Worth the trip to Tasmania
February 27, 2005

American golf of recent times has seen the wonder of the construction of great remote golf in the sandhills of Nebraska and along the Oregon coast.

I have been fortunate enough to play at both Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes and wondered if we in Australia could match the success and quality of the great but isolated courses of America and Britain. It seemed a forlorn dream.

We have such a small population living mostly in the coastal cities that cling to the edge of a huge country and the possibility of financial survival let alone success seemed slim.

Until now, no one had even been prepared to take a chance.

Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links Greg Ramsay and Richard Sattler on the 13th green before grassing.

The only significant courses in Australia are within an hour's drive of the big cities.

Melbourne was the focus of the visit of Alister MacKenzie in late 1926 and he transformed golf in Australia with his golfing philosophies and his instruction to his constructor, Mick Morcom (the Royal Melbourne greenkeeper) and Alex Russell (his local design partner and an Australian Open champion.)

The best courses of the famed sandbelt of Melbourne — Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, Woodlands, Metropolitan, Commonwealth, Peninsula and Yarra Yarra — make up one of the finest groups of courses in the world and MacKenzie, whilst not solely responsible, was a huge influence on all of them.

Sydney has the dramatic links at La Perouse and Adelaide's golf architecture reputation is centered on Royal Adelaide, another wonderful MacKenzie design, and Kooyonga, the creation of a local MacKenzie disciple, Cargie Rymill.

As it is in the rest of the world, great land close to where people live is too expensive to consider building a golf course and fragile coastal land makes it difficult to wind through seemingly never ending permitting issues.

There has been, however an abundance of ordinary, outer suburban land suitable for housing estates that have attracted extraordinary prices simply because famous golfers have attached their names to the golf course.

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links A view from the tee of the 200 metre par-3 5th hole.

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links A view from the 6th hole tee toward the green 381 metres away.

There is nothing new in that phenomena but not even the architects are walking onto these sites and selling the land or the dream with the well- worn out Tom Morris cliché "God meant this to be a golf course."

Not even the developers are falling for that one.

Then, one day five years ago a young design company bearing my name was contacted by a twenty-three year old kid named Greg Ramsay who was trying to sell his dream to a Tasmanian farmer named Richard Sattler, Tom Doak (the Pacific Dunes architect) and I.

Sattler owns Barnbougle, a 13,000-acre potato and cattle farm with a five mile long beach front highlighted by the most perfect strip of golfing duneland.

The only use for the land as far as he could see was for occasional camping weekends for his four children who would pitch a tent in the dunes and cook on the beach.

"It was just useless sand to me that we couldn't grow spuds in," Sattler said.

Ramsay harassed Sattler until the big man finally relented and let the kid on his land.

"He kept telling me how perfect it was for golf but I didn't play golf, didn't know anything about it an didn't even particularly like it."

He agreed to let Ramsay use the land if he could raise the money and Greg seduced Doak employee, Bruce Hepner to come down with me to Bridport to see the site.

It was perfect.

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links The 12th hole.

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links The view from the 17th tee.

Here was a chance to do what Mike Keiser (Bandon) and Dick Youngscap (Sand Hills) had done in America.

The only problem was Ramsay had almost no success raising the necessary money. He had only his dream and we left with his "I'll make you guys famous speech" in our ears and a collective assumption that it would never happen.

One famed Australian golfer heard of the project and dismissed it with a perfunctory "no good building them where there are no people."

We dismissed it a reaction of one who was looking at the business without passion and without that can anything be really great?

Tom and I had convinced Sattler he could have a significant course worthy of sitting alongside the best in the country but it was Mike Keiser who convinced Sattler he could make the course work financially.

He had proved at Bandon Dunes you could make them work if the golf was good enough even if people did have to make a real effort to find it.

A few local investors were found and the Tasmanian state government, desperate for a viable piece of worthwhile golfing tourism, contributed enough to begin.

The course has turned out as well as all hoped it might.

At the opening just before Christmas and there was a predictable air of optimism and a real sense the praise was not simply a stream of platitudes.

Sattler has taken up bad golf but his son Steve is decent enough already to have played a round without embarrassment with Greg Norman who came down after he missed the cut at the recent Heineken Classic.

It is a windy place, it is cold in the winter and sometimes in summer as well and it takes an effort to reach.

The course is an hours drive from Launceston; the nearest Tasmanian city of any size and it takes another hour to fly to Melbourne or Sydney.

Some balk at that, but if you point out the problems are no different from those at Cypress Point (cold, remote) Royal Dornoch (cold, really remote) Pacific Dunes (cold, remote) or Sand Hills (remote and closed for six months because it is really cold) the doubters are forced to concede they would stop at just less than selling their mothers for a game at those famed courses.

History and others will judge the course and far be it for me to allocate points but it is beyond question Barnbougle Dunes is a course that can sit comfortably with the best courses in Australia and prove remote golf is viable even in countries with small populations. Indeed it may be it is the future of great design all around the world.

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links A view of the 15th green and fairway from the 16th tee.

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Photo courtesy of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links A gloaming view from the deck looking out to sea.

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