golfinmelbourne.com

Address:
Number of holes: 18
19th Hole: On some days
Motorised carts : No
Cost: 9 — $10 / 18 – $17 (Most days the honour system is in place here)

To start with one thing I must say about this course is, don’t come out if you don’t feel up to a couple of hill climbs. Now I’m not talking about some little bump on the ground that some people call hills, I’m talking serious steepage.

When Stewart & I played played this course we only played 9 holes. I had heard about the rope pull that they have on one of the holes here so I wanted to see that. Therefore the review that I have here is only for the back 9 (where the rope pull is located).

To play from the 10th tee your have to walk up the serious hill from the club house. Now I’m not the fittest bloke in the world (as anyone who has seen the photos would know) but we had to stop twice on the way up to catch our breath. Once at the top the view makes the climb worth while. It is just gorgeous.

A couple of standout holes on the back 9 would have to be the par 3 11th & the par 4 16th.

The par 3 11th is just an amazing hole. It’s 165 meters long & my guess is that 150 of those meters are straight down. We had no one behind us so both Stewart & I took a couple of balls of the tee. I thought about taking a 6 iron after seeing how far it was & then rethought the idea & took an 8 iron. The 8 iron was too much. The second ball I hit was a pitching wedge & that was right on the money. Now I’m not a big fan of heights & standing on the 11th tee I had a slight case of vertigo, that’s how high up this elevated tee was.

The second hole that I felt was a stand out was the par 4 16th. It is just a gorgeous hole. It is 314 meters long with the last 90 meters at the base of the big hill. The hedges at the back of the green just make it a wonderful hole to look at & play.

The reason we played the back 9 begins at the 16th green. It is a rope pull system that is there to help you climb back up the hill. It is the first time I have seen anything like it on a golf course. There is a rope that runs in a loop powered by a motor at the top of the hill. You push the start button when you are ready to climb the hill & this rope loop is there to pull you up. If I haven’t explained this properly have a look at the photos to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

Now there are a couple of problems with the course. First off the greens. Most course have a different grass on there greens than they do on the fairways. Unfortunately at Woodend it is the same grass just cut lower. This may not sound like a big deal but when you are trying to putt on this surface it doesn’t give you fair value for your putts.

The other thing is when you are going to the 11th tee your have to cross the 17th fairway. There are no warnings about that you are about to cross a fairway, it may not be a problem with the number of people that play the course but to me it seemed a little dangerous.

All in all a brilliant course. The views that you get from the top of the hill are spectacular. I will be going back to play the full 18 some time soon. I’ll just make sure that I’m well rested.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.