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Regions of Golf: The Melbourne Sandbelt · Designing Golf

0:00
Speaker 1: The Melbourne sand Belt boasts one of the densest concentrations
0:03
Speaker 1: of great golf courses in the world Royal Melbourne West
0:07
Speaker 1: and East Courses, Kingston Heath, Victoria, and then if you
0:12
Speaker 1: travel down the Mornington Peninsula you'll encounter some exceptional modern
0:17
Speaker 1: Lynxy courses like Saint Andrew's Beach. Last December, I took
0:21
Speaker 1: a very special trip to this region. I got to
0:24
Speaker 1: know the courses, I got to know the people, and
0:27
Speaker 1: I was bowled over by the experience. So today, on
0:30
Speaker 1: designing Golf, we're talking about the sand Belt. It's history,
0:34
Speaker 1: it's golf, it's culture and how to go about planning
0:37
Speaker 1: a trip there. My guests are going to be Harley
0:40
Speaker 1: Cruz and Lucas Michelle, both Australian golf architects, both intimately
0:46
Speaker 1: familiar with this region. Let's get into it. I'm Garrett
0:50
Speaker 1: Morrison and this is designing golf. There are certain regions
1:00
Speaker 1: in the world of golf that can go by very concise,
1:04
Speaker 1: sometimes two or three word names. These regions have exceptional golf,
1:09
Speaker 1: often because history and geology conspired to make the areas
1:14
Speaker 1: wonderfully well suited to the game. You have the right
1:17
Speaker 1: people at the right time and the right pieces of land.
1:21
Speaker 1: So a few of these regions would include East Lothian.
1:24
Speaker 1: In Scotland, there are a bunch of them. In Scotland,
1:27
Speaker 1: you have Saint Andrews. You have South Ayrshire where Royal
1:30
Speaker 1: Troon and Prestwick are. You have the Highlands with Royal Dornick,
1:34
Speaker 1: Brora and now Cabot Highlands. You know, Scotland is a
1:38
Speaker 1: special place. Outside of Scotland though, there's the Heathlands south
1:43
Speaker 1: of London, There's Long Island. In the US, there's the
1:46
Speaker 1: Monterey Peninsula, There's the North Carolina sand Hills and the
1:50
Speaker 1: Nebraska sand Hills. And then you have what I would
1:53
Speaker 1: consider one of the most fascinating regions of golf in
1:58
Speaker 1: the world way over in Australia. I'm talking about the
2:01
Speaker 1: sand Belt, or the Melbourne sand Belt to be more specific,
2:05
Speaker 1: and that's the topic I'm taking on today in this
2:09
Speaker 1: episode of Designing Golf Now. Quick pronunciation note. Australians say Melbourne,
2:16
Speaker 1: I say Melbourne. Am I mispronouncing the name of the city.
2:21
Speaker 1: I don't think so, And that's because Australians don't really
2:25
Speaker 1: pronounce their rs right. It's a the Australian accent is
2:29
Speaker 1: a non rhodic accent. Often ours toward the ends of
2:33
Speaker 1: words are not pronounced. I speak West Coast American English.
2:37
Speaker 1: I do pronounce my rs pretty much wherever they are.
2:41
Speaker 1: So you know, Australians say copac, I say car park, right,
2:46
Speaker 1: or I would really say parking lot. So I think
2:49
Speaker 1: it's okay for me to say Melbourne. If I said Melbourne,
2:54
Speaker 1: it might feel like I was trying too hard. And
2:58
Speaker 1: at least I'm not saying Melbourne. So that's the compromise
3:01
Speaker 1: that I'm making with pronunciation here. All right, let's do
3:05
Speaker 1: some very quick and dirty history of Melbourne, the city
3:09
Speaker 1: and how golf started there. So Melbourne was a gold
3:13
Speaker 1: rush city in eighteen fifty it had a population of
3:17
Speaker 1: about twenty nine thousand. But then gold was discovered in Victoria,
3:24
Speaker 1: the state or province of Victoria in eighteen fifty one,
3:29
Speaker 1: and this triggered a massive migration to Victoria. Many arrived
3:34
Speaker 1: through Port Phillip Bay, which is where Melbourne is located.
3:39
Speaker 1: So Melbourne really became the gateway to the Victorian gold
3:43
Speaker 1: fields in much the same way that San Francisco had
3:46
Speaker 1: become the gateway to the California gold fields. So by
3:50
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four, Melbourne's population had increased to over eighty thousand,
3:55
Speaker 1: and as in San Francisco, it wasn't the miners who
3:59
Speaker 1: ended up up benefiting most from the discovery and extraction
4:03
Speaker 1: of gold. It was Melbourne's business class, the city's merchants,
4:08
Speaker 1: bankers and businessmen. Also in very good shape were the
4:13
Speaker 1: land owning gentry in the surrounding area. Sheep farming and
4:18
Speaker 1: wool production remained one of Melbourne's signature durable industries, alongside banking.
4:25
Speaker 1: So Melbourne continued to grow through the eighteen sixties, seventies,
4:30
Speaker 1: and eighties. The eighteen eighties, in fact, are widely recognized
4:33
Speaker 1: as the city's peak. The population reached and exceeded four
4:38
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people, which made Melbourne one of the biggest
4:41
Speaker 1: cities in the British Empire. This was the era of
4:45
Speaker 1: marvelous Melbourne. It was a modern, thriving metropolis with electric
4:50
Speaker 1: street lighting, a cable car network, huge commercial buildings. So
4:55
Speaker 1: this was an era of really rapid growth and prosperity
5:00
Speaker 1: which was never going to last forever. It did come
5:03
Speaker 1: to a halt with a market crash in the eighteen nineties,
5:07
Speaker 1: but by that point Melbourne was established, there were still
5:10
Speaker 1: plenty of well off people who had this new thing
5:15
Speaker 1: in history called leisure time right, and in the eighteen
5:20
Speaker 1: nineties some people in the Melbourne area decided to spend
5:23
Speaker 1: a portion of their leisure time playing golf. This was
5:27
Speaker 1: around the time that golf was catching on internationally. The
5:31
Speaker 1: game had spread from Scotland to England in what the
5:35
Speaker 1: historian Michael Morrison calls the Great English golf Boom of
5:39
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, and then in the eighteen nineties Scottish
5:43
Speaker 1: and English immigrants exported the game to both former and
5:48
Speaker 1: current British territories like the United States and Australia. So
5:53
Speaker 1: the first golf clubs in Melbourne were founded in the
5:55
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. The courses were established on land just outside
6:00
Speaker 1: the city and it's very possible, I think that the
6:03
Speaker 1: land bust of the eighteen nineties in Melbourne allowed for
6:09
Speaker 1: this use of land, because in the eighteen eighties those
6:12
Speaker 1: same properties might have been too expensive to be used
6:15
Speaker 1: for golf. So in any case, Melbourne Golf Club, later
6:20
Speaker 1: called Royal Melbourne, was founded in eighteen ninety one on
6:24
Speaker 1: a site in a suburb just south of the city
6:27
Speaker 1: named Caulfield, so this was just outside the city, just
6:31
Speaker 1: south of the city. Basically, various other golf clubs sprung
6:34
Speaker 1: up in the outlying areas of the city over the
6:37
Speaker 1: next couple of decades. But if we're talking about the
6:40
Speaker 1: story of the Melbourne Sandbolt specifically, the key event came
6:44
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh one when Royal Melbourne relocated from Caulfield
6:49
Speaker 1: farther south, about five miles south to an area called Sandringham.
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Speaker 1: And this was the first time a golf club had
6:57
Speaker 1: been established in what we now know is the Melbourne
7:00
Speaker 1: sand Belt. The sand belt is a geological anomaly in
7:04
Speaker 1: the Melbourne area. Most of the city and its surrounding
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Speaker 1: regions sit on heavy clay soils, but in this one
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Speaker 1: band along Port Phillip Bay, starting about ten miles south
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Speaker 1: of the city center, you have a very different soil profile,
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Speaker 1: which turned out to be really great for golf. So
7:25
Speaker 1: to discuss the geology and vegetation and agronomy of the
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Speaker 1: sand belt more in depth, I'm going to bring on
7:33
Speaker 1: Harley Cruz. Harley is an Australian golf architect and Melbourne
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Speaker 1: native who has developed a tremendous expertise in vegetation management,
7:43
Speaker 1: so he's really the perfect person to discuss this topic with.
7:47
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9:33
Speaker 1: Let's go to my conversation with Harley Cruz. Harley Cruz,
9:43
Speaker 1: Welcome to the pod. Thank you for being here.
9:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, Garrett, It's excellent to be here and to
9:47
Speaker 2: follow on from my colleague in things here where I
9:50
Speaker 2: am at Eleanorgolf Club in Sydney Lucas Michelle. So we'll
9:54
Speaker 2: both here this week working on a project which is good.
9:57
Speaker 1: Later in this episode, I'm going to bring on Lucas
10:00
Speaker 1: Spashelle to talk about various subjects to do with sand
10:04
Speaker 1: Belt golf, and the two of you happened to be
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Speaker 1: in the same location, which worked out well for I
10:10
Speaker 1: think all of us so hardly I wanted to talk
10:13
Speaker 1: with you about what the Melbourne sand belt actually is
10:17
Speaker 1: like geologically speaking.
10:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, good question. And sand belt of course sand
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Speaker 2: wind blown sands. Interesting. Underneath all this sand too, is
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Speaker 2: like a bedrock of sandstone. It's like dated back four
10:33
Speaker 2: hundred million years. It's pretty amazing. But I guess, you know,
10:38
Speaker 2: windblown sand that came from the coast of port Field Bay,
10:41
Speaker 2: and you know, the stronger the winds, the more the
10:43
Speaker 2: sand went inland, so it stretches. I guess the sand
10:47
Speaker 2: belts are sort of a patch of ground that sort
10:48
Speaker 2: of stretches inland, probably ten to fifteen k's thereabouts, in
10:54
Speaker 2: various different parts of the coast. But underneath it all
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Speaker 2: not far from Royal Melbourne actually is. You know, it's
11:01
Speaker 2: cliffs of which we stood the we stood the basically
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Speaker 2: the erosion and hung in there and that's part of
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Speaker 2: the original bedrock and the sand of great depths, you know.
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Speaker 2: I guess sand and sand dune has been a variable thing.
11:15
Speaker 2: You know, they can be two hundred feet deep of sand,
11:18
Speaker 2: or it could be you know, twenty centimeters deep of
11:20
Speaker 2: sand or even less in some places. So some sand
11:23
Speaker 2: belt golf courses have more sand than others, and with
11:27
Speaker 2: that becomes also that connection of geology and the vegetation
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Speaker 2: is also part of that mix of the sand as well.
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Speaker 1: The sand is pretty deep in the sand belt in
11:38
Speaker 1: certain spots. Right at Royal Melbourne for instance.
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Speaker 2: Correct, I think on Royal World on top of the
11:43
Speaker 2: big jernes, it's very deep. I was only there looking
11:47
Speaker 2: at an air off the side of West Course last week,
11:49
Speaker 2: whereas some dams were done a few years ago now,
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Speaker 2: and I mean it's seriously deep there in those locations.
11:55
Speaker 2: And then you get other parts of the golf course.
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Speaker 2: We're doing some work with Yarria at the moment and
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Speaker 2: it's got some good of sand as well. But then
12:01
Speaker 2: certain parts of that site you might only have three
12:04
Speaker 2: or four feet five six feet of sand, and then
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Speaker 2: you hit these sort of clay underneath, and parts of
12:09
Speaker 2: Metropolitan even less again in some cases Metropolite even less
12:13
Speaker 2: because they sold off some of their sand back in
12:15
Speaker 2: the sixties. I think, so so yeah, it's it's it's
12:19
Speaker 2: they're not all the same in terms of the massive
12:21
Speaker 2: depths of sand. I guess is the outset that that variability.
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Speaker 3: Is there?
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Speaker 1: A historical story here? How did how did this geological
12:29
Speaker 1: formation come about.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's like all sort of dune country.
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Speaker 2: It was coastal coastal windblown sands of Port Philla Bay.
12:38
Speaker 2: And I guess the sea level of Port Phila Bay
12:40
Speaker 2: might have been lower at some point or high at
12:42
Speaker 2: some point, but you know, just nature's forces of work
12:45
Speaker 2: blowing in, you know, washing. I think a lot of
12:47
Speaker 2: the sand is deposited by the you know, the ocean
12:50
Speaker 2: and the tidal movements on Port Philla Bay, and it
12:53
Speaker 2: was deposited on the coast, and the wind picked it
12:55
Speaker 2: up and blew it inland, and then eventually, you know,
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Speaker 2: plants would colonize the primary dunes and then other plants
13:03
Speaker 2: with colonized inland and the primary dunes along Portfoli Bay,
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Speaker 2: there's probably a width of call it, you know, a
13:10
Speaker 2: mile at most width of sand there that's young, fresh
13:15
Speaker 2: sand with less organic material in it, and it supports
13:18
Speaker 2: very different types of species as opposed to when you
13:21
Speaker 2: get inland where you get that darker lone sand, which
13:25
Speaker 2: is organic material that's broken down in the sand, and
13:27
Speaker 2: it's a very different type of older structured sand. And
13:33
Speaker 2: the sands are pretty fine. You imagine wind picking up
13:36
Speaker 2: the sand, the fire of the sand, the further inland
13:38
Speaker 2: it would go. So yeah, it's interesting and it's different too.
13:42
Speaker 2: We're doing I'm doing work in Sydney at the moment
13:44
Speaker 2: with Royal Sydney. It has different sand again, and if
13:46
Speaker 2: you go to Adelaide you get the red sand. So
13:49
Speaker 2: Melbourne's fame for its dark gray sand. Sydney's got its
13:52
Speaker 2: white sands, and Adelaide with raw Adelaide and Kyunga A,
13:56
Speaker 2: Green Grange, Glenel we've all got the red sand.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, so Melbourne you've got the dark gray sand.
14:04
Speaker 1: Is there anything special about what other characteristics of it,
14:09
Speaker 1: aside from color, are unique to Melbourne sand?
14:13
Speaker 3: Yeah?
14:13
Speaker 2: I guess. I mean bunkers were dug out of that sand, right,
14:16
Speaker 2: so you've got native bunkers dug out of native sand
14:19
Speaker 2: and that sandy loam having those vines in it gives
14:24
Speaker 2: it a structure that means you can get those beautiful
14:27
Speaker 2: sand faced bunkers and those beautiful edges and lips that
14:30
Speaker 2: you know, anywhere from four inches down to sort of
14:33
Speaker 2: you know, a few feet deep on those edges and
14:35
Speaker 2: it stays up and hangs together. And I guess too,
14:38
Speaker 2: you know, Historically all the greens have built out of
14:42
Speaker 2: the naive sands, and so the whole culture of Melbourne
14:46
Speaker 2: sand belts is growing turf on these on these sands.
14:49
Speaker 2: But two, I guess even on one golf course, you'll
14:52
Speaker 2: have a variation of sand, so that we are I
14:54
Speaker 2: guess I be a certain part of a site where
14:56
Speaker 2: historically greenkeepers of quarried sand one spot just to have
15:01
Speaker 2: that native sand for the greens, so and of that
15:05
Speaker 2: particular speck. So it's it's you know, it's the fundamental.
15:09
Speaker 2: It's the foundation, isn't it of that sand belt golf.
15:13
Speaker 1: You mentioned. It holds together really well, and that's part
15:16
Speaker 1: of the reason that you can get some of these
15:18
Speaker 1: these sharp edges and shapes that people associate with sand
15:22
Speaker 1: belt golf. Now, that's just because like the particles of
15:25
Speaker 1: the sand just locked together, don't they.
15:28
Speaker 2: It's fine, Yeah, it's the fine I guess it's the
15:30
Speaker 2: angular shapes then as part of the structure and that
15:33
Speaker 2: organic material that's in amongst it all that gives it
15:36
Speaker 2: their dark gray color, right, and that's that's where it
15:39
Speaker 2: locks together. Whereas the sands, say in Sydney, in Rose
15:42
Speaker 2: Bay and Sydney where ural Sydney is they're rounded sand particles,
15:47
Speaker 2: less organic and they just don't hold together, not structural,
15:49
Speaker 2: they're very very very soft and very unstable. So yeah,
15:54
Speaker 2: it's a unique makeup in that Melbourne sand belt. I
15:56
Speaker 2: guess hit Austray golf because even when you go down
15:58
Speaker 2: to the Morning Peninsula it's a bit and again. So
16:01
Speaker 2: so it's an interesting, interesting part of the Yeah, the
16:04
Speaker 2: foundation of that sand belt golf.
16:07
Speaker 1: It's part of why it's such a unique golf region
16:09
Speaker 1: is it comes from the ground itself, which I think
16:11
Speaker 1: is is really interesting, you know, aside from aside from
16:15
Speaker 1: holding together nicely, and you know, it must be nice
16:18
Speaker 1: for architects to work in this kind of sand because
16:20
Speaker 1: they put it into shapes and it sort of stays
16:22
Speaker 1: in those shapes to an extent. Why is the why
16:27
Speaker 1: is the soil so good for golf in in other senses?
16:30
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, I guess you know, of course, as
16:33
Speaker 2: we know, golf began on sand and and I guess
16:37
Speaker 2: it's the free draining nature of it of sand, you know,
16:40
Speaker 2: that fluidity of it. You know, the natural shapes that
16:43
Speaker 2: were there, the natural green sites, the natural tea sites.
16:46
Speaker 2: I guess it's just it's golf country right as we
16:50
Speaker 2: call it so and you know the backstory of course,
16:54
Speaker 2: Royal Melbourne was a couple other locations before they got
16:56
Speaker 2: to black Rock to where they are today, and a
16:58
Speaker 2: few other clubs are same so oldly. Fortunately there was
17:02
Speaker 2: a realization that sandy ground was way better to put
17:05
Speaker 2: golf on than heavy soils, and and you obviously were
17:09
Speaker 2: fortunate to get some influences from the UK, and notably
17:13
Speaker 2: of course doctor Alison Mackenzie. But and those influences, you know,
17:18
Speaker 2: I guess helped identify what's the best land for Melbourne
17:21
Speaker 2: for golf, and off they went and it was you
17:23
Speaker 2: know what too, I guess it was one of those things.
17:25
Speaker 2: It was the benefit of the fact that it probably
17:27
Speaker 2: agriculturally wasn't very fertile, so it wasn't great golf for agriculture.
17:32
Speaker 2: It wasn't great land for agriculture, but great land for golf.
17:34
Speaker 2: And and in fact many of the many of the
17:37
Speaker 2: golf courses were on land that had been sand belt.
17:40
Speaker 2: Golf courses were on land that had been clear at
17:42
Speaker 2: some point for farming.
17:45
Speaker 1: But probably the only farming they could do is like
17:48
Speaker 1: sheep farming, they couldn't grow things in it.
17:50
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Craig, you'd be running a few sheep
17:53
Speaker 2: or a few cows and things like that. So I mean,
17:56
Speaker 2: you know, Yariarra Metropolitan, they're all all these golf courses, Woodlands.
18:02
Speaker 2: Woodlands was a farm, so they're all they all had
18:04
Speaker 2: some sort of you know down on the outside of
18:06
Speaker 2: suburban Melbourne at that stage that was it was sort
18:08
Speaker 2: of farmland and relatively cheap land and obviously good land
18:12
Speaker 2: for golf.
18:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, striking similarity with Scottish Links golf. You know,
18:17
Speaker 1: land that wasn't good for anything else but was perfect
18:19
Speaker 1: for golf exactly, and so golfers found it and they
18:23
Speaker 1: could use a lot of it because you know, it
18:25
Speaker 1: wasn't super valuable and and so that's that's where I
18:30
Speaker 1: guess Melbourne golfers just found found this area and knew
18:36
Speaker 1: what to do with it, which is fantastic. And you know,
18:39
Speaker 1: you could go you.
18:41
Speaker 2: Could get the grasses to grow and you can get
18:43
Speaker 2: things to happen. I mean at these you know, when
18:45
Speaker 2: we think about the courses were built with no irrigation
18:47
Speaker 2: system existing, right there was, so you know the fact
18:51
Speaker 2: that it took you know, three or four years to
18:53
Speaker 2: grow a golf course in like the West Course took
18:55
Speaker 2: three or four years to grow until it was ready
18:57
Speaker 2: for play. These course at Ryal Melburne similar two or
18:59
Speaker 2: three is you were relying on mother nature to liver
19:03
Speaker 2: some rainfall to grow grasses. So I guess it was
19:06
Speaker 2: the combination of that free draining nature, a little bit
19:09
Speaker 2: of fertility with the organic material in the sands and
19:12
Speaker 2: just believe for root systems to get down and just
19:14
Speaker 2: provide that great, great golfing ground. So yeah, it's interesting
19:19
Speaker 2: we look back on that non irrigation factor of establishing
19:22
Speaker 2: golf around the world. Actually, I guess, but here it
19:25
Speaker 2: is good golf country.
19:27
Speaker 1: Was it easy to establish the turf at first? And
19:30
Speaker 1: that's that's such a common story in golden edge golf.
19:34
Speaker 1: What is the agronomy of the sand belt? So what
19:37
Speaker 1: kinds of grasses are used generally used for golf in
19:40
Speaker 1: the same typically, now there's a variety.
19:42
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean typically in civil terms, sand belt
19:47
Speaker 2: golf is what you would call bermuda, what we call couch,
19:52
Speaker 2: So it's basically couch couch or bermuda on teas and
19:56
Speaker 2: fairways and then bent grass and greens, and that's pretty
20:01
Speaker 2: ubiquitous through the sand belt, you know. So it's it's
20:03
Speaker 2: troop spairways, roughs, teas and then and then and then bent.
20:07
Speaker 2: And of course there was a lot of experimentation with
20:10
Speaker 2: Bent and lots of other backstories. But I'm probably not
20:13
Speaker 2: the best person of the story around the Sutton's mixed
20:15
Speaker 2: at rural Melbourne, but you know it was they were
20:18
Speaker 2: sitting there ordering some seed for some grasses to grow
20:21
Speaker 2: off a British seed supplier and said, we're here in
20:24
Speaker 2: this climate, this, this and this. The seed pliers sent
20:26
Speaker 2: them hold on different seeds and they mixed it up
20:29
Speaker 2: as the Suttons mix, and they threw it out there
20:31
Speaker 2: and what grew grew. But so at Royal Melbourne situation,
20:35
Speaker 2: there's more than ten varieties of different grasses in their greens.
20:38
Speaker 2: It was the shotgun mix, I guess you'd call it,
20:41
Speaker 2: to see what would work. But you know today today
20:44
Speaker 2: the golf course is still primarily primarily couch grasses. You know,
20:48
Speaker 2: you've got hybrid bents on greens. Now. You know Victoria
20:52
Speaker 2: next door to Royal Melbourne's got pure distinction. Pininicia Kings,
20:54
Speaker 2: who has got pure distinction. I think colnwealth as well,
20:58
Speaker 2: and I guess the only difference is probably is getting
21:01
Speaker 2: some of the fescue surrounds of greens. That's happened probably
21:04
Speaker 2: the last fifteen to twenty years to get a more
21:07
Speaker 2: interesting short game around around the greens. So Royal Melbourne
21:13
Speaker 2: woodlands have all got you know, fescue green surrounds as well,
21:16
Speaker 2: which is a little bit more intensive because you know,
21:20
Speaker 2: I guess the other thing. Melbourne's climate is coolish in winter,
21:24
Speaker 2: but then sorry, I'm going to talk since celsius here,
21:27
Speaker 2: but you might get mornings down to one to three
21:30
Speaker 2: or four degrees but nothing much lower than that, and
21:32
Speaker 2: then in the middle of February and our summertime you
21:35
Speaker 2: can get nor Westley winds coming in at forty degrees celsius. Dry.
21:39
Speaker 2: It's a dry heat though, but it's dry and hot,
21:41
Speaker 2: so so you know, the coach is fine in that
21:45
Speaker 2: sort of weather and the events can handle in there,
21:47
Speaker 2: and the fescue is there's a lot of hand watering
21:50
Speaker 2: that goes on, of course to keep the fescuse in
21:51
Speaker 2: good condition, but that's differentie. Sorry, that's the thing that
21:57
Speaker 2: we've got water now and you can hand water. I mean, interestingly,
22:02
Speaker 2: post World War two where there's a lot of austerity
22:05
Speaker 2: going on around in golf courses around the world, and
22:07
Speaker 2: even it was affecting the better courses. Rural Melbourne had
22:10
Speaker 2: fourteen staff looking after thirty six holes of golf. You
22:13
Speaker 2: just imagine that today, you know, so today there's a
22:17
Speaker 2: lot of extra hands to look go after our golf
22:19
Speaker 2: courses and that includes you know, hand watering of greens
22:23
Speaker 2: and green surrounds.
22:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, keeping that fescue going. And that's something you'll see
22:29
Speaker 1: at real Melbourne is the you know, the grass changes
22:33
Speaker 1: color as you're approaching the green, and that's those are
22:36
Speaker 1: the fescue surrounds. And I mean when a ball lands
22:38
Speaker 1: on it, it just leaps off of the ground, which
22:40
Speaker 1: is quite a sight to see. But yes, I mean
22:45
Speaker 1: Melbourne is a moderate climate and famously fescue, you know,
22:50
Speaker 1: has some troubles and moderate damp climates, like like where
22:56
Speaker 1: I live in Oregon, where it's just like a battle
22:59
Speaker 1: you around to keep fascue from being invaded by poet anyway,
23:04
Speaker 1: but in any case, that is, those are the kind
23:07
Speaker 1: of varieties of grasses people love to hear about Sutton's
23:10
Speaker 1: mix when you go to Royal Melbourne, you hear about
23:14
Speaker 1: this wonderful bank grass mixture that they have in their
23:18
Speaker 1: greens and it's basically unique to Melbourne. Is this Sutton's
23:23
Speaker 1: mechs And that's always that's always fun to hear about.
23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
23:28
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a really good putting surface.
23:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it looks blockchy like, it looks like a
23:35
Speaker 2: bit of certain times a year, it looks like camouflage
23:38
Speaker 2: on the ground, right, But you know, to the credit
23:42
Speaker 2: of the greenkeepers of the of the the decades and
23:47
Speaker 2: through to today that we've got these amazing surfaces that
23:50
Speaker 2: are not only smooth, but you talk about the bounce
23:52
Speaker 2: and the rescue, you've also got the bounce on the greens,
23:55
Speaker 2: you know. Oh yeah, there's a there's a there's a
23:57
Speaker 2: trick that Vigid Forsyth, the supertender Roy Melburne does. He
24:00
Speaker 2: bounces of all knee hot, you know, just like a basketball. Yeah,
24:04
Speaker 2: and that's obviously that's part of the game, you know,
24:06
Speaker 2: is that incredible firm green, not just the speed of
24:09
Speaker 2: the greens with the bounce. So that's that's the real craft.
24:13
Speaker 2: I think that's the real craft in amongst superintendents, excuse me,
24:17
Speaker 2: in Melbourne, it's getting those firm greens and getting that bounce.
24:20
Speaker 2: I think that the modern tools, anyone can get speed,
24:23
Speaker 2: but the real craft is getting firmness.
24:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And the Suttons mixes obviously well adapted to
24:30
Speaker 1: this particular location. You know, it's it is, it's it's made.
24:35
Speaker 1: If it's not one of these fancy bent grasses that
24:37
Speaker 1: you bring in from somewhere else though those those seem
24:40
Speaker 1: to be working fine as well. Yeah, this stuff is indigenous.
24:45
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the topography of the sam Belt,
24:50
Speaker 1: you know you have, uh, this is a sandy area
24:54
Speaker 1: and so people automatically imagine a duneescape are kind of
24:58
Speaker 1: rolling dun escape. Is that some of what you see
25:01
Speaker 1: in the sand belt. What varieties of topography do you
25:04
Speaker 1: see across across this area?
25:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. I mean you get a lot of
25:10
Speaker 2: again variation as the same before with the winds, and
25:13
Speaker 2: you know this is all created by wind and ocean
25:17
Speaker 2: depositing sand. So you've got places like Royal Meldern, Victoria.
25:20
Speaker 2: They've got a big broad dune shape. You know, it's
25:25
Speaker 2: not Lynx golf dunes, which are sharp and steep. You
25:27
Speaker 2: know that you see on the coast like your barm
25:30
Speaker 2: Googles and places like that where you've even seven mile
25:33
Speaker 2: where you've got more sort of classic British dunes. These
25:38
Speaker 2: are big, broad shapes, but you know, the vertical differences
25:42
Speaker 2: are quite quite high, particularly say rural Melbourne and Victoria,
25:48
Speaker 2: but then when you get to Kingston Heath the ground
25:50
Speaker 2: is relably flat, so it's all on sand, but it's
25:54
Speaker 2: reliably flat. Woodlands is another course that we're involved with
25:58
Speaker 2: and it's relevantly with that too. The club houses up
26:00
Speaker 2: on the hill doesn't have as much vertical relief as
26:04
Speaker 2: Victoria or Royal Melbourne, but still you know there's special
26:08
Speaker 2: golf courses too, so there's great variations of of that
26:12
Speaker 2: topography and and the height and the relief in the
26:16
Speaker 2: dune system.
26:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting how topography how land is. You know,
26:22
Speaker 1: all the sand belt courses are are wonderful and so
26:27
Speaker 1: well designed, but when you combine that design with great land,
26:32
Speaker 1: like at Royal Melbourne West, you have you have the
26:36
Speaker 1: top course. You know, it's it's it's immediately clear. Oh man,
26:39
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of on another level. But
26:42
Speaker 1: even a course like Kingston Heath can be so interesting
26:45
Speaker 1: on flat land, and then it gets to those last
26:47
Speaker 1: several holes and and all of a sudden you see
26:51
Speaker 1: a little more rumpele happening in the land, some some
26:53
Speaker 1: Royal Melbourne like forms that those holes travel over, and
26:57
Speaker 1: the routing is brilliant in the way that it takes
26:59
Speaker 1: you to that land. And so it seems like the
27:03
Speaker 1: land was so well used. Whatever these courses had, they
27:08
Speaker 1: used really well.
27:09
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think too there was a skill set
27:11
Speaker 2: that was built up, you know, after the construction of
27:15
Speaker 2: and we're talking about Morecambe, you know who was obviously
27:18
Speaker 2: involved with the construction of Royal Melbourne's East and West
27:20
Speaker 2: courses and the bunkering at Kingston Heath. There was a
27:23
Speaker 2: whole lot of skills we learned through these early classic
27:26
Speaker 2: SAMD beilt courses that then you see Morgan's name pop
27:29
Speaker 2: up at Woodland's and you know, different people. So there
27:32
Speaker 2: was a whole lot of knowledge getting built up in Melbourne.
27:34
Speaker 2: And then those those trades were put out to other
27:39
Speaker 2: SAMD Belt clubs and I guess they had role models too.
27:42
Speaker 2: Of the other sand belt clubs had role models to
27:45
Speaker 2: look at as well. So I think it was an
27:47
Speaker 2: incredible amount of skills set, and they were you know,
27:49
Speaker 2: they were working with horse and scoop, weren't they They
27:51
Speaker 2: weren't working with doses and excavators, so they were walking
27:54
Speaker 2: with horse and scoop. But I think you can look
27:56
Speaker 2: at Kingston Heath there was a lot more hand of
27:59
Speaker 2: man make some of those ripples and rumbles you talk about,
28:02
Speaker 2: and the bunkering because it was relatively bland land in
28:05
Speaker 2: certain parts and so there were certainly you can you
28:09
Speaker 2: can certainly see that effort, whereas I guess the bigger
28:12
Speaker 2: June shapes of scale of vic and rayal Melbourne Land.
28:16
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't have to do that work that
28:18
Speaker 2: hard and to get that that sort of results. So
28:21
Speaker 2: now that's interesting, really interesting stuff.
28:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, what kinds of indigenous vegetation do you find in
28:29
Speaker 1: the sand belt? What is naturally there? What volunteers?
28:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's basically again there's some variation through courses,
28:40
Speaker 2: but effectively we call it the sand belt heath. So
28:44
Speaker 2: on that sandy ground where it's fairly open and the
28:49
Speaker 2: tree coverage may be sparse or nonexistent, then you get this,
28:55
Speaker 2: you know, the incredible ray of species of heath heathland species,
29:00
Speaker 2: which I guess in a way for those watching. I
29:04
Speaker 2: mean you've got the great heathland courses of Barkser and
29:07
Speaker 2: Surrey around London, you know, and that's on the sand
29:09
Speaker 2: belt down their sand belt right where the soals there
29:14
Speaker 2: are sort of a little bit of sidic and you've
29:16
Speaker 2: got a less of a tree coverage and those sort
29:19
Speaker 2: of plants, you know, the heathland plants of their survive
29:23
Speaker 2: and I think so rural Melbourne's and the sand belt
29:25
Speaker 2: of Melbourne should say is is a dry land heath
29:29
Speaker 2: not as wet as British heathlands, but it is. It
29:32
Speaker 2: is small plants, true to low, small awkwards, things that
29:36
Speaker 2: might only be six inches high, incredible diversity. You might
29:40
Speaker 2: have a square meter of land and you might have
29:41
Speaker 2: ten different species growing in that square meter. So it's
29:44
Speaker 2: a fascinating piece of this heathland and that heathland oblique.
29:50
Speaker 2: Kingston Heath gets its name from that local heath. You've
29:53
Speaker 2: got yary Yara Commonwealth woodlands, all these courses Pus the Kingswood,
30:01
Speaker 2: the north course of Pique has probably got the best
30:04
Speaker 2: heathland woodland course possibly in Australia, I would say in
30:07
Speaker 2: terms of its vegetation and just the purity of the
30:10
Speaker 2: original vegetation was there. So so I think where it
30:13
Speaker 2: was drier and a bit harsher, there'd be less trees.
30:15
Speaker 2: And even if you look at a cross section of
30:18
Speaker 2: Royal Melbourne you cross the road through into the East Course,
30:20
Speaker 2: where you got to less sand and the ground that
30:23
Speaker 2: was a bit lower to the water table, so it
30:25
Speaker 2: was a bit damper. The vegetation would change into more
30:29
Speaker 2: of a woodland character. Even some swamp swamp guns were
30:33
Speaker 2: existing there because things were quite wet in certain parts
30:35
Speaker 2: of the low ground of Royal Melbourne on the east.
30:37
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's an amazing amount of range of flora.
30:43
Speaker 2: But then of course there was I guess when these
30:46
Speaker 2: courses were originally laid out, there was sort of hangovers
30:50
Speaker 2: from these things called the Climatization Society of Melbourne, which
30:54
Speaker 2: these acclimatization societies wanted to make the landscape look European,
30:58
Speaker 2: you know, and they wanted to have in the US.
31:01
Speaker 1: It was the beautification movement there.
31:04
Speaker 2: You go, So it's kind of like this Oussie scrub,
31:07
Speaker 2: this Aussie bush was inferior, and you had to tame
31:10
Speaker 2: it and plant cypresses and pine trees, and it.
31:14
Speaker 1: Was savage, savage flora. We have to get rid of.
31:16
Speaker 2: It, yeah, exactly. And then and then came the then
31:20
Speaker 2: came the huge you know, the beyond that. And you
31:23
Speaker 2: know even post war, you know, the fifties, sixties and seventies,
31:27
Speaker 2: there was a bit of a native plant boom in
31:30
Speaker 2: this country where they started planting, planting shall we call
31:35
Speaker 2: them horticultural curiosities of different trees from different parts of Australia.
31:38
Speaker 2: So you'll see West Australian trees and Queen trees in
31:41
Speaker 2: Queensland and New South Wales planted on Melbourne sand belt.
31:46
Speaker 2: You know, well intended plantings, but just just ultimately long
31:51
Speaker 2: term probably shouldn't be there if the course is going
31:53
Speaker 2: to be true to the land that they're on. But
31:55
Speaker 2: it's amazing flora and there's amazing people doing some great
31:59
Speaker 2: stuff these courses, and as clats will say, I mean
32:02
Speaker 2: a lot of the golf courses have gone through renovations
32:05
Speaker 2: of their architecture tee to green, and most of the
32:10
Speaker 2: same built clubs have in the last ten, fifteen twenty
32:12
Speaker 2: years been doing tinkering away with things and the missing
32:16
Speaker 2: or the last piece perhaps of getting these golf courses
32:20
Speaker 2: to their true potential now is the vegetation side of it.
32:23
Speaker 2: Where they've gone a little bit off course. I said,
32:26
Speaker 2: not deliberately, but over successive years of planting different things,
32:31
Speaker 2: gone a little bit off course, and where the great
32:33
Speaker 2: opportunity to restore the vegetation is focusing on the landscape.
32:39
Speaker 1: This has been part of the life's work of Mike Clayton,
32:42
Speaker 1: whom you work with, and he's made incredible progress in
32:46
Speaker 1: Australia and many other places with restoring indigenous vegetation. One
32:54
Speaker 1: of Clats's bugaboos is the tea tree. Now, first of all,
33:02
Speaker 1: how do you spell it? Because I'm I've seen it.
33:05
Speaker 1: I've seen it both T I and te a tree.
33:10
Speaker 1: And then what is it and what are some of
33:12
Speaker 1: the issues that it presents for for golf.
33:14
Speaker 2: Yea, I've set it spelled both ways, and you can
33:16
Speaker 2: pick up texts and they'll spell it both ways as well.
33:19
Speaker 2: I'd probably spell it the more modern way, which is
33:22
Speaker 2: tea and I think Clates might spell it the T
33:25
Speaker 2: I and there's a pupil.
33:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing I've seen Mike speller with t
33:28
Speaker 1: I yeah, well he probably knows, so.
33:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Look, it's an interesting topic in itself, and
33:34
Speaker 2: it's quite it's a little bit controversial amongst some clubs
33:37
Speaker 2: at the moment, but sure coast t tree is its
33:41
Speaker 2: common name, and as the word suggests, belongs near the
33:46
Speaker 2: coast and typically I guess prior to settlement of Melbourne
33:50
Speaker 2: and clearing of land, coast t Tree was in the
33:53
Speaker 2: within five hundred meters of the high tide mark and
33:55
Speaker 2: that was about it. It didn't venture inland from there,
33:59
Speaker 2: but as as was disturbed cleared for some of that
34:02
Speaker 2: farming I was talking, or some subdivisions for housing. It's
34:07
Speaker 2: an incredible plant because the masses of white flowers in
34:11
Speaker 2: spring typically around now this time of the year, and
34:15
Speaker 2: with the profusion of flowers becomes a profusion of seed,
34:18
Speaker 2: and so it's a fantastic invasive plant. And I guess
34:24
Speaker 2: what's happened at the golf clubs where over a period
34:27
Speaker 2: of seventy eighty one hundred years it's and the golf
34:33
Speaker 2: was often on disturbed ground in came the tea tree,
34:36
Speaker 2: and unless there was somebody physically weeding them out and
34:40
Speaker 2: removing them, which cud cockfit at Rayal Melbourne did in
34:43
Speaker 2: the early days. He was the superintendent there Ryal Melbourne
34:46
Speaker 2: from nineteen thirty six. I think for forty five years
34:49
Speaker 2: he would go around and pull out the occasional tea
34:52
Speaker 2: tree signing the germinator. But it's highly invasive, but it
34:56
Speaker 2: looks great, you know, it's got this silver gray foliage,
34:58
Speaker 2: white flowers in spring and it looks great. But nothing
35:02
Speaker 2: else grows underneath it, so it precludes everything else. And
35:05
Speaker 2: so with the invasion or the allowing of tea tree
35:09
Speaker 2: to colonize, it displaces all this beautiful native heath that's there,
35:15
Speaker 2: and there's plenty of all nearly all the golf course
35:17
Speaker 2: in the sandpit. When you go and remove some of
35:19
Speaker 2: that coastal tea tree sitting in the ground for decades,
35:22
Speaker 2: is this late I call it latent seed of the
35:24
Speaker 2: heathland spec He's just sitting there and it pops up
35:27
Speaker 2: and germinates. And the classic example of that's probably Victory
35:29
Speaker 2: Golf Club, which Clayton knows so well. When they took
35:31
Speaker 2: the t tree out on the seventh hole, up comes
35:34
Speaker 2: all the heath.
35:35
Speaker 1: It looks amazing.
35:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the other way of germinating and promoting this
35:38
Speaker 2: heath is to do what is what some of the
35:41
Speaker 2: Sand Belt clubs do is burning like environmental burns. You've
35:45
Speaker 2: felled the T tree down and create this fuel load
35:48
Speaker 2: and you burn it and then up comes a wonderful heath.
35:51
Speaker 2: So it's a tricky one because if you close we
35:57
Speaker 2: sometimes speculator, if you close the gate at Royal Melbourne
35:59
Speaker 2: and went away for five years and come back, you
36:02
Speaker 2: possibly find and a lot most of the same BLD course.
36:04
Speaker 2: So you'd find the T tree invading the whole golf course, right,
36:08
Speaker 2: it's that invasive and he you know, so even down
36:12
Speaker 2: to Saint Andrew's Beach where you know there's one ad
36:15
Speaker 2: holes there, there was land for another ad holes and
36:18
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen years ago it was just just clear
36:20
Speaker 2: fields with just grasses that within ten or fifteen is
36:24
Speaker 2: just covered with a forest of T tree now. So
36:28
Speaker 2: it's it's highly invasive, but it is a subject of
36:31
Speaker 2: great debate. There's golf club members who think that T
36:36
Speaker 2: tree is indigenous and that's what belongs and that's what
36:39
Speaker 2: it's always been there and that's what should be there.
36:43
Speaker 2: And we have a phrase amongst the fewest peak T Tree,
36:47
Speaker 2: which was really probably in the sixties early seventies again
36:51
Speaker 2: post World War Two, where you know, there was less
36:54
Speaker 2: resources at hand and said, you know, low staff numbers.
36:58
Speaker 2: All the focus was just managing with the small amount
37:01
Speaker 2: of resources. Turf, ta de green, the vegetation are as
37:04
Speaker 2: well often thus forgotten about and you've just had masses
37:07
Speaker 2: and masses of tea tree that would come into all
37:10
Speaker 2: the sand belt courses and literally sort of take over.
37:14
Speaker 2: So there's been recently, more recent times, I guess there's
37:18
Speaker 2: been thinning out of T tree. I think even at
37:21
Speaker 2: Royal Melbourne has done for example, behind six West back
37:24
Speaker 2: in the early days of having tournament golf, bringing bringing
37:29
Speaker 2: golf and TV to to golf in Australia where they
37:33
Speaker 2: needed to get spectators to be able to stand and watch.
37:35
Speaker 2: So the rear of sixth West on the hill there
37:37
Speaker 2: they removed all that T tree and it's been cleared
37:40
Speaker 2: like that for decades now. But yeah, it's a it's
37:45
Speaker 2: a tricky one old T tree and the balance and
37:47
Speaker 2: and I guess providing members are sort of satisfaction that
37:53
Speaker 2: when you remove it, you know it's not all doom
37:55
Speaker 2: and gloom and devastation. There's there's a whole lot of
37:57
Speaker 2: other alternatives that will actually standing beautifully in place of
38:03
Speaker 2: the teatrip.
38:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well, it's it's such an interesting story because
38:09
Speaker 1: technically it is native to the region, right, tea tree,
38:14
Speaker 1: it grows in the area, but it doesn't. But it's
38:18
Speaker 1: not exactly the environment that the golf courses are in.
38:21
Speaker 1: The golf courses are in more of the heathland environment,
38:25
Speaker 1: and and so it's it's a tricky discussion to have
38:29
Speaker 1: because people, it's not as though it's the it's a
38:32
Speaker 1: you know, a pine tree from North America or something.
38:36
Speaker 1: This is this is native vegetation, but not but not
38:40
Speaker 1: in the particular locale of the habitat of of the
38:46
Speaker 1: golf courses. And and from my perspective, you know, as
38:49
Speaker 1: a golf tree, it's tricky because you know, you hit
38:52
Speaker 1: you hit a ball into it, and it's you don't
38:54
Speaker 1: go in there. You you cannot go in there. It
38:58
Speaker 1: is gnarly low to the ground and there's just no
39:03
Speaker 1: no recovering your ball. That's right.
39:05
Speaker 2: I mean literally literally you would have seen the trunks
39:07
Speaker 2: of these trees lying along the ground and the canopy sticking.
39:10
Speaker 2: It's so yeah, but yeah, it's it's it's not great
39:14
Speaker 2: you as you say, you go in there and you
39:15
Speaker 2: don't want to be in there.
39:16
Speaker 1: And well you might as well just move on. Whereas
39:19
Speaker 1: when you have the native heath, yeah, you know, it's
39:22
Speaker 1: a penalty and it's it's can be hard to find
39:25
Speaker 1: your ball in the native heath, but there's there's some
39:27
Speaker 1: you can walk through it. It's you know, it's not
39:30
Speaker 1: going to attack you. So that's the Yeah, that's an
39:34
Speaker 1: ongoing project at a lot of sand bell clubs. That
39:37
Speaker 1: is very interesting.
39:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, well and it's a bit of an ongoing I
39:41
Speaker 2: guess project and education process and awareness right when when
39:46
Speaker 2: when golf has start to become aware of the alternatives,
39:48
Speaker 2: And I think that's where there's been some really good
39:50
Speaker 2: work done by vegetation managers at various different golf courses.
39:54
Speaker 2: We're working with in particular on the Sandbild at the
39:58
Speaker 2: moment with Yarryarra and Woodlands, two very different golf courses
40:02
Speaker 2: vegetation wise, two golf courses that have distinctly different ecological
40:08
Speaker 2: what we call ecological vegetation classes of of vegetation. Actually
40:12
Speaker 2: the mix of woodlands is unique to anything else on
40:14
Speaker 2: the sand book and Yariera, to its credit, is pulled
40:19
Speaker 2: out a lot of what I almost call tree junk,
40:22
Speaker 2: introduced exotic species, and that happened through you know, the
40:25
Speaker 2: renaissance golf workers removing a lot of the tree junk
40:29
Speaker 2: and getting it out of there, to the point we've
40:30
Speaker 2: almost got a clean slate to start with there at
40:33
Speaker 2: Yariaro of now getting back even just simply on the
40:37
Speaker 2: ground plane, getting back native wallaby grasses instead of having
40:41
Speaker 2: other grasses there or cooch there. Just to get that
40:44
Speaker 2: contrast between irrigated mown couch and that sandy grassy ruff
40:50
Speaker 2: that browns off and goes yellow and summer and gives
40:52
Speaker 2: that great contrast and also good you know, you can
40:55
Speaker 2: find your ball in it, right, So it's not a
40:57
Speaker 2: lush thick ruff that you might get in call wetter
41:00
Speaker 2: climates of North America or s a UK. So and
41:04
Speaker 2: I said, there's some really good people doing good work,
41:07
Speaker 2: professional people in the management team of these golf courses.
41:10
Speaker 2: Their working lives are dedicated just to vegetation, which is great.
41:15
Speaker 2: Great to see you in ten, fifteen, twenty easier. You
41:17
Speaker 2: didn't have those people doing that so much. So it's
41:20
Speaker 2: and so that sort of focus. I guess the awareness
41:23
Speaker 2: and the awareness of the alternatives to tea tree is
41:27
Speaker 2: still a story to be sold and told.
41:28
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's one of the biggest areas of
41:32
Speaker 1: progress in sam bel Golf recently and you're definitely have
41:36
Speaker 1: been have been a part of that story. So very
41:38
Speaker 1: cool to hear about it from your perspective. Thank you
41:41
Speaker 1: for coming on the podcast, Harley. Very nice to talk to.
41:44
Speaker 2: You, Pleasure Garrett anytime. It's been been good fun, so
41:47
Speaker 2: thank you very much.
41:55
Speaker 1: So I left off my history of sam belk Golf
41:57
Speaker 1: with Royal Melbourne moving to Sandringham in nineteen oh one.
42:03
Speaker 1: This started a kind of trickle of golf clubs down
42:06
Speaker 1: to the sand Belt from their original locations closer to
42:10
Speaker 1: the city. Next up was the Metropolitan Golf Club, which
42:14
Speaker 1: consisted of some former Royal Melbourne members I believe who
42:18
Speaker 1: didn't make the initial move. Metro arrived in the sand
42:22
Speaker 1: Belt in nineteen oh eight. Woodland's Golf Club was founded
42:25
Speaker 1: in the southern portion of the sand Belt in nineteen thirteen,
42:29
Speaker 1: and then in the nineteen twenties the trickle turned into
42:33
Speaker 1: a flood. Commonwealth Golf Club started in the sand Belt
42:36
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty, Kingston Heath in nineteen twenty five, Victoria
42:41
Speaker 1: Golf Club and Yeri Yarra Golf Club in nineteen twenty seven.
42:46
Speaker 1: So suddenly you had quite a few golf courses on
42:50
Speaker 1: this excellent terrain in the Melbourne sand Belt. So the
42:54
Speaker 1: last ingredient to make this a world class golf region is,
42:58
Speaker 1: of course archetl extra. Now it seems to me that
43:02
Speaker 1: there was a good amount of local design talent in Melbourne.
43:08
Speaker 1: Kingston Heath was routed by a Scottish immigrant named Dan Suiter,
43:12
Speaker 1: and he did an incredible job. Victoria Golf Club was
43:16
Speaker 1: designed by Bill Meader, a local banker, and Oscar Dammen,
43:20
Speaker 1: a local shop owner. Again awesome work by the two
43:24
Speaker 1: of them. But a major galvanizing moment for golf architecture
43:29
Speaker 1: in the Melbourne sand Belt was a visit by doctor
43:32
Speaker 1: Alistair McKenzie in October and November of nineteen twenty six.
43:37
Speaker 1: Now I've done a whole podcast episode on this visit
43:41
Speaker 1: by Alistair McKenzie. You can find that back in the
43:45
Speaker 1: Friday Golf podcast archives. It's called something like the Doctor.
43:51
Speaker 1: The Good Doctor Goes down Under. It was released a
43:54
Speaker 1: few years ago, but I went into more detail about
43:57
Speaker 1: McKenzie's visit there, but really really subject. Mackenzie was technically
44:03
Speaker 1: there to design a new course for Royal Melbourne, which
44:07
Speaker 1: was moving from Sandringham to a property next door in Blackrock,
44:11
Speaker 1: and Mackenzie's main job while he was in Melbourne was
44:15
Speaker 1: to lay out this new course, which eventually became the
44:18
Speaker 1: famous West Course. But while he was in town, Royal
44:22
Speaker 1: Melbourne basically rented him out to several clubs to make
44:27
Speaker 1: design recommendations because they couldn't afford to just employ him
44:34
Speaker 1: during the entire duration of his stay. So mackenzie ended
44:39
Speaker 1: up helping out with bunkering plans and other design issues
44:42
Speaker 1: at Victoria Golf Club, Kingston Heath and the Metropolitan Golf Club,
44:48
Speaker 1: and to me, his influence on these places is really obvious.
44:54
Speaker 1: He introduced state of the art strategic golf architecture to
44:59
Speaker 1: the sand belt and that brought the region to another level.
45:04
Speaker 1: So the classic courses of the Melbourne sand Belt, to
45:07
Speaker 1: my mind, are the West and East courses at Royal Melbourne,
45:11
Speaker 1: Kingston Heath, Victoria Golf Club, the Metropolitan Golf Club, Yarra Yarra,
45:17
Speaker 1: Commonwealth and Huntingdale. These are almost always mentioned in any
45:23
Speaker 1: discussion of the sand belt. There are very few people
45:26
Speaker 1: who would deny that these courses should be considered kind
45:32
Speaker 1: of the pillars of sand belt golf. I would also
45:36
Speaker 1: add to that group though, Sandy Golf Links, which is
45:39
Speaker 1: right next door to Royal Melbourne and definitely looks and
45:44
Speaker 1: feels and plays like a sand belt golf course. I
45:46
Speaker 1: would add Sandy Golf Links to that group, as well
45:49
Speaker 1: as Spring Valley Golf Club, which is in the same
45:52
Speaker 1: area and again has enough similarities to classic sand belt
45:57
Speaker 1: courses to be considered one of them. Then south of
46:01
Speaker 1: this main area of the sand belt you'll find a
46:04
Speaker 1: few more courses Woodlands Golf Club, Peninsula, Kingswood Country Golf
46:09
Speaker 1: Club which has thirty six holes north and South courses,
46:13
Speaker 1: and Long Island, which is now owned by the National
46:17
Speaker 1: Golf Club. Sometimes these courses aren't mentioned in discussions of
46:21
Speaker 1: sand belt golf, but I think they should be. I
46:23
Speaker 1: think they belong in that category. So that's basically the
46:27
Speaker 1: scope of what I would consider the Melbourne sand Belt. Now,
46:31
Speaker 1: from Melbourne, you can also drive to the Mornington Peninsula,
46:36
Speaker 1: where you'll find courses like Saint Andrew's Beach, the Dunes
46:39
Speaker 1: Golf Links, Ports Sea Golf Club and three courses at
46:43
Speaker 1: the National Golf Club. You can also travel to the
46:46
Speaker 1: Bellerine Peninsula where you can play Thirteenth Beach, Golf Links
46:50
Speaker 1: which is the site of the VIC Open, Barwin Head's
46:53
Speaker 1: Golf Club and Lonsdale Links all definitely worth seeing. And
47:00
Speaker 1: you know, if you go to the Mornington Peninsula or
47:01
Speaker 1: the Bellerine Peninsula, one good thing is that many of
47:05
Speaker 1: the courses in those areas are public and so you
47:09
Speaker 1: won't have to try too hard to gain access and
47:13
Speaker 1: book ty times. They'll be a little bit more accessible
47:17
Speaker 1: to travelers. So with that, I'd like to bring on
47:21
Speaker 1: my friend Lucas Michelle to discuss his perspective on sand
47:26
Speaker 1: Belt golf and what he thinks visitors should see and
47:30
Speaker 1: do in and around Melbourne. Lucas is one of my
47:34
Speaker 1: go to advisors on Australian golf. He's very knowledgeable, he
47:39
Speaker 1: knows golf incredibly well, knows the area incredibly well and
47:43
Speaker 1: it's just fun to talk to him. So let's go
47:46
Speaker 1: right over to Lucas Michelle. Lucas Michelle, Welcome to the pod.
47:56
Speaker 1: Happy to be on you, Lucas are have all always been,
48:01
Speaker 1: have been for years one of my local sources on
48:03
Speaker 1: sand Belt golf. I ask you a lot of questions.
48:06
Speaker 1: You've always been very generous in answering them. Melbourne is
48:09
Speaker 1: your adopted hometown, it's my understanding. Didn't you grow up
48:12
Speaker 1: in Perth.
48:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I grew up in Perth. Moved to Melbourne
48:17
Speaker 3: when I was eighteen, really for two reasons, to study.
48:21
Speaker 3: I started an engineering degree in Melbourne, but then also
48:26
Speaker 3: to pursue some competitive golf. You know, Melbourne is really
48:30
Speaker 3: the capital golf city of Australia, and if I was
48:34
Speaker 3: going to get better at golf, I figured I needed
48:36
Speaker 3: to be on the East Coast and Melbourne was the spot.
48:39
Speaker 3: So yeah, moved to Melbourne in twenty twelve and have
48:42
Speaker 3: been there ever since. And yeah, it's just a great place.
48:46
Speaker 1: The region has produced so many great golfers like you know,
48:50
Speaker 1: Peter Thompson and everybody knows about Jeff Ogilvie knows about
48:53
Speaker 1: You're in that lineage of golfer Mike Clayton, You're in
48:56
Speaker 1: that lineage of golfers now as a US Midam winner,
49:00
Speaker 1: and it's and so that's one thing that's really interesting
49:03
Speaker 1: about the sand Belt is it's it's way of producing
49:07
Speaker 1: great players with great golf courses and very like high
49:13
Speaker 1: IQ high golf IQ players come out of Melbourne too,
49:18
Speaker 1: probably because of the nature of the of the golf
49:21
Speaker 1: courses there. You're you're now very well traveled, right, so
49:24
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of different a lot of different
49:26
Speaker 1: regions of golf. When you think about the sand Belt,
49:29
Speaker 1: what is distinctive about the golf architecture there, well, like,
49:33
Speaker 1: what is the thing that makes it the sand Belt
49:36
Speaker 1: aside from the land?
49:37
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, I think it was. It was a
49:39
Speaker 3: little bit of a shock when I moved to Perth,
49:41
Speaker 3: moved from Perth because I think the firmness of the
49:45
Speaker 3: turf was the biggest thing that I had to get
49:48
Speaker 3: used to, you know, understanding where a ball needs to land,
49:51
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes in front of a green, twenty outs
49:53
Speaker 3: short of a green to release and finish near the hole.
49:57
Speaker 3: And then obviously there's contour on top of that, really
50:00
Speaker 3: thoughtful contour on the ground. So you've kind of got
50:03
Speaker 3: those two factors. And coming from Perth, you know, I'd
50:06
Speaker 3: say Perth is probably firmer and faster than most places,
50:09
Speaker 3: but Melbourne was just on another level. So and as
50:13
Speaker 3: I've traveled, I've definitely realized that that is fairly unique
50:17
Speaker 3: to Melbourne I spent. I was fortunate I spent a
50:20
Speaker 3: semester abroad at Saint Andrew's UNI and was there from
50:23
Speaker 3: August through December, and certainly in August, September, October we
50:28
Speaker 3: had a nice dry fall and yeah, it was lovely
50:32
Speaker 3: and that was definitely probably the most similar I can
50:34
Speaker 3: I can think of to that style of golf, but
50:37
Speaker 3: I would definitely say, yeah, it's that firmness. I think
50:40
Speaker 3: it creates a golfer that is more used to thinking
50:43
Speaker 3: their way around a golf course, So think of yeah,
50:46
Speaker 3: Peter Thompson and Jeff and Mike Clayton. I think it
50:49
Speaker 3: was a real benefit to my game of spending a
50:52
Speaker 3: lot of time on a sand belt course my home
50:54
Speaker 3: club Metropolitan and then frequently playing Ryal Melbourne, catting at
50:58
Speaker 3: Ryal Melbourne. I spent also used cuttying there as well,
51:02
Speaker 3: So that kind of helps you think about how how
51:05
Speaker 3: design works too.
51:07
Speaker 1: You've constructed quite a life for yourself spending time in Melbourne,
51:11
Speaker 1: going to university in Saint Andrews, like I'm I'm pretty jealous,
51:16
Speaker 1: to be honest, but uh, you know, firm and fast
51:19
Speaker 1: golf is what you get in both of those places,
51:23
Speaker 1: and the you know this at the sand Belt in particular,
51:26
Speaker 1: I found when I went there last year, the first
51:29
Speaker 1: time I saw the ball leap into the air after
51:32
Speaker 1: landing was a real moment. I remember it because I
51:36
Speaker 1: was playing with you actually at that real Melbourne's East Course,
51:40
Speaker 1: it was. It was probably on the first hole when
51:42
Speaker 1: you know, I landed the ball short of the green
51:45
Speaker 1: and it just it's like a trampoline effect and it
51:49
Speaker 1: changes the way that you you play the golf courses.
51:52
Speaker 1: But then you add the design of the courses into that,
51:57
Speaker 1: and these courses are influenced by the strategic school of
52:01
Speaker 1: golf architecture as it was formulated in the early twentieth century,
52:07
Speaker 1: and so you have bunkers guarding the ideal angles into greens.
52:12
Speaker 1: You have greenside bunkers sort of punishing players who are
52:17
Speaker 1: out of position in the fair way, and when you
52:22
Speaker 1: combine that architecture with the firm turf, you just get
52:25
Speaker 1: really interesting golf. The design doesn't have to be that complicated, right,
52:30
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be anything fancy to be interesting
52:34
Speaker 1: because you have firm turf, you have bunkers, you have
52:37
Speaker 1: hazards exactly where they should be to create strategic questions,
52:42
Speaker 1: and the golf courses just kind of go from there.
52:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, the questions are relatively simple. You know, it's generally,
52:50
Speaker 3: like you said, a classically strategic call. But yeah, the
52:55
Speaker 3: why the courses play really exemplifies the architecture on the ground.
53:00
Speaker 3: And I would say, sam Bell golf courses they probably
53:03
Speaker 3: don't have a ton of quirk compared to you know,
53:06
Speaker 3: some of the courses you see maybe the ones that
53:08
Speaker 3: were even built, you know, pre Golden Age, you see
53:11
Speaker 3: a lot of really wacky features. I mean maybe Metro's
53:14
Speaker 3: got a couple. I think you stood on the ninth
53:16
Speaker 3: fairway and looked at the mounds and you're like, oh,
53:19
Speaker 3: Brian Snyder would love this. Yeah. Yeah, but but yeah,
53:25
Speaker 3: I think I think it's just like you said, just
53:28
Speaker 3: you know, classically strategic architecture. And there's there's variations across
53:32
Speaker 3: the sand belt. You know, Commonwealth is probably most known
53:36
Speaker 3: for the tilt in the greens, so that the greens
53:39
Speaker 3: will tend to tilt away from the player if you're
53:43
Speaker 3: playing from the less than ideal line, so that sort
53:48
Speaker 3: of does it more with tilt. Places like Metropolitan probably
53:51
Speaker 3: does it more with the bunkering, and it just varies
53:54
Speaker 3: across the sand belt. You know, Kingston Heath probably has
53:57
Speaker 3: a little bit more variety in the sort of artitecture
54:00
Speaker 3: on the ground, you know, different strategic questions. Not it's
54:03
Speaker 3: not always bungers on the inside of the dog leg.
54:05
Speaker 3: You know, there's a couple, well, the twelfth hole has
54:07
Speaker 3: a bunker in the middle of the fair way. You know,
54:08
Speaker 3: there's there's maybe a little bit more variety there, and
54:10
Speaker 3: there's a bit more blindness there as well, which is
54:12
Speaker 3: pretty cool. But yeah, like you said, you know it
54:16
Speaker 3: is it's it's classic strategic architecture combined with just awesome playability.
54:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kingston Heath is is so wonderful because the the
54:29
Speaker 1: design is super intellectual, you know, like it's it's really
54:34
Speaker 1: varied from hole the whole, like all the all the
54:36
Speaker 1: tools of strategic architecture are are used at Kingston Heath.
54:40
Speaker 1: Then you go to Commonwealth, which I love, which you mentioned,
54:44
Speaker 1: really love Commonwealth, but there the strategic concepts are are
54:49
Speaker 1: very straightforward, where yeah, you have that tilt, you have
54:54
Speaker 1: the bunkers and the right positions, and you know the
54:57
Speaker 1: question is can can you deal with with all of that?
55:01
Speaker 1: And it makes for very interesting golf, but in a
55:05
Speaker 1: different way from Kingston Heath, in a different way from
55:08
Speaker 1: the West Course at Royal Melbourne, which is which is
55:11
Speaker 1: very complexly designed as well. The East Course has has
55:14
Speaker 1: those incredible greens that you talk to me a lot
55:17
Speaker 1: about when we are playing. The greens at the East
55:20
Speaker 1: Course are unbelievable.
55:23
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think, yeah. I think as I kind
55:26
Speaker 3: of played the East Course more and more and caddied
55:28
Speaker 3: there as well, I think I sort of realized, you know,
55:32
Speaker 3: there's greens like the third, tenth, eleventh, sixteenth and eighteenth
55:38
Speaker 3: that I think they're way more complex than you get
55:41
Speaker 3: on the West Course. And I think that's I think
55:44
Speaker 3: it must be. I mean it came a little later
55:46
Speaker 3: than the West. I got to think that obviously Russell
55:50
Speaker 3: was left on his own with Morecambe to do the
55:53
Speaker 3: West and at the East Surien and I think there's
55:56
Speaker 3: probably maybe Russell and more them getting a little bit
56:01
Speaker 3: more confident in what they were doing and getting a
56:04
Speaker 3: little bit more creative there.
56:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, But yeah, they're experimenting the green experimental for sure,
56:10
Speaker 1: you get that sense that it was like, well let's
56:13
Speaker 1: try this.
56:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, whereas you look at you know, Yaria was I
56:17
Speaker 3: think built a round the same time as the West
56:20
Speaker 3: or maybe even like like maybe even finished before it,
56:23
Speaker 3: and so you don't have that complexity, and that was
56:25
Speaker 3: Russell and I don't know actually who built it. But
56:28
Speaker 3: there's a big difference between the complexity of the green
56:31
Speaker 3: greens at yari Era versus rom Elbane's not to say
56:34
Speaker 3: yarrows aren't great, but you know, green like eleven is
56:37
Speaker 3: probably one of the most intricately designed greens on the
56:40
Speaker 3: sandhold at Yarria. But yeah, the East just I think
56:45
Speaker 3: is a notch higher in terms of green design.
56:48
Speaker 1: There are probably some intricacies that are Era and the
56:50
Speaker 1: greens that that could be recaptured. But your general point
56:54
Speaker 1: is totally right. You know, you're era I think was
56:57
Speaker 1: twenty six or twenty seven, which is when the West
57:01
Speaker 1: Course was conceived, right when Alistair McKenzie came through Australia
57:06
Speaker 1: and offered all of his suggestions for these courses. And
57:11
Speaker 1: the West Course was built according to Alistair McKenzie's plans,
57:14
Speaker 1: but not finished until the early nineteen thirties, and that's
57:18
Speaker 1: when the East Course was finished too. And by the
57:22
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties there's crazy stuff going on all around
57:25
Speaker 1: the world in golf architecture. You know, Alistair McKenzie is
57:28
Speaker 1: building Augusta National with some of the craziest greens ever
57:32
Speaker 1: ever created, and there's a lot of there's a spirit
57:36
Speaker 1: of experimentation in early nineteen thirties golf architecture, just as
57:40
Speaker 1: the industry is falling off a cliff and nobody can
57:42
Speaker 1: nobody can build anything anymore. Later in the thirties you
57:46
Speaker 1: have Langford and Moreau come along in the US and
57:49
Speaker 1: do some crazy stuff. And so maybe maybe Alex Russell
57:52
Speaker 1: was kind of, you know, absorbing the spirit of the times.
57:56
Speaker 1: He was a very cosmopolitan guy. He probably kept track
57:59
Speaker 1: of what was going on in the golf industry and
58:02
Speaker 1: who knows, the use course greens might have been influenced
58:05
Speaker 1: by that, yeah, you know, by that atmosphere.
58:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think as well. Morecambe clearly had an influence
58:13
Speaker 3: because if you look at the Russell courses that were
58:16
Speaker 3: done outside of Melbourne, you know, I was remember at
58:19
Speaker 3: Lake carrn Up in Perth, and before Mike Clayton went
58:23
Speaker 3: through there and redesigned, it was fairly rudimentary. And I
58:26
Speaker 3: think he did plans for that course in the fifties
58:29
Speaker 3: as well. I think he drew up green plans. I
58:32
Speaker 3: don't know if they were ever built, but he definitely
58:34
Speaker 3: relewed the course Russell did, so he built the course
58:36
Speaker 3: in you know, they built the course in the late twenties,
58:39
Speaker 3: and then I believe he went through and did a
58:41
Speaker 3: review and drew some more sketches in the fifties. But
58:45
Speaker 3: clearly when he didn't have Morecambe there, it just couldn't
58:48
Speaker 3: get built to that level. So I think when Clayton
58:50
Speaker 3: went through, they used some of those sketches and then
58:52
Speaker 3: put a bit of their own flavor on the golf course.
58:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Lucas, I have a few questions for you
58:59
Speaker 1: from members of Friday Golf Club. I put a call
59:03
Speaker 1: out for questions related to, you know, what it's like
59:07
Speaker 1: to visit the sand Belt and how to kind of
59:11
Speaker 1: plan a sand Belt trip, what it's what it's like
59:15
Speaker 1: to try to get access to these clubs and travel
59:18
Speaker 1: to the area. So, you know, starting with the golf
59:21
Speaker 1: part of it, this is a complicated question. This is
59:24
Speaker 1: a hard question answer, But what do you think the
59:27
Speaker 1: priority is? Like do you stick around the city and
59:30
Speaker 1: try to play as many sand Belt courses as possible,
59:33
Speaker 1: or do you sprinkle in some trips out to the
59:37
Speaker 1: Mornington Peninsula or even the Bellerine Peninsula. These are sort
59:40
Speaker 1: of the Hampton's areas of the Melbourne region with with
59:47
Speaker 1: some great golf in their own right. What would be
59:50
Speaker 1: your approach if you had a week and a half
59:52
Speaker 1: to two weeks in the area, would you would you
59:56
Speaker 1: go narrow and deep or would you kind of spread
59:59
Speaker 1: out a little bit?
1:00:00
Speaker 3: I think I would probably spread out. I think, you know,
1:00:03
Speaker 3: the sand Belt, it's a little homogeneous once you get
1:00:07
Speaker 3: past you know, the top two or three or four courses.
1:00:11
Speaker 3: I think I would, you know, the sand belt style,
1:00:13
Speaker 3: there is variety, a little bit of variety, like we
1:00:16
Speaker 3: talked about with Commonwealth, you know, having the tilted greens
1:00:19
Speaker 3: versus you know a Yaria or Metro or elsewhere. So
1:00:23
Speaker 3: I think I would definitely do four or five sand
1:00:27
Speaker 3: Belt courses. And then I think there's so much good
1:00:31
Speaker 3: golf on the Mornington Peninsula. I think for that variety
1:00:34
Speaker 3: to spice up the trip, a little bit. I think, yeah,
1:00:38
Speaker 3: you can't look past you know, you're s Andrew's Beach.
1:00:40
Speaker 3: If you can get on the National kind of matter
1:00:42
Speaker 3: or Mona and then yeah, I mean, like you said,
1:00:46
Speaker 3: the Bellerine has some great golf now, but on Heads
1:00:49
Speaker 3: is really good and Lonsdale Links is really fun. I
1:00:54
Speaker 3: wouldn't suggest going out to Port Farry. That's about a
1:00:56
Speaker 3: four hour drive, but if you did want to.
1:01:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it looks like my kind of place.
1:01:04
Speaker 3: It's really cool. You drive the Great Ocean Road to
1:01:08
Speaker 3: get there, so maybe that's an option. If you've got
1:01:10
Speaker 3: a couple of days spare, you can go stay out there.
1:01:13
Speaker 3: But yeah, I would definitely, you know, throw in some
1:01:16
Speaker 3: some interesting stuff, even RACV Heelsville it's a course up
1:01:21
Speaker 3: north north of Melbourne that Mike Clayton did with Mike
1:01:24
Speaker 3: Cocking probably fifteen twenty years ago, and that's got some
1:01:29
Speaker 3: really fun green complexes, super different to what you'd see
1:01:31
Speaker 3: on the sand belt heavy soils, but you know, past
1:01:35
Speaker 3: sixty eight or six or something like that. I also
1:01:39
Speaker 3: wouldn't look past Sandy Golf Links. I think that's a
1:01:42
Speaker 3: really sort of in that shorter courses sort of thing.
1:01:46
Speaker 3: I think that's super super fun. You know, it's got
1:01:49
Speaker 3: every element of raw melw into it.
1:01:52
Speaker 1: You know that's right next door.
1:01:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so it's superb.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: I would I would beat the drum drum for Sandy
1:01:59
Speaker 1: Golflin as well. I mean, it's it's so easy to
1:02:01
Speaker 1: work into an itinerary because it is a shorter course
1:02:05
Speaker 1: a par it's like a par sixty five or six
1:02:08
Speaker 1: or something.
1:02:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a six. I haven't broken par there,
1:02:11
Speaker 3: I've played it. Maybe it's hard eight nine times.
1:02:14
Speaker 1: It's so hard because.
1:02:18
Speaker 3: Pathlives where good players faced, and then and then you've
1:02:21
Speaker 3: got lots of plath threes and firm, super firm surfaces
1:02:25
Speaker 3: and not a lot of bunkers, which I think actually
1:02:27
Speaker 3: makes it harder for good players because the ball runs
1:02:29
Speaker 3: away from the green and then there's so much complexity
1:02:31
Speaker 3: around the green.
1:02:32
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, you're probably right that that is. That
1:02:35
Speaker 1: is the factor.
1:02:36
Speaker 3: It is.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: I mean that, and that the turf is maintained by
1:02:39
Speaker 1: the Royal Melbourne team. You know that the courses are
1:02:42
Speaker 1: right next door to each other and they have a deal,
1:02:45
Speaker 1: a very nice deal from from the perspective of Royal
1:02:47
Speaker 1: Melbourne to kind of co maintain the courses, and yeah,
1:02:53
Speaker 1: it's so the turf is like what you get at
1:02:56
Speaker 1: Royal Melbourne for all intents and purposes. That designs great.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: They redid it a few years ago and uh and
1:03:04
Speaker 1: turned it into a true sand belt course. So definitely
1:03:07
Speaker 1: would recommend that. And yeah, there's so much good golf
1:03:11
Speaker 1: in the area around it's a little bit hard to
1:03:13
Speaker 1: wrap your arms around it. But I think I like
1:03:16
Speaker 1: your approach. It's the sort of the approach that I
1:03:18
Speaker 1: took where you try to see as much sand belt
1:03:21
Speaker 1: golf as possible because that's that's the unique thing about
1:03:24
Speaker 1: the area. You won't find it anywhere else.
1:03:26
Speaker 3: You know.
1:03:27
Speaker 1: San Andrew's Beach is an incredible golf course, but it
1:03:29
Speaker 1: is it is like the bandoned courses more so than
1:03:33
Speaker 1: than the sand belt courses are like the bandoned courses.
1:03:37
Speaker 1: But I think San Andrew's Beach is one of Tom
1:03:39
Speaker 1: Doaks's best golf courses. Yeah, it's one of the one
1:03:43
Speaker 1: of the three or four best of his that I've
1:03:45
Speaker 1: that I've seen, And and so getting out there and
1:03:48
Speaker 1: seeing that would it would really spice up the trip.
1:03:51
Speaker 1: And then you guys are working at Portsya, right now.
1:03:55
Speaker 3: Right, correct, And.
1:03:59
Speaker 1: It's a cool place.
1:04:00
Speaker 3: That's that is a cool place. It's it's probably doesn't
1:04:03
Speaker 3: have the you know, design complexity of you know in
1:04:06
Speaker 3: certain certainly the design of the greens and bunkers. But yeah, yeah,
1:04:13
Speaker 3: solid routing, great land, some of the best land you
1:04:16
Speaker 3: could ever imagine for golf, spectacular setting. Very luckily where
1:04:21
Speaker 3: we're working with them and hopefully we can make some
1:04:23
Speaker 3: slight improvements on what they've already got.
1:04:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they they're they're pretty close to to
1:04:29
Speaker 1: having something very special and and worth traveling out to
1:04:32
Speaker 1: the tip of the Mornington Peninsula to to see it.
1:04:36
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean so much good stuff And yeah,
1:04:39
Speaker 1: I guess that doesn't answer the question in like a
1:04:42
Speaker 1: firm way for uh, for people who want to travel there,
1:04:46
Speaker 1: But the basic messages you can't really go to this
1:04:50
Speaker 1: region and not go not do a little bit of
1:04:53
Speaker 1: traveling around and seeing the varieties of golf.
1:04:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, and depends what you're into, but there's some good
1:04:59
Speaker 3: wineries down on the morning To Peninsula. You can make
1:05:01
Speaker 3: out a trip. Like I said, the Great Ocean Road
1:05:04
Speaker 3: if you do happen to go Bellerine Side is not
1:05:06
Speaker 3: that far from from where you know Lonstow and those
1:05:10
Speaker 3: courses are, so you know, there's definitely other elements to
1:05:14
Speaker 3: the trip. It doesn't have to be one hundred percent golf.
1:05:16
Speaker 3: If you're interested in other things.
1:05:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, great wine region, it's uh, I mean just
1:05:21
Speaker 1: on top of everything else. They there's there's good good
1:05:25
Speaker 1: pinot noir specifically in the in the Melbourne region. All right,
1:05:30
Speaker 1: and this is a question from my colleague Boschagins, Uh,
1:05:35
Speaker 1: can you think of any other cluster of courses in
1:05:39
Speaker 1: the world that you feel placed similarly to SAMD Belt courses?
1:05:43
Speaker 1: What's what's kind of the closest thing elsewhere to the
1:05:46
Speaker 1: sam Belt.
1:05:48
Speaker 3: It's probably if you get a good summer the London heathlands,
1:05:53
Speaker 3: I would.
1:05:53
Speaker 1: Say it's got to be right.
1:05:54
Speaker 3: Yeah. I played the Walton Heath Trophy in a couple
1:06:00
Speaker 3: is actually twenty fifteen when I went over to Sanders
1:06:02
Speaker 3: and then maybe like twenty seventeen, and I actually don't
1:06:06
Speaker 3: know what the soils are there. They maybe clay because
1:06:08
Speaker 3: it was so firm, like when the clay dried.
1:06:11
Speaker 1: Out, the ball was bouncing late summer.
1:06:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, unbelievable. So I think a dry summer on the
1:06:19
Speaker 3: London heathlands. I think it's sort of got that aesthetic too,
1:06:23
Speaker 3: with the sort of heathland style vegetation as well.
1:06:27
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I agree. Yeah, the soils are generally pretty good,
1:06:32
Speaker 1: pretty fine in the heathlands, but there are but it
1:06:36
Speaker 1: is a mixture of heavy clay and more sandy stuff,
1:06:40
Speaker 1: and it's just there's more variety than you would find
1:06:42
Speaker 1: in the sand Belt. I just came back from a
1:06:44
Speaker 1: trip to the Heathlands and would totally co sign that.
1:06:48
Speaker 1: You know, both completely unique regions that deserve their own trips.
1:06:54
Speaker 1: It's not like you would ever stand on Woking a
1:06:58
Speaker 1: fairway at Woking Golf Club and and mistake it for
1:07:01
Speaker 1: ye are era. But there are some real, real similarities
1:07:06
Speaker 1: with concentration of great golf architecture, really good land and
1:07:12
Speaker 1: you know, some interesting heathland vegetation there are there's some
1:07:15
Speaker 1: vegetation similarities as well, I guess all right, here's a
1:07:19
Speaker 1: question from a Friday Golf Club member named Tim Shermer.
1:07:25
Speaker 1: He wants a little more information on the quote unquote
1:07:29
Speaker 1: lesser known courses of the sand Belt. Everybody knows about
1:07:36
Speaker 1: Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath to an extent, everybody knows about
1:07:39
Speaker 1: Victoria knows about metropolitan where where you remember when you
1:07:45
Speaker 1: think about courses like Commonwealth, Woodlands Huntingdale. I don't know
1:07:51
Speaker 1: if you would consider Long Island part of the sand belt.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: But that's next door to Peninsula Kingswood to thirty six
1:07:58
Speaker 1: holes at Peninsula Kingswood, south of of what you would
1:08:01
Speaker 1: traditionally call the sand belt. What do those courses have
1:08:06
Speaker 1: to offer?
1:08:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, we've talked a little bit about
1:08:11
Speaker 3: Commonwealth already, but but Woodlands, you know, I can't remember
1:08:15
Speaker 3: if you got out there to Woodlands you did, Yeah, yeah,
1:08:19
Speaker 3: So Woodlands is you know, probably there's a little bit
1:08:23
Speaker 3: of difference in the vegetation there. It's on maybe a
1:08:25
Speaker 3: slightly different They call them evc's. It's like Ecological Vegetation Community,
1:08:32
Speaker 3: I think is the name for it.
1:08:33
Speaker 1: It's a little south of of like the classic sand belt.
1:08:36
Speaker 1: It's south of bit, yeah, a little bit. It's like
1:08:39
Speaker 1: it's sort of between Royal Melbourne and Peninsula Kingwood. Right,
1:08:44
Speaker 1: Peninsula Things was about thirty minutes south of Victorian and
1:08:48
Speaker 1: Royal Melbourne and then you know Woodlands is sort of
1:08:50
Speaker 1: in between.
1:08:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I mean architecturally it's I mean any
1:08:56
Speaker 3: photo you'd see the place looks distinctively sand Belt. You know,
1:08:59
Speaker 3: it's got the those flared up bunkers with flash sand.
1:09:03
Speaker 3: It's got the fescu surrounds just like a royal Melbourne,
1:09:05
Speaker 3: so you can bounce the ball in really well. Green's
1:09:08
Speaker 3: always firm. We're actually doing a little bit of work
1:09:11
Speaker 3: there with the vegetation because it got a little bit
1:09:13
Speaker 3: crowded with tea tree over the years. But yeah, superb
1:09:18
Speaker 3: golf course. The fourth hole is one of the best
1:09:21
Speaker 3: courses on the sand Belt. One of the quirkiest golf
1:09:24
Speaker 3: holes on the sand Belt. Actually just really yeah a really.
1:09:31
Speaker 1: With the green, that's like you can't hit it from
1:09:34
Speaker 1: any angle.
1:09:35
Speaker 3: I played there about a week ago. I hit a
1:09:38
Speaker 3: pin high left to a front pin which is about
1:09:41
Speaker 3: six paces wide and stands about five feet above all
1:09:46
Speaker 3: the surrounds, So to actually hit the green from that
1:09:49
Speaker 3: position pin high left was impossible. I putted it and
1:09:52
Speaker 3: putted it straight over the top of the pin and
1:09:54
Speaker 3: went straight to the other side, and I was basically
1:09:56
Speaker 3: playing ping pong from each started the green. So crazy,
1:10:01
Speaker 3: crazy hole, Like if you built it today, I just
1:10:03
Speaker 3: don't think you could. I think you would you know
1:10:05
Speaker 3: that would blow it up.
1:10:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly at like modern green speeds. You know, this
1:10:11
Speaker 1: was it was built, you know, a long time ago,
1:10:14
Speaker 1: but it's so interesting because it has survived in.
1:10:18
Speaker 3: The correct So the woodland's just to see the fourth
1:10:21
Speaker 3: almost but some great short falls there as well. You
1:10:26
Speaker 3: didn't bring up Spring Valley, but that's probably worth seeing.
1:10:29
Speaker 3: They're going through like a bit of a green restoration project.
1:10:33
Speaker 3: But that's got some really good good holes on some
1:10:36
Speaker 3: great land, very sort of Kingston Heathy sort of type
1:10:40
Speaker 3: type land. Just you know, it doesn't quite have the budget,
1:10:43
Speaker 3: and there are a couple holes down you know in
1:10:46
Speaker 3: more of a wetland area that aren't quite as good,
1:10:48
Speaker 3: but some really really good stuff there. We talked about Sandy.
1:10:54
Speaker 1: That's Sandy belongs to this group, and.
1:10:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, even like there's might be a little bit harder
1:11:00
Speaker 3: to get on. But if you're counting Long Island as well,
1:11:03
Speaker 3: which I haven't seen yet obviously that going through a
1:11:06
Speaker 3: major renovation at the moment. But if we're counting Long Island,
1:11:09
Speaker 3: then just another five minutes south is a little place
1:11:12
Speaker 3: called Frankston Golf Club which has elements of sand belt
1:11:17
Speaker 3: to it. It's really difficult to get a good history
1:11:21
Speaker 3: on the place. You know, I've heard stories that Russell
1:11:23
Speaker 3: did it, but it's got some really cool, cool elements
1:11:28
Speaker 3: and it's one of the coolest club models I think
1:11:32
Speaker 3: I've ever seen. It's a little bit like the Dunes Club,
1:11:34
Speaker 3: Like there's like two staff, there's an un you know,
1:11:38
Speaker 3: there's no one manning the clubhouse, so you just put
1:11:41
Speaker 3: your beers in the fridge when you get there. There's
1:11:43
Speaker 3: a barbecue outdoor barbecue set that you know, you cook
1:11:46
Speaker 3: your meal on. And the rule of the club is
1:11:49
Speaker 3: to leave it as you found it, so you know,
1:11:51
Speaker 3: everyone does their own dishes and and you know, goes
1:11:54
Speaker 3: out and plays golf and like I said, leave it
1:11:56
Speaker 3: as you found it. And it's sort of the model
1:11:59
Speaker 3: as well the club in general. You know, they basically
1:12:02
Speaker 3: not touch the golf course for I guess almost one
1:12:05
Speaker 3: hundred years. So in a way, the vegetation, if you
1:12:10
Speaker 3: leave it as you found it, you're not quite leaving
1:12:12
Speaker 3: the vegetation as you found it, because it grows. But
1:12:14
Speaker 3: outside of just clearing a little bit of vegetation, it's
1:12:17
Speaker 3: it's a really you know, it's super charming place and
1:12:21
Speaker 3: certainly if you can get on there. I'd recommend trying.
1:12:25
Speaker 1: You're barely even supposed to talk about Frankston as the
1:12:27
Speaker 1: impression that I got when I was in Melbourne. Yeah, yeah,
1:12:31
Speaker 1: it's a combination of very private but also, as you say,
1:12:34
Speaker 1: very casual, where it's you know, it's just the kind
1:12:37
Speaker 1: of club you'd want to be part of because it's
1:12:38
Speaker 1: so efficient and you know, it's how how golf clubs
1:12:43
Speaker 1: used to be, without all the without all the amenities,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: and so yeah, that's a I'm glad you mentioned that one. Yeah,
1:12:53
Speaker 1: I love Woodlands. I think I mean, Woodlands is so
1:12:58
Speaker 1: cool because I mean, the architecture is a little bit different,
1:13:00
Speaker 1: Like the way the greens are designed is a little
1:13:03
Speaker 1: bit different than the rest of the sand Belt courses.
1:13:06
Speaker 1: It's a little more modern, little more mid century around
1:13:09
Speaker 1: the greens where you can where you can see the
1:13:11
Speaker 1: artificiality a bit, but not necessarily in a bad way.
1:13:15
Speaker 1: It's it's it's just a different style. And I think
1:13:19
Speaker 1: the way that the greens play is is very fun
1:13:22
Speaker 1: and interesting as well. And then it's it's more it's
1:13:27
Speaker 1: just more tried. It's more enclosed. The holes are are
1:13:30
Speaker 1: more Yeah, enclosed. Is the is the word. And and
1:13:35
Speaker 1: so there's there's not this feeling of you know, open
1:13:39
Speaker 1: heathland as much as some other courses. Uh, but it's
1:13:44
Speaker 1: very beautiful and and the combination of the forest and
1:13:48
Speaker 1: the underlying vegetation is very very pretty and I was
1:13:53
Speaker 1: impressed by it. I thought it was definitely worth worth
1:13:56
Speaker 1: visiting Woodlands is Uh. That was one of my most
1:14:00
Speaker 1: fun days on the trip. All right. So another question
1:14:04
Speaker 1: from from Tim Shermer. He asks about handling kind of
1:14:09
Speaker 1: travel within Melbourne, within Australia. I'm going to assume, like
1:14:16
Speaker 1: like I would, that you would recommend renting a car
1:14:18
Speaker 1: while you're there.
1:14:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you could probably you could probably stay
1:14:23
Speaker 3: in the sand Belt region if you're only doing the
1:14:25
Speaker 3: sand Belt courses and just uber most of the courses
1:14:30
Speaker 3: are near train line, so you could even train it
1:14:32
Speaker 3: from closer to town if that was something you'd be
1:14:35
Speaker 3: interested in doing. But yeah, renting a car is pretty easy.
1:14:38
Speaker 3: It's it's a city set up for driving mostly so
1:14:43
Speaker 3: and if you if you're.
1:14:44
Speaker 1: You're going to go to the Mornington Peninsula, correct.
1:14:47
Speaker 3: It's a must really yeah.
1:14:50
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, the courses, it's really appealing the idea
1:14:54
Speaker 1: of not renting a car if you're going to go
1:14:56
Speaker 1: to the sand Belt, because the sand Belt courses themselves
1:14:59
Speaker 1: are obviously extremely close together. When you look at them
1:15:02
Speaker 1: on a map, you're like, oh my god, all these
1:15:04
Speaker 1: all these places are right next door to each other.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: But but yes, if you want to go to St.
1:15:09
Speaker 1: Andrew's Beach, that's that's a bit of a drive, and
1:15:12
Speaker 1: uh yeah, you just have to get used to if
1:15:14
Speaker 1: you're coming from the US, get used to driving on
1:15:17
Speaker 1: on the other side of the road, which which I
1:15:20
Speaker 1: was not used to on the on the first day
1:15:22
Speaker 1: that I think you followed behind me when we were
1:15:24
Speaker 1: going to a restaurant and I was struggling to find
1:15:28
Speaker 1: the right lane to be in.
1:15:29
Speaker 3: It's when you turn like I go to the US
1:15:34
Speaker 3: obviously a lot now and I just exactly it's like
1:15:36
Speaker 3: a switch and I'm fine, But yeah, that first day,
1:15:39
Speaker 3: you've got to be concentrated. You can't be distracted. If
1:15:41
Speaker 3: you take a phone call or listen to a podcast
1:15:43
Speaker 3: while you're trying to drive, you'll do something wrong.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: This is my number one piece of advice to any
1:15:48
Speaker 1: Americans going to Australia or the UK for that matter,
1:15:51
Speaker 1: is that when you're driving. Don't put people in danger,
1:15:54
Speaker 1: just like focus on driving only because that it will
1:15:58
Speaker 1: take all of your attention to navigate it at first
1:16:02
Speaker 1: unless you're experienced with it. So in terms of accommodations,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: I stayed at Victoria Golf Club, and I believe they're
1:16:13
Speaker 1: shutting down their accommodation, that that's no longer going to
1:16:16
Speaker 1: be available. If you were traveling to Melbourne, where would
1:16:20
Speaker 1: you stay. Would you stay in the city or would
1:16:22
Speaker 1: you try to be closer to the courses?
1:16:26
Speaker 3: I think I mean, say you were doing the trip
1:16:30
Speaker 3: where you play some morning to Peninsula golf courses as well.
1:16:33
Speaker 3: You could maybe stay a day or two in the
1:16:35
Speaker 3: city at the front end, and then maybe you moved
1:16:38
Speaker 3: to Peninsula. Kingswood has some good accommodation. You could stay
1:16:42
Speaker 3: there and you could almost stay there to do the
1:16:44
Speaker 3: morning to Poiniculal courses because it's only about thirty forty
1:16:48
Speaker 3: minutes from there to drive down there, and it's great accommodation.
1:16:52
Speaker 3: There's two courses at PK, so you know you could
1:16:57
Speaker 3: stay and play there a bunch, but then you still
1:17:00
Speaker 3: be able to commute both ways potentially, but there's enough
1:17:04
Speaker 3: stuff to see in the city as well. Just Melbourne's
1:17:06
Speaker 3: a cool town. Downtown Melbourne as Lamanya would call it,
1:17:11
Speaker 3: which it actually is a proper downtown.
1:17:15
Speaker 1: You're referring to when my colleague Joseph Lamania was in
1:17:18
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland and referred to downtown Port Rush and it
1:17:21
Speaker 1: went crazy on TikTok.
1:17:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, But the Melbourne CBD as we call it,
1:17:27
Speaker 3: we don't say downtown.
1:17:28
Speaker 1: Melbourne does have a legitimate downtown's it does. This is
1:17:32
Speaker 1: a way of like a metro area of five million
1:17:35
Speaker 1: people or.
1:17:35
Speaker 3: So, correct, correct, So it's worth there's some things worth
1:17:39
Speaker 3: doing in the Melbourne CVD.
1:17:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and we'll talk about some of those in
1:17:44
Speaker 1: a minute. The Peninsula Kingswood accommodation is kind of the
1:17:47
Speaker 1: new kid on the block, right The Victoria. You know,
1:17:51
Speaker 1: rooms that I stayed in were perfect for what I
1:17:53
Speaker 1: was looking for because they are very basic, bare bones.
1:17:57
Speaker 1: There was a laundry machine, you know, just like I.
1:18:01
Speaker 1: It was all I needed and really nothing more. Peninsula
1:18:05
Speaker 1: Kingswood is going is going to be a little more
1:18:07
Speaker 1: upscale in terms of its accommodation, and this is where
1:18:09
Speaker 1: international golf travel is going, right that the places that
1:18:13
Speaker 1: offer the more bare bones accommodations are are are are
1:18:18
Speaker 1: going to have a hard time competing with the places
1:18:20
Speaker 1: that are offering more luxury. And I think that's the
1:18:24
Speaker 1: direction the Peninsula Kingswood is going in. So you know,
1:18:27
Speaker 1: it's pricey, but I you're right that that location, if
1:18:31
Speaker 1: you're doing a Melbourne golf trip and you're gonna sample
1:18:34
Speaker 1: some of the Mornington courses and then the sand Belt
1:18:36
Speaker 1: courses is basically the perfect location because you're right in
1:18:40
Speaker 1: between the two. The other option, I guess would be
1:18:42
Speaker 1: to find a cool place in Melbourne to stay play
1:18:45
Speaker 1: the sand Belt courses, then relocate out to Portsy or
1:18:50
Speaker 1: something like that. They have a nice, very lovely hotel
1:18:54
Speaker 1: out at Portsy that you could stay and then you know,
1:18:58
Speaker 1: get to all the more Rington of course, is fairly efficiently. Yeah.
1:19:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sorrento options as well. Yeah, so Sorrento's got some
1:19:06
Speaker 3: good accommodation options down there. That's sort of the bigger
1:19:08
Speaker 3: town on the morning to Peninsula. That's quite nice. I
1:19:11
Speaker 3: think they've gotten Intercontinental, which is, like, you know, obviously
1:19:14
Speaker 3: a bit more high end.
1:19:15
Speaker 1: So but yeah, Sorrento's a high end kind of town,
1:19:19
Speaker 1: isn't it.
1:19:19
Speaker 3: It is a little bit yeah yeah, Portsier almost is
1:19:22
Speaker 3: as well, but it's a little bit smaller, just doesn't
1:19:24
Speaker 3: quite have everything.
1:19:26
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay. Something that Melbourne is famous for is coffee.
1:19:33
Speaker 1: So again, you've been all around the world, You've had
1:19:36
Speaker 1: American coffee, which Australians are constantly disparaging, and I understand
1:19:43
Speaker 1: why what is it about Melbourne coffee? Like, why why
1:19:48
Speaker 1: do people just take it really seriously in the city?
1:19:51
Speaker 3: I think so, I think. I mean I learned to
1:19:55
Speaker 3: make coffees. I was working at a golf course driving range,
1:19:59
Speaker 3: and we make coffees. And even at a golf course,
1:20:02
Speaker 3: you know, driving range, you know, we were taught really well,
1:20:05
Speaker 3: like people would come in and teach us how to
1:20:07
Speaker 3: make coffee. Because if you don't make good coffee in Melbourne,
1:20:10
Speaker 3: no one will drink your coffee. They'll just buy it
1:20:12
Speaker 3: somewhere else because it's just so competitive.
1:20:14
Speaker 1: So one of the assistant pros made me a cup
1:20:16
Speaker 1: of like a flat white at Victoria and just went
1:20:21
Speaker 1: in and then handed it to me and it was delicious.
1:20:24
Speaker 1: I was like, where, yeah, where am I? Yeah? This
1:20:27
Speaker 1: is not golf course coffee.
1:20:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it's part of the culture, and I
1:20:30
Speaker 3: guess all the golf clubs, like you know, if you
1:20:33
Speaker 3: drank a coffee at Metropolitan and it was no good,
1:20:36
Speaker 3: like the members are going to tell the stuff because
1:20:39
Speaker 3: Melbourne people, I guess now just no coffee. So it's
1:20:42
Speaker 3: definitely a cultural thing. I barely drink coffee outside of home.
1:20:47
Speaker 3: I've got a decent home set up, but yeah, so
1:20:52
Speaker 3: I tend to make a lot of coffee and I
1:20:54
Speaker 3: enjoy that buying the beans from a local cafe that
1:20:58
Speaker 3: I know has good been and sort of doing it myself.
1:21:01
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's just it's just a cultural thing, I think.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: So you don't really know the local spots as much
1:21:08
Speaker 1: because you make more coffee at home.
1:21:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean around the sand Belt there's probably there's
1:21:14
Speaker 3: there's a little place behind Yari Yarra golf Club called
1:21:18
Speaker 3: Humble Creatures, and it's pretty humble, but it's they do
1:21:21
Speaker 3: great food as well, So I mean, if you had
1:21:24
Speaker 3: to grab a bacon and egg roll before golf. A
1:21:26
Speaker 3: lot of golf clubs don't really do breakfast, so if
1:21:30
Speaker 3: you have to grab something before golf, that might be
1:21:32
Speaker 3: a good spot. There's another place in Saint Kilder friend
1:21:36
Speaker 3: of mine King Sneith member actually owns. It's called Jerry's
1:21:40
Speaker 3: Milk Bar. They do some really good food and great
1:21:42
Speaker 3: coffee too. The place I get beans in Oakley which
1:21:46
Speaker 3: is near Metropolitans called Coke Terra and that that's that's
1:21:51
Speaker 3: I love the beans there and they make great coffee.
1:21:53
Speaker 3: So there's there's definitely, I mean, you almost can't go wrong,
1:21:56
Speaker 3: like I said, because it's so cultural, like the actual
1:21:59
Speaker 3: the Top Bend, it's it's pretty flat like there's a
1:22:02
Speaker 3: lot of good places making good coffee, so I can't
1:22:04
Speaker 3: really say there's a standout because they're all really good.
1:22:07
Speaker 1: They're all good. Yeah, this is this is I think
1:22:09
Speaker 1: you told me this and I was just like, all right,
1:22:12
Speaker 1: I'll just go get coffee anywhere. And uh yeah. Right
1:22:16
Speaker 1: around the Victoria and Royal Melbourne, there's a place called
1:22:20
Speaker 1: Fabrica that I was a big fan of. They make
1:22:24
Speaker 1: really good coffee and then they had excellent lunch offering.
1:22:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing. The brunch sort of lunch cafe
1:22:32
Speaker 3: lunch brunch culture pretty strong too. Good good food in
1:22:35
Speaker 3: those sorts of places for a reasonable price.
1:22:37
Speaker 1: The genre of cafe that there there's a lot of Yeah,
1:22:40
Speaker 1: I mean, a couple of my favorite things right there, brunch,
1:22:43
Speaker 1: food and coffee. And then on a kind of one
1:22:47
Speaker 1: of the main streets by Victoria, there's a there's a
1:22:50
Speaker 1: place called Tu Bob Snob that I went to a
1:22:54
Speaker 1: few times that was that was good as well, and
1:22:57
Speaker 1: so yeah, that that was the coffee was great and
1:23:01
Speaker 1: you and you basically as an American going in there,
1:23:04
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't know what to order. It's not really
1:23:06
Speaker 1: about drip coffee. It's about the espresso based drinks. It's
1:23:09
Speaker 1: a flat white or yeah, you know something something like that.
1:23:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:23:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Restaurants scene in Melbourne it's a big I mean,
1:23:20
Speaker 1: you can't really sum it up. Obviously. Where would you
1:23:24
Speaker 1: suggest people start looking in turns if they want to
1:23:26
Speaker 1: find a good restaurant.
1:23:28
Speaker 3: Well, I think if there's one place I would look
1:23:32
Speaker 3: down as Flinder's Lane in the city. So that's where
1:23:35
Speaker 3: you've got. There might be fifty restaurants on a laneway,
1:23:41
Speaker 3: but a couple of the spots I've been to that
1:23:43
Speaker 3: are really good. You've got a sort of Japanese fusion
1:23:47
Speaker 3: place called super Normal. Gimlet is another one. A different French,
1:23:52
Speaker 3: sort of modern French. That's another one. There, but I
1:23:59
Speaker 3: mean there's I mean, and you can't go wrong there.
1:24:01
Speaker 3: The Chinchin's another one, another sort of Asian fusion. There's
1:24:04
Speaker 3: a ton of great restaurants on Flinders Lane, so that's
1:24:07
Speaker 3: probably the place in the city. And then Chapel Street
1:24:12
Speaker 3: is a pretty vibrant street in Pran, South Earra, so
1:24:19
Speaker 3: that's a good spot. Plenty of restaurants there as well,
1:24:23
Speaker 3: different sort of vibe, very young and hip. I would
1:24:26
Speaker 3: say you're probably not going to want to go north
1:24:29
Speaker 3: of town just because maybe not because you won't be
1:24:32
Speaker 3: staying that side, but Brunswick and Carleton and there's great
1:24:36
Speaker 3: stuff around those areas as well outside of the city
1:24:41
Speaker 3: or outside of the city and surrounds if you're wanting
1:24:44
Speaker 3: something quick after Gulf near the sand Belt, Oakley, which
1:24:49
Speaker 3: is where I actually live sort of, it's a little
1:24:53
Speaker 3: bit of a Greek hub, like Melbourne has got a
1:24:55
Speaker 3: very large Greek population. I think it's like in a city,
1:24:59
Speaker 3: it's the large is outside of Athens or you know,
1:25:02
Speaker 3: I don't know what the population of Athens, but there's
1:25:04
Speaker 3: a ton of Greek people and they're all centered around Oakley.
1:25:07
Speaker 3: So if you want a great Greek meal, you can't
1:25:11
Speaker 3: go wrong in Oakley. There's probably fifteen Greek restaurants in
1:25:14
Speaker 3: a little hub just about two minutes from Metropolitan Golf Club.
1:25:17
Speaker 1: So I do want to great Greek meal. I missed
1:25:22
Speaker 1: it while I was there. That's yeah, it's too bad.
1:25:25
Speaker 3: I love that post golf if you have to head
1:25:28
Speaker 3: that way towards.
1:25:29
Speaker 1: Town, okay in Oakley cool? All right. So getting back
1:25:35
Speaker 1: to more kind of golf focused questions, you know, practical
1:25:39
Speaker 1: for people who are who are planning a trip to
1:25:43
Speaker 1: Melbourne and trying to figure out where to play. This
1:25:46
Speaker 1: is a question from a Friday Golf club member, Jonathan Fuchs,
1:25:51
Speaker 1: which is the name of a character in Barry as Well,
1:25:54
Speaker 1: so great great last name. So he's basically asking how
1:25:59
Speaker 1: ris are the local private clubs to visitors these days?
1:26:04
Speaker 1: This may have changed within the last few years with
1:26:08
Speaker 1: with COVID. You know, there there is some accessibility for
1:26:14
Speaker 1: the top private sam Belk clubs, but it's become more complicated,
1:26:18
Speaker 1: right I think.
1:26:19
Speaker 3: So, I don't quite know, but I think if you
1:26:23
Speaker 3: have plenty of notice and you contact like director of
1:26:26
Speaker 3: golf at insert a golf club named King sneath Metropolitan Raal, Melbourne,
1:26:32
Speaker 3: I think they're receptive. It's just time of year and
1:26:36
Speaker 3: play restrictions, so you know, I would say get in,
1:26:40
Speaker 3: you know, with probably if you can twelve months advanced
1:26:43
Speaker 3: notice because it is limited, you know, member plays prioritized.
1:26:49
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think with enough notice, and obviously Saturday
1:26:53
Speaker 3: tends to be the day of the week where you can't.
1:26:55
Speaker 3: I think maybe Raal Melbourne might do a little bit
1:26:57
Speaker 3: because they've got the two courses, but Saturday is it difficult.
1:27:00
Speaker 3: But any other day, you know, Saturday, if you can
1:27:02
Speaker 3: arrange it, maybe that's the day to go down to
1:27:04
Speaker 3: the morning to Peninsula and play one of the public options,
1:27:06
Speaker 3: or maybe it's Sandy Golf Links. You know, you can
1:27:09
Speaker 3: work in something like that. But yeah, I think they're
1:27:12
Speaker 3: still pretty receptive to international player.
1:27:16
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I found. You know, I come
1:27:19
Speaker 1: from a different perspective then I guess the average traveler
1:27:22
Speaker 1: to Melbourne would. Because I knew a lot of members
1:27:26
Speaker 1: of SAMD bell clubs before I went, and so I
1:27:29
Speaker 1: arranged the rounds through them and very generously people took
1:27:32
Speaker 1: me out on their courses and the guest rates are
1:27:35
Speaker 1: much lower than the standard visitor rate would be. But
1:27:40
Speaker 1: my understanding is that, especially if you're a member of
1:27:43
Speaker 1: a club and you're being introduced by your pro or
1:27:47
Speaker 1: have some kind of some kind of letter of introduction,
1:27:50
Speaker 1: I don't know, then then you should find be able
1:27:55
Speaker 1: to find a way onto even your Role Melbourne's or
1:27:59
Speaker 1: your King Heats once you get there. It's an expensive
1:28:03
Speaker 1: round if you're an unaccompanied guest, but it is definitely
1:28:06
Speaker 1: possible to play these courses. And I would say playing
1:28:09
Speaker 1: the West Course at Royal Melbourne is worth it. This
1:28:13
Speaker 1: is like maybe the greatest golf course in the world.
1:28:16
Speaker 1: Go ahead and pay that visitor fee. It's it's incredible
1:28:19
Speaker 1: and you won't regret it. There are also you know,
1:28:22
Speaker 1: you can time your trip with tournaments that are held
1:28:25
Speaker 1: at these courses as well, and that's a great way
1:28:27
Speaker 1: to see Royal Melbourne too, and and so that's something
1:28:31
Speaker 1: i'd recommend. But you'll, you know, you pointed it out
1:28:37
Speaker 1: with the Mornington Peninsula courses. You'll find more public courses
1:28:40
Speaker 1: on the Mornington Peninsula and that's part of what's so
1:28:42
Speaker 1: appealing about that area. And you can just kind of
1:28:46
Speaker 1: schedule some time down there as well. You know, as
1:28:50
Speaker 1: I've said before, you've been all over the world seen
1:28:52
Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds of golf clubs. What are
1:28:55
Speaker 1: Australian golf clubs like in terms of their culture?
1:29:01
Speaker 3: So I would say they're actually pretty big, like you know,
1:29:05
Speaker 3: you've got twelve hundred members or so. With one aspect,
1:29:08
Speaker 3: I think that an American listener probably wouldn't expect maybe,
1:29:12
Speaker 3: you know, so they're busy. They're pretty vibrant and busy places.
1:29:18
Speaker 3: So you know, a Saturday there might be two hundred
1:29:20
Speaker 3: plus players playing. That tends to be the big club
1:29:23
Speaker 3: days for most golf courses in Melbourne. But you know,
1:29:29
Speaker 3: very social, very busy, lots of golf. You know, they're
1:29:32
Speaker 3: doing fifty thousand plus rounds even at the top clubs.
1:29:37
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, golf culture is definitely you know, pace
1:29:40
Speaker 3: of play is prioritized at Metro. You know, I don't
1:29:44
Speaker 3: think I've played in over four and a quarter hours
1:29:48
Speaker 3: in a comp day, you know, in groups of four
1:29:50
Speaker 3: with nine minute tea intervals. So people play fast. I
1:29:54
Speaker 3: think there's a pride of playing fast, particularly those first
1:29:56
Speaker 3: few groups that go out. They think they try and
1:29:59
Speaker 3: see how much they can be. The guys behind them,
1:30:01
Speaker 3: you know, get ten to fifteen minutes ahead of them,
1:30:03
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think you know, when you come down,
1:30:06
Speaker 3: make sure you play fast, don't take too long, don't
1:30:09
Speaker 3: hold up members.
1:30:10
Speaker 1: An ultimate, ultimate thing that you gotta with the pace
1:30:14
Speaker 1: of that.
1:30:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so that's probably a big aspect. And and
1:30:19
Speaker 3: people love competition as well, so you know, there's daily
1:30:23
Speaker 3: competitions on you know, where people are, you know, asking
1:30:26
Speaker 3: each other what they shot, and that's sort of a
1:30:28
Speaker 3: big part of the culture as well.
1:30:30
Speaker 1: Is there a good amount of forsomes.
1:30:34
Speaker 3: Not not a ton definitely, not as much as those
1:30:36
Speaker 3: sort of British clubs that do it a bit more.
1:30:40
Speaker 1: That's my understanding. Clubs like metal competition, right.
1:30:47
Speaker 3: Correct. I think Roll Melbourne has like rules around you know,
1:30:50
Speaker 3: certain days a week before, certain times it's two balls only,
1:30:53
Speaker 3: so you might see a little bit more foursomes play
1:30:56
Speaker 3: because four people can go out and play just two balls.
1:31:00
Speaker 3: So I think that happens maybe a little bit there.
1:31:02
Speaker 3: But you know, we have an annual couple annual events
1:31:05
Speaker 3: at Metropolitan that are foursom's and super fun. But yeah,
1:31:10
Speaker 3: that's probably about it for Fasome's golf.
1:31:14
Speaker 1: You've mentioned Metropolitan a couple of times, you remember there
1:31:18
Speaker 1: question from Friday Golf Club member Joshua Ralston, who I
1:31:22
Speaker 1: think you know may have played at one point. How
1:31:27
Speaker 1: there was a renovation at Metropolitan by Crafter and Margford,
1:31:32
Speaker 1: an Australian firm with Neil Crafter, who's a great golf historian.
1:31:39
Speaker 1: I visited the course with you in the middle of
1:31:42
Speaker 1: this renovation. Is that work done and if so, how
1:31:46
Speaker 1: is it looking?
1:31:47
Speaker 3: Yeah? So that finished in The course open in April,
1:31:51
Speaker 3: so it was a pretty quick build or turn around.
1:31:54
Speaker 3: They did the front nine last year and then finished
1:31:57
Speaker 3: the back nine earlier this year. It's all better than well.
1:32:01
Speaker 3: The course is in really good condition. We just had
1:32:03
Speaker 3: our club championships a couple of weeks ago and it
1:32:05
Speaker 3: was in great shape for that. So yeah, the course
1:32:08
Speaker 3: is definitely back in play and would recommend yeah, if
1:32:13
Speaker 3: you want to play Metro, now the good time to
1:32:15
Speaker 3: play it because it's in great shape.
1:32:17
Speaker 1: Also, the firm Ogil V Cocking and mead OCM did
1:32:22
Speaker 1: work at Huntingdale I believe, which is another great sand
1:32:25
Speaker 1: Belt club. Is that work done.
1:32:27
Speaker 3: That's opening I believe for the members in December. I
1:32:31
Speaker 3: don't know when it would be open for visitor.
1:32:34
Speaker 1: Play, but I think so for this coming season.
1:32:36
Speaker 3: Basically, Yeah, there's some discussions you know between Metropolitan and Huntingdale.
1:32:41
Speaker 3: There's a potential merger on the table and so I
1:32:44
Speaker 3: think we're getting an early look at it in January potentially.
1:32:49
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's probably the big hot button item at
1:32:51
Speaker 3: both clubs at the moment, which is interesting.
1:32:54
Speaker 1: Looking forward to seeing that because that's the only sand
1:32:57
Speaker 1: belt course that or like top sandbal course. I didn't
1:33:00
Speaker 1: they didn't really see, so it should be interesting. There's
1:33:03
Speaker 1: also an ongoing project with OCM at Long Island, which
1:33:07
Speaker 1: is next door to Peninsula Kingswood, and that's a very creative,
1:33:12
Speaker 1: ambitious renovation where there are different like alternate routes that
1:33:16
Speaker 1: are being created around the golf course, holes within holes,
1:33:20
Speaker 1: courses within courses, and that's a very interesting project as well.
1:33:25
Speaker 1: You're working out at Woodlands. What's the scope out there?
1:33:29
Speaker 3: Probably more vegetation based at Woodlands, so you know a
1:33:33
Speaker 3: lot of the I mean it is in that sort
1:33:36
Speaker 3: of you talked about. It has a great sort of
1:33:38
Speaker 3: atmosphere playing amongst the woodlands. I guess it's very app name. Yeah,
1:33:43
Speaker 3: but the coastal tea tree there is pretty well, it's
1:33:46
Speaker 3: an invasive species actually outside of the strip of coastline
1:33:50
Speaker 3: right next to the ocean, so and it's you know,
1:33:54
Speaker 3: it can be useful of a plant in certain areas strategically,
1:33:57
Speaker 3: but at the end of the day, your ball goes
1:33:59
Speaker 3: in it, you're probably not seeing it again or you're
1:34:01
Speaker 3: really struggling to recover out of it. So it's not
1:34:03
Speaker 3: a great golf plant, I would say, particularly when it
1:34:07
Speaker 3: matures and gets really bushy. So there's selective sort of
1:34:10
Speaker 3: pruning of that stuff throughout the course happening and then
1:34:13
Speaker 3: regenerating heathland because as soon as you take that out,
1:34:16
Speaker 3: there's a lot of native seed bank left under it.
1:34:19
Speaker 3: So that's yeah, correct, So that's that we're doing something
1:34:22
Speaker 3: a little bit similar. So it's almost the reverse though
1:34:25
Speaker 3: at Yaria, Renaissance Golf Design came through and did all
1:34:29
Speaker 3: the architectural works and then hired Harley Cruz, myself and
1:34:34
Speaker 3: Mike Clayton to tackle the revegetation aspects of it. So
1:34:40
Speaker 3: it's almost like, you know, we're putting a bit more
1:34:42
Speaker 3: of the sand belt vegetation onto that place and maybe
1:34:46
Speaker 3: stripping a little bit of the more invasive stuff off
1:34:49
Speaker 3: of woodlands and certainly not to try and make them
1:34:51
Speaker 3: feel similar or anything. They're always going to have a
1:34:53
Speaker 3: distinctive field. But in both cases getting a little bit
1:34:58
Speaker 3: back to a more natural stite.
1:35:01
Speaker 1: That would be great for year Era. That's that's really
1:35:03
Speaker 1: the the kind of missing piece there, because what a
1:35:07
Speaker 1: cool golf course. I really enjoyed Year Era quite a bit,
1:35:12
Speaker 1: and with some of the you know, regenerated Heathland, I
1:35:15
Speaker 1: think it would it would bring it together very nicely.
1:35:19
Speaker 1: So uh. And then finally, so Commonwealth was also a
1:35:22
Speaker 1: recent project not by you, but by Renaissance Golf Design
1:35:26
Speaker 1: and Tom Doaks. One of Tom Doaks Experience associates, Brian Slonik,
1:35:31
Speaker 1: did what I thought was a great project at at Commonwealth,
1:35:34
Speaker 1: and so that's fairly new, reopened before I visited, and
1:35:39
Speaker 1: and so that's that's available as well. A lot of
1:35:41
Speaker 1: the sand Belt courses are are rounding into vintage form,
1:35:45
Speaker 1: which is very exciting. Last one for you, lucas you
1:35:49
Speaker 1: you've worked a lot with Mike Clayton and Mike Divrees
1:35:52
Speaker 1: at Seven Mile Beach in Tasmania. This would be another
1:35:56
Speaker 1: idea for Melbourne. If somebody goes a little more, has
1:36:00
Speaker 1: more time, more ability, to travel. It's not that hard
1:36:04
Speaker 1: to get to Tasmania from Melbourne. It's a lot easier
1:36:07
Speaker 1: to get there than it is to get there from
1:36:09
Speaker 1: any anywhere else. And there are some amazing golf courses
1:36:13
Speaker 1: on Tasmania. Now you have Barn Google Dunes out on
1:36:19
Speaker 1: the island. On nearby island, there's Cape Wickham and a
1:36:22
Speaker 1: lot of really cool golf options. Seven Mile Beach is
1:36:25
Speaker 1: a place that you've been working at quite a bit
1:36:29
Speaker 1: and it's just opening now, kind of right nearby the
1:36:33
Speaker 1: Hobart International Airport. How's that project looking and what's the
1:36:38
Speaker 1: what does the future look like there?
1:36:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think they're looking at opening to public
1:36:43
Speaker 3: December fourth, So there is there's tea times you can
1:36:47
Speaker 3: book now basically tea times.
1:36:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:36:50
Speaker 3: I was there on Thursday Friday last week and we
1:36:54
Speaker 3: actually were the first. It was a Society of Golf
1:36:56
Speaker 3: Course Australian Golf Course Architects meeting and we're the first
1:36:59
Speaker 3: people play the full eighteen holes, which is pretty cool,
1:37:03
Speaker 3: I think. I think Madden, you know a few of
1:37:05
Speaker 3: the ownership group have played a full eighteen but we
1:37:07
Speaker 3: were the sort of first I guess non ownership group
1:37:10
Speaker 3: to play it, and yeah, it's looking really good. They've
1:37:14
Speaker 3: had constant water challenges throughout the build. That's been the
1:37:17
Speaker 3: real struggles. So you know, the condition in spots is
1:37:21
Speaker 3: still not quite right. They're actually closing it down for
1:37:24
Speaker 3: about three weeks of November to get everything prepped for
1:37:29
Speaker 3: the opening. So but yeah, I mean the greens are superb.
1:37:34
Speaker 3: It's just you know, little little little bits of the fairways,
1:37:36
Speaker 3: you know, maybe aren't fully grown in. But they've got
1:37:39
Speaker 3: a really secure water source coming online hopefully in December.
1:37:42
Speaker 3: So yeah, by you know, late summer, it should be
1:37:47
Speaker 3: really really really good. I think, you know, it's I
1:37:51
Speaker 3: found it. It was quite fun playing with you know,
1:37:53
Speaker 3: some golfers of different abilities, and I found it quite
1:37:57
Speaker 3: a challenge. But the course only had maybe thirty five bunkers,
1:38:03
Speaker 3: so there's not a lot of challenge, well not a
1:38:06
Speaker 3: lot of penalty from a bunker's perspective. But I would
1:38:10
Speaker 3: say keep it out of the maram grass. I think
1:38:12
Speaker 3: that's that's gonna be the that's right.
1:38:14
Speaker 1: You don't need bunkers. Yeah, when you're yeah.
1:38:16
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, looking at it, there was
1:38:18
Speaker 3: a few things I was like, okay, we probably need
1:38:20
Speaker 3: to if we can just get the maram off right
1:38:23
Speaker 3: off the edge of the fairways as much as possible.
1:38:25
Speaker 3: So I think there'll be some Like any golf course
1:38:28
Speaker 3: when it opens, you know, there's bits and pieces that
1:38:31
Speaker 3: you do, so you know, if you're coming in the
1:38:33
Speaker 3: first few months of opening, I would say, you know,
1:38:35
Speaker 3: remember it's a brand new golf course. But I think
1:38:39
Speaker 3: it's going to blow people away. It's absolutely spectacular what
1:38:42
Speaker 3: Mike's done with well, what both Mike's but particularly Mike
1:38:45
Speaker 3: Devrees has done with the greens. I mean, there's some
1:38:47
Speaker 3: of the most some of the best green complexes I've
1:38:50
Speaker 3: seen anywhere. It's just unbelievable.
1:38:52
Speaker 1: It's been fun to see him work. He's one of
1:38:54
Speaker 1: the best green chambers.
1:38:55
Speaker 3: And he is, Yeah, he's he's great and yeah, I
1:39:00
Speaker 3: mean I spent about eight months down there with him
1:39:02
Speaker 3: and I didn't I barely got to touch a grain
1:39:06
Speaker 3: because that was just Mike space. You just leave him, Alind,
1:39:10
Speaker 3: let him do that thing. So I was watching from fob.
1:39:13
Speaker 3: It was it was a really cool experience.
1:39:16
Speaker 1: All right, Lucas, that's all the questions I have for you.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time.
1:39:20
Speaker 3: Thanks Jaron, appreciate it.
1:39:26
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
1:39:31
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