Royal Melbourne Golf Club (Australia) is a club founded by Scottish settlers and therefore meets all the high standards of the best golf courses in the world. Among its features are not only the unique nature of Australia, but also many natural barriers that make the game especially interesting.
Royal Melbourne Golf Club is one of the most famous golf courses in Australia. It has played host to thousands of golfers each year and hosted tournaments such as the Australian Open, The World Cup and the Presidents Cup.
Royal Melbourne Golf Club is one of Australia’s most famous golf courses.
This unique golf course was laid out next to the Caulfield Racecourse in 1891 and members played there for a decade before the massive construction that marked the birth of the world famous Melbourne Sandbelt.
Dr. Alister MacKenzie, the famous Scottish architect, was commissioned to design the course.
When he got here in October 1926, he was delighted with the hilly, sandy landscape and the unusual grass surface, which was as easy to work on in creating the course as it was enjoyable to play on later.
Before beginning work on the design of the West Course, Mackenzie asked for a list of the club’s members, with their ages and physical attributes, as he decided to make the course comfortable for players of all ages and abilities.
In just the few weeks he spent in Melbourne, Mackenzie created the West Course project.
He then appointed Alex Russell, a club member and winner of the 1924 Australian Open, as his partner. And it was Russell who subsequently designed the East Course, which opened in 1931.
From 1930 Royal Melbourne was the venue of choice for major tournaments, including the Australian Open, The World Cup and the Presidents Cup.
Since 1959, these championships have been held on the Composite Course, which consists of Russell’s six holes on the East Course and Mackenzie’s twelve holes on the West Course.
The Royal Melbourne Golf Club has hosted some of golf’s biggest names.
The West Course is a beautiful design and beautiful architecture. It has all the best that can be found on golf courses in Australia!
It’s hard to single out the most important details of the course, everything here is interesting. The bold layout of the bunkers looks very impressive, and the raffles around the tees are dominated by native grasses that frame each hole with effortless naturalness, providing the utmost clarity and contrast, yet not distracting from the game.
The greens here are simply marvelous and have been of superb quality for decades. Large and beautifully contoured, they’re designed to be played by professionals and amateurs alike.
The East Course begins very close to its more famous brother, with a seven-hole “home paddock” in the foreground. The bunkers are superb, and the greens, while smaller than the West Course, are just as intricately complex and beautifully planned.
The fact that the design involved a natural undulation of the land, similar in many ways to PGA National (Zavidovo), has created a large number of spots on the course from which even a professional can’t always play equally well.
“The finishing straight is no less memorable: it begins with a short par-4 15th and a 16th with treacherous bunkers, a fairly simple yet one of Melbourne’s best par-3s.
The last two holes, which are the culmination of the already mentioned Composite Course, are also quite exceptional. The 18th is one of the most amazing closing par4s, the 6th hole one of AlisterMacKenzie’s greatest creations.
