I awoke this morning to the sound of heavy rain.  A quick look outside confirmed that the decision to play at Royal Hobart yesterday, rather than today was inspired.  It wasn’t just wet, though, it was freezing cold.  The plan today was to go up to 7 Mile Beach (along fro RH and near the airport) to see the land on which 2 new courses are planned to be built.  I was picked up by Dieter as arranged at 9am.  Having cursed myself for packing a sweater and a rain coat I was now delighted I did.  We drove for 30 minutes, the last 10 down a dirt track, to a locked gate where we waited for the rest of the crew, who had the key to the site.  After a further 5 minutes driving down the increasingly rough track, we parked up and got out.  Again, I forgot my camera (this won’t happen again) but, to be honest, the weather was so miserable that I’m not sure I’d have taken many pictures anyway.

We looked first at the 5 Mile Beach site.  7 Mile Beach and 5 Mile Beach are, unsurprisingly two long beaches on a spit of land close to the Hobart Airport.  5 Mile is on the North side and 7 Mile on the South side of the spit.  The land itself is sandy and duny.  Despite being on the same piece of land the two sites are quite different.  5 Mile Beach has relatively small, rolling dunes, whilst 7 Mile has much bigger, much more dramatic dunes.  5 Mile will make a superb golf course, in competent hands.  7 Mile could make a brilliant golf course but it will take expert design.  It’s easy to build dramatic features in dramatic land but great golf isn’t about drama (though it can help) but about how the terrain is played over and affects the game.  That’s why relatively flat dunes, such as those at St Andrews of Muirfield, can provide much better golf than some of the courses, say, on the west coats of Ireland which have huge dunes.  The latter can appeal more to those who play them once but the former are, ultimately, more satisfying, interesting and challenging, except in those rare cases where a truly talented architect has been at work.

It will be interesting to see how these two sites pan out, if funds for their construction can be raised.

We retired, rather wet and bedraggled to Royal Hobart for a drink and some lunch.  One of the group was due to make a presentation to the club’s committee in the hope of being awarded the contract to work with the club on improvements to their course and had brought plans (and plans of another Australian course he is working on), which were laid out on a table and the subject of much discussion.  Finally, we left, and I said goodbye to the group.  I’ll be seeing Rich M again on Tuesday, when he takes me around his home club, Kingston Heath.  The others, I hope to get another chance to meet in the future, perhaps in the UK where I can return some of their splendid hospitality.

The good news is that the forecast for Melbourne is showers tomorrow but improving from then on.

The forecast rain hadn’t arrived today.  Good news for those of us playing golf.  Not such good news for the Australian cricket team, who had folded  for just 85 at Bellerive Oval in Hobart against South Africa.  Australia’s lowest total since they rolled over for 60 at Trent Bridge last year.  Obviously an occurrence that gave me no pleasure and one which I avoided mentioning in the company of a group of sports mad Australian golfers.  To make things feel even more like home, along with the cold weather, we went for an Indian, which was very good, having bought bottles of beer in a Bottle Shop.

I’m trying to get my head around Australian licensing laws.  Most supermarkets and grocery stores don’t sell alcohol.  There are occasional specialist wine merchants or bottle shops (the expression bottle shop is equivalent to an Englishman’s off-licence) but most bottle shops appear to be extensions of bars or hotels.  I had read much about the Australian craft beer revolution but, one excellent beer in Sydney aside, I hadn’t seen much evidence.  On my way to the restaurant I passed a brewpub, where I stopped for a quick half, as I was running early.  The beer I had was excellent, a really hoppy IPA, described as an Aussie IPA.  It certainly had elements of the pacific IPAs I have tried before (mostly from New Zealand or brewed using New Zealand hops) but it wasn’t as tropical fruit-y, which was a good thing.  I’ve since learned that the Winston (the brewpub) is also supposed to do good food.  That’s where I’ll head this evening, I think.

Pictured at the top (my apologies, I forgot my camera so had to use my ‘phone) are most of the group.  My further apologies to Richard C, who I sat next to and who I appear to have managed to crop from the shot.  A really good evening with a really great and diverse bunch of blokes.

Dinner last night at Lost Farm was excellent.  The Brisbane lads encouraged me to try the dozen mixed oysters (2 each of six different presentations, 3 cooked and 3 raw) which were truly excellent and paired well with the Tasmanian Riesling they had ordered and I followed it with some delicious and beautifully cooked local lamb, which again went well with the Shiraz they ordered.  After dinner we went down to the Sports Bar, where we had a couple of drinks (well, I did, they were still going strong when I left).  The bar was packed and raucous.  A very informal place and unlike anything I have seen at any other golfing venue.  I spent a little time talking to members of the team which had represented Cypress Point Club at the Mackenzie Cup at Royal Melbourne, who had just arrived and were looking forward to playing Barnbougle.  Barnbougle and CPC are both wonderful golf courses with stunningly beautiful locations.  I couldn’t help thinking, though, that the Sports Bar at Barnbougle on a busy Friday night was about as far from CPC as you get get in the world of golf.  Both utterly wonderful, though.

This morning I set off from Bridport for the 3 1/2 hour drive to Royal Hobart, knowing that the weather forecast was not good.  I had a ‘phone converastion with my eldest son, who was looking forward to palying rugby for his university’s colleges rugby 15 (effectively the 3rd XV) tomorrow (or today, over here) and was confident of getting to represent Cambridge in their annual match against Oxford (albeit at 3rd XV level) in a couple  of weeks.  That call was accompanied by the drive through Northern Tasmania, which is very attractive.  The latter half of the drive was made more pleasant by listening to the Australian cricket team struggling against South Africa, a game being played in Hobart.

I arrived at Royal Hobart with only a few minutes to spare before our tee time.  I met  the TGF group and my playing partners Rich and Dieter.  As we set off the forecast rain had not arrived.  In fact, it never did, and we enjoyed pretty good conditions for the whole of the round.  Hobart isn’t as storied a club or course as most I am playing on this trip.  It’s a parkland course and a decent one but it was great to play with two tidy golfers (Rich plays off +2 and Dieter off 4).  Sadly, in a par competition (what we would call a bogey) I didn’t play well, though scoring was tricky, as was demonstrated by the fact that the competition was won by a score of level.  Hobart is the sort of club that would be good to be a member of.  A very decent course and a nice vibe about the place.  We shared a couple of jugs of beer between the 10 of us while presentations were made to the competition winners.

I’m struck by how much competitive golf Australians play and how popular the competitions are.  There was a field of 145 for todays comp, lower than the usual 200 because of the poor weather forecast.  Most clubs have at least two competitions a week and fields of 150-200 are common, even midweek.

I drove into Hobart to find my AirBnB, and to change for dinner tonight, which I’m having with the TGF group.

 

On Wednesday evening, when I arrived at Barnbougle, I had met 5 blokes from Brisbane on a lads trip to Tasmania; Scotty, Jonno, Myles, Ainsley and Kevin.  They’d been slightly the worse for wear but very friendly and we’d intended to play together yesterday but they’d cocked up their tee times, so we couldn’t make it work.  This morning they were due off at 8am, rather earlier than my booking of 9.20 but I joined them, playing in a three with Jonno and Kevin.  Jonno was rather the worse for wear and not a serious golfer and Kevin was a 15 handicapper having a bad day.  They were great company, however, and Barnbougle Dunes was just brilliant.

There is, apparently, some debate as to which of Barnbougle Dunes or Lost Farm is the better course (though all major publications rank Dunes above Farm).  I loved Lost Farm but it seems to me there’s no room for discussion.  Lost Farm may be one of the best courses in the world.  Barnbougle Dunes is one of the best in the world.  It is visually dramatic.  It has width but huge strategic interest.  It has greens that test short game skills to breaking point but reward invention and real skill.  It has dramatic shots and natural beauty.  It has, perhaps, the best set of short par 4s I have ever played.  It has brutal, baffling but wonderful par 5s and it’s par 3s aren’t overlong but demand precision.

I have a Holy quartet of courses I have played (Muirfield, Dornoch, Portrush and Cypress Point) which are in  a different league to all other courses I have played (and some of those others are great courses) and which I do not want to, or can’t, seperate.  I’m going to need to mull it over but, at the moment, I think Barnbougle Dunes joins that group.

My front 9 was scrappy, a number of really well played holes matched by a few poorly played ones.  And then a few I thought I played OK but that beat me up.  The par 3 7th was an example of that.  At just 98 metres (110 yards) on the card it looks simple:

It is, however, brutally difficult.  The green is tiny.  As the photo shows, short left is not good.  Long, anywhere, is worse.  Right, pin high, is hopeless, as it drops off steeply.  If you are going to miss, the only miss is short right.

After playing with Jonno and Kevin:

I had lunch with them and the rest of their group and we agreed to meet up for dinner that evening.  I went back out for another 18 and played really well.  Having played through a father/mother/son 3 ball on the long, brutally hard par 4 8th I caught a single on the 10th tee.  I loved the tenth.  A wide open fairway allows you to blast away but the trick is in the second shot a long iron or utility to a wildly contoured green, protected by huge bunkers:

By the 11th (a stunning par 5, with a really difficult green) that single had joined up with another, and they asked me if I wanted to join them,  Sean was a Canadian fireman (from Edmonton) on a year long job swap with a fireman from Adelaide and Peter was a retired Australian:

The 12th is a wonderful short par 4 which plays uphill, to a fairway angled from left to right, with a bank of bunkers flanking the right side of the fairway:

Carry the second of those bunkers and you’ll almost certainly reach the green in one.  In the morning I went for that shot and caught the bunker just a yard short of the lip.  By coincidence, it turned out that Sean had seen that shot.  We agreed that it encapsulated the brilliance of the course.  I had gone for, what for me, was the risky but, if executed, most rewarding play.  I had hit the ball as well as I can and failed to execute by one yard in 240.  Watching that ball in the air and coping with the closest of failures wasn’t disappointing, it was thrilling.

I parred the par 3 16th, having missed the green by 30 yards, pitching the ball past the hole and using the steep bank beyond it to bring the ball back to the hole.  There are a number of places on the course where the smart play with the short game is to go well beyond the hole and let gravity bring the ball back.  Again, these are shots requiring imagination and are great fun.  Peter offered to take a photo of me on the 17th tee, with the 16th green in the background.:

When Peter, Sean and I finished, I decided to go back out for another 9 holes, choosing to play the back 9.  I have now played 94 holes in 2 days and my body is letting me know!  That said, I’m playing pretty well and loving every minute of it.

Barnbougle is a beautiful spot.  Here are some more images which hopefully show that:

I got back to the clubhouse just in time for dinner.  The restaurant (at Lost Farm) is in an elevated position, with simply stunning views of the bay.  Even better, it has a viewing platform, where most diners went to watch a simply stunning sunset.  Sadly, I forgot to take my camera to dinner!

I have loved Barnbougle.  Two absolutely top notch courses in a truly beautiful place and the whole place has a wonderfully relaxed feel.  This morning I head on down to Hobart, for a get together with members of the Australian based The Golf Forum at Royal Hobart.  Sadly, a month’s rain is due to fall this weekend.  Vindicating my decision to pack a waterproof top!