architects hired by Metro to improve the course.

Whilst the back 9 does need a bit of work I do hope that not too much is doen and that what is done is consistent with the really good front 9.

The approach to the excellent par 5 6th

The swale in front of this green is a brilliant feature.  A short iron or wedge shot to a firm green.  Anything just short won’t run up, as the shots Andrew and I played demonstrate:

They knew I was coming

Victoria Golf Club is another of the Sandbelt clubs and is highly regarded, sitting squarely in the echelon of clubs behind Royal and Kingston Heath in the Melbourne pecking order.  It hosted the 2010 and 2011 Australian Masters, the earlier of those being noted for the presence of Tiger Woods and the breaking scandal of the presence of one of his many mistresses at that tournament.

This game had been organised by Greg, who had been fantastically helpful in arranging some of the golf during my stay in Melbourne.  I had been hoping to meet him during the week but, sadly, that had proved impossible.  I arrived and was met by the Director of Golf (Australian clubs like a title or two), Paul who introduced me to two of the three members I would be playing with.  David ( a retired general in the Australian army), Peter and Matt were excellent company and, unusually for this trip, of a similar or lesser standard of golfer to me.  We played a very enjoyable match which I’m pleased to say David and I won, with the highlight for me being the half in birdie at the tenth where, after Peter hit his approach to a foot, I holed a ten footer for mine.

Victoria is an excellent course, without quite being in the class of Royal or KH.  There’s no doubt that the highlight of the course is its set of par 3s, which are really, really good.

The par 3 13th from the tee

All of these holes demanded carries over sand for the good player looking for a possible birdie but also offered a way in for the lesser player looking to make an easy (?!) bogey.

Like all the Sandbelt clubs I played the look of the course was wonderful, with sandy waste areas again prominent:

These really are a wonderful feature.  You can’t lose a ball in them.  You always get some sort of shot but it may be a very bad lie.  Much, much better than thick rough.

As we finished the 9th, David pointed to the Union Flag flying on the flagpole outside the clubhouse and told me it was in honour of my presence.  I laughed but he and Peter assured me that the flag was, indeed, flying because the club had a British visitor.

After we finished David, Peter and Matt insisted I join them for lunch and so that Peter and Matt could buy the drinks that were owed from the wager on the game.  Victoria is a very welcoming club and has several rooms allowing visiting golfers to stay on the premises.  Another very enjoyable experience on the Sandbelt.

Matt had arranged dinner with a few other golf tragics after our game at Royal Melbourne.  Rich and Chris I had played with earlier in the week.  Terry I will play with next week in Adelaide.  Ben is manager of Metropolitan Golf Club, where I was playing on Frday afternoon and a member at RM and Brian joined us for the craic.  Once again (and I can’t blame Qantas this time) I forgot the camera.  I also made the mistake of turning up to dinner in Melbourne, with members of the very best Victorian golf clubs, in a New South Wales GC polo shirt.  I understand that some may have seen this as a social faux pas.  They should be very grateful I wasn’t sporting a Trent Bridge 2015 t-shirt.

We drank beer and ate pizza and talked golf and cricket for three hours.  Once again it was clear to me what a good bunch of blokes these are.  In much the same way, whenever the GCA (another golf architecture forum but US based, with many UK members) UK contingent get together we have a good time but we just don’t do it as often as the Victorian mafia.  Something to work on on my return.  During the evening I mentioned my visit to the SCG and we worked out that Victoria were playing a day/night warm up against the South Africans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday.  It turns out that Matt is a member of the MCG and he suggested that we might go along for some of the game, so that I could see the MCG.  More on that in a later post.

A really good evening with a cracking set of people.  Good conversation, good food and good beer.  What more could you want?