2012 opening for new Aussie course

14 June 2011

Scott Warren reports on some new Australian golf developments.

The final four holes of Greg Norman Golf Course Design's Stonecutters Ridge are growing in, with the course scheduled to open early in 2012.

14 holes are complete and ready for play on the site an hour west of the Sydney CBD. It's Norman's first course in Australia's largest city.

Ashlar Golf Club will trade its site in the nearby Blacktown city centre for the new course when it opens, its members having agreed to a land swap with Norman's Medallist Developments, which will build 170 new homes on the current Ashlar course.

Stonecutters Ridge is part of a real estate development.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of earthmoving we had to do here – you could actually just do your layout, put the greens in the right places and put your tees in there and just go with it," Norman said during a recent visit to the site.

To the south of Sydney, GNGCD will rework several holes at New South Wales Golf Club when the club resurfaces all its greens later this year. It is converting its putting surfaces to Mackenzie bentgrass after extreme weather and the stresses of hosting the 2009 Australian Open saw many greens suffer from disease.

Elsewhere in Norman's home country, his design firm opened the first nine holes of The Dunes at Port Hughes, on the coast of South Australia, on 1 June.