Welcome to the city with the greatest collection of courses in the world. Melbourne’s famous Sandbelt layouts, located 30 minutes southeast of the city’s downtown, are the most closely grouped, accessible and enjoyable collection of designs you will ever come across. The impressive course list includes two at Royal Melbourne (venue for the 2011 President’s Cup), Kingston Heath, The Metropolitan Club, Huntingdale, The Yarra Yarra Golf Club and Victoria Golf Club, among others.
“The locals do take great pride that within 10 square kilometers you have seven of the top 25 Australian courses (as ranked by Golf Digest), and then after that five of the top 100, which is quite amazing when you consider how many golf courses are in Australia and how big the country is,” says Steve Worner, Melbourne native and golf tour operator. But that’s not all you have to choose
from—there’s also the Mornington Peninsula, an 80-minute drive south, where course development boomed almost a decade ago. But first, there’s Melbourne.
Getting there, ideally during the
Aussie summer of September to May, requires a long journey—approximately 7,875 miles from San Francisco. Currently direct flights lasting 15 hours are only available from Los Angeles via Qantas and American Airlines (you can fly direct from San Francisco to Sydney—a connection to Melbourne is another 90 minutes). But once there, you’ll find a sports paradise. This modern and cosmopolitan city, host of the 1956 Olympics, also has Australian Open tennis in January at Melbourne Park; the Formula 1 Austra- lian Grand Prix in March; cricket and Aussie Rules Football at the famous MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground); and the country’s richest horse race— the Melbourne Cup—in November. And then there’s the golf. With some advance planning, you
can play the best private courses, and the exchange rate is currently a slightly favorable one (1 U.S. dollar = 1.12 Australian dollar). Start your trip at Royal Melbourne,
which is like Australia itself: big, bold and beautiful (and the area’s most
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