Links Lady Bay
Fleurieu Peninsula, SA | User Rating: 
(4.5) | Add A Review
Voted South Australia’s number one public access course Voted South Australia’s number one resort course.
Close to Kangaroo Island One hour from the city of Adelaide
No golfing trip to South Australia would be complete without a visit to The Links Lady Bay Golf Resort. The experience begins on the journey South from Adelaide with stunning views along the way.
The moment you arrive at The Links Lady Bay’s first tee you know you are somewhere special. Experience the feeling of getting away from it all in the beautiful South Australian countryside amongst wild birds and kangaroos in their natural habitat.
Strong enough from the back tees to test gifted golfers, yet fair enough to be enjoyed by the average player, the championship golf course is regarded as one of South Australia’s finest.
Some of the short holes would grace any of the most famous links courses in the world. In particular the signature 17th hole, which features in Australia’s best holes, provides a challenging test into the wind for the player striving to gain his par 3.
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30 Mar 2010
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21 Feb 2009
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07 Nov 2008
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15 Jul 2008
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26 Dec 2002
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1. q-tip | Rated
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15 Oct 2011
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Measures 6400m Par 72 off the back tees (6020m-white tees and 5345m Par 73-red ladies) with four heavily bunkered par 3s ranging from 126-197m, ten par 4s ranging from 299-428m and four par 5s ranging from 509-526m.
Links Lady Bay (LLB) is not a traditional links course but good to play course where the designers have looked up the definition of two golf course terms: links course and a links-style course. LLB successfully emulates a links-style course with 124 bunkers with some areas of sandy waste given the course is built on a sandy-clay base on undulating land less than 1km from the Gulf St Vincent and about 1 hour south of the Adelaide CBD.
I know the rankings of Australia’s courses are an imperfect way of measuring architectural merit, as Australian Golf Digest (March 2010) ranks LLB #57 in Australia and undoubtedly #1 outside the Adelaide metropolitan area, but they are a reasonable guide to use.
Course conditioning is good as you’d expect for a top 100 course. Course has quite wide undulating Santa Ana couch fairways with fairway-length couch grass rough not posing any challenges to hit out off and essentially making your landing areas a little easier. The large sized bent grass greens are smooth, but not overly quick. However, the couch teebeds are flat and a pleasure to play off.
Highlights include: the 339m straight 4th (index 15) slightly downhill with 2 fairway bunkers on the right with a (dry) yellow staked gully across the fairway 1m from the green’s front edge which has 2 bunkers; the 428m straight 5th (index 3) with 2 fairway bunkers middle of the fairway off the tee (275m to clear) with a red staked gully along the right to a green guarded by 4 bunkers; the 155m 6th (index 13) to a 30-40 long green with 9 bunkers; the 509m straight 7th (index 12) with a lake beginning 130m short on the right running up short and right to a green with 6 bunkers; the 175m 8th (index 8) with 8 bunkers; the 425m straight 12th (index 1) plays slightly uphill to a green with 6 bunkers; the 355m straight 14th (index 4) with a bunker left 210-230m off the tee with a hidden pond on the right 240m off the tee to a green with 4 bunkers with the pond on the far right; the 526m slight dogleg left 16th (index 11) with 2 bunkers left on the high side to a right-sloping fairway with the 14th hole pond on the right, a bunker middle fairway 100m out of the double green which is heavily bunkered short left; and finally the signature 197m 17th (index 7) with a heart-shaped green with 8 bunkers.
The back nine is much more heavily bunkered with varying topography than the front nine. Also a good feature is the 13th/16th double green.
Played here 27/09/2011 for the first time with $35 green fees. Despite its location only the 11th tee, 12th green and 18th tee has Gulf views and you can not hear the waves from any part of the course.
Course access is from St Andrews Boulevard about 2km south of Normanville. I also, like others, loved the pin placement map idea.
Highly recommended for those who want to play a links-style course.