Kingston Heath Golf Club

IN: COURSE REVIEWS | BY: Mike Clayton | | REGION: Melbourne, VIC DATE: 10 Dec 2004 | Rated

Hole 15

(Photo: David Scaletti/Sportscapes)

Kingston Heath is almost universally regarded as the second best course in the country but the smaller and flatter property demanded it would be a much different proposition than Royal Melbourne. One is golf on a grand scale; the other is intricate but both place emphasis on cerebral and strategic play.

Sydney pro, Dan Soutar routed the original layout and he formed the whole course around the tiny, 130 metre, tenth hole in the middle of the property. Remarkably, seven other holes surround this 130-metre hole. The third hole plays toward it and its green is only 20 metres from the tee. The fourth plays away and only a slither of tea-tree separates the seventh fairway from the tenth tee. The eighth tee abuts the tenth as it heads to the south but the ninth comes straight back to a greensite as close to the tenth as the third is. The eleventh plays away again and the tee shot off the long fourteenth is fired past the back of the green.

Kingston Heath is one of the smallest courses of world renown and Merion in suburban Philadelphia is perhaps the only layout of real quality where the architect got more out of such a tight piece of ground.

The difficulty of the course is centred around its bunkering, which is not only visually stunning and another wonderful example of the construction genius of Mick Morcom, it is full of all the strategic interest we expect of a fine course.

Whilst Royal Melbourne receives almost universal acclaim there are some who question the quality of Kingston Heath. They point to the blind approach to the long seventeenth, the blind drives at the eighth and sixteenth holes, the fact all three par fives run from north to south, the lack of a long par three and even the regularity with which small aircraft fly overhead on their way to the neighbouring Moorabbin Airport.

All these criticisms fail to recognise the problems faced by Soutar in squeezing great golf into only 125 acres. He could have shortened the seventeenth and played a drive and pitch hole to the top of the hill and perhaps even a par five to finish but that would have taken much of the difficulty out of the famous and fearsome finishing holes beginning with the world class par three, fifteenth. The blind drives at both eight and eleven could have been avoided by teeing grounds on top of the hills but much significant length would have been lost and the balance of the course completely upset. And the approaches to these holes are amongst the finest on the sandbelt.

The balance of the course is testament to the genius of those who influenced it. The wonderful short holes, 5, 10 and the aforementioned 15th are unquestionably holes of world class. Mackenzie built the fifteenth hole during his trip to Melbourne in 1926. His commissioned report indicated Soutar's short par four fifteenth was a 'real blotch on the course' and the Scot suggested it revert to a par three with a green on top of the dune. It is the same hill one plays over on the way to the previous green and drives over from the sixteenth tee.

The little par four third is a fine example of Melbourne's terrific short par fours where the player can drive at the green but that choice involves all the risk. The conservative tee shot to the correct left half of the fairway leaves the player with a demanding pitch to the smallest green on the course.

A hugely long course at over 6800 yards when it opened, it is now on the short side of what is regarded as 'Championship' length but its genius is that it can still defend itself against the finest players. More importantly, it is a course to constantly stimulate those who play it with regularity.

The course has also been one of our most celebrated tournament venues for years now and many of the countries greatest golfing memories have been played out over the famed holes. Ossie Pickworth beat his long time rival from Sydney, Jim Ferrier in the 1949 Australian Open and Frank Phillips turned the tables for New South Wales when he prevailed against the reigning British Open Champion and Kingston Heath specialist, Peter Thomson.

Thomson, with his wonderful game based around exquisite judgement and control of trajectory through the seaside winds, had a game made for the conditions he found both at home and in Britain.

Kingston Heath has hosted the Australian Open seven times in the past century. Gary Player won here in 1970 beating Bruce Devlin and in 1983 Peter Fowler caused one of the biggest upsets in Australian golf history when he outlasted David Graham and Ian Baker-Finch to claim the title.

Peter Senior, in the midst of a month of play that was the best of his career, won in 1989 and Greg Norman triumphed in 1995. That week Norman finished by hitting a beautiful five iron into the teeth of the north wind at the fifteenth then crashed a 30-footer into the back of the cup for a three at the long par four, seventeenth.

The history of modern Opens was rewritten by the extraordinarily talented Melbourne amateur, Aaron Baddeley when he won at Royal Sydney in 1999 then, against all the odds, he defended at Kingston Heath in his first season as a professional. On that final afternoon he out duelled Robert Allenby who, like Baddeley, won his first Open at Royal Sydney in 1994.

Kingston Heath is not a spectacular golf course designed to entrance those looking for quick and obvious thrills. It is a course with multiple layers of complexity that take more than a single round to uncover and its wonder is that the more one plays it the greater the appreciation for its sophistication.

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