The Royal Sydney Golf Club in Australia has opened its newly named Bay course following a comprehensive renovation by Hanse Golf Design.

“The origins of our course project lie in our ‘2030 Strategic Plan’ developed in 2015,” said Des Mulcahy, CEO of Royal Sydney. “Having had its last major redesign in 1922, our old Championship course was approaching 100 years of service. From a golfing standpoint, its quality was diminishing. It was also increasingly difficult to maintain, with drainage issues and an ageing irrigation system that would likely have required an overhaul regardless.

“We also wanted a golf course that reflected the history and reputation of the club, meeting the standards of our other sporting and clubhouse facilities. The chance to work with one of the world’s greatest golf course designers was an opportunity to bring our course back to its standing as one of Australia’s great courses.”

Gil Hanse was appointed in 2016 and developed a masterplan in 2017. Following membership feedback, the architect implemented some small tweaks, with the revised design approved and followed through construction.

“The design remained essentially as per the plan, but there have been some variations,” said Mulcahy. “Gil has spoken about the difference between creating a design in two dimensions and realising a design in three dimensions – that is, standing on the course and seeing opportunities to open up spaces, or create new golfing challenges. For example, there are eight more bunkers than originally designed. Yet the total bunker square meterage is the same – it’s just a matter of marginally changing their shapes or splitting them up to create greater strategic complexity.”

Course superintendent Adam Marchant says there have been significant improvements to the course from a playability perspective. “Despite more than 15 hectares of course land being ceded for the heathland landscape, the shape of this landscape has opened up new playing corridors and added new risk and reward strategies for each hole,” he said. “The playing standard has also been improved by our construction enhancements. For example, greens are now easier to keep firm and consistent, bunkers don’t get washed out easily and the sand does not ‘plug’ the way it used to.”

Bunkers now feature new sand sourced from Melbourne and Better Billy Bunker liner. “The club has also opted for revetted bunker edges to allow more precise bunker shape and a reduction in wind-based erosion,” said Marchant. “During the project, the club decided to add an extra layer to the revetting process to ensure consistency of bunker edges. Durabunker’s product sits beneath the revetted turf and is a synthetic layer not visible as it is covered by the sand.”

Greens have been rebuilt to USGA specifications with a 100-millimetre gravel layer, a 350mm sand layer and have been regrassed with Pure Distinction creeping bentgrass. SubAir infrastructure has also been built into each green.

Hanse shaped most of the greens when visiting the site during the 15-month construction period. Hanse Golf Design shapers Josh McFadden, Reece Haspell and Rory Paul were on site throughout the project, working alongside the club’s team and construction personnel from Atlas Golf Services.

“Gil’s design has created many new areas of interest on the course,” said Marchant. “There’s the sharp hook at the approach to the seventh green, the Boomerang green on the eleventh and the new bunker complex on the inside of the dogleg on eighteen. Gil’s green contouring gives us, the turfcare team, plenty of options to vary the challenge for golfers with our pin placements.

“He has also utilised ribbon-style tee boxes, which don’t just add challenges in length for the tees further back, but also harder angles, narrower corridors of play and potential risks that are less severe for those golfers playing from the front tees. Finally, moving from our old routing – which had the ninth hole at the far end of the property – to a ‘two loops of nine’ routing presents fun options for nine-hole play, or even composite courses with our nine-hole Centenary course.

“Obviously, the aesthetic aspects of the course are the easiest to notice, particularly from photos, and people have already said how much character the new landscape has provided. There has been one aspect about going from parkland to heathland links that many people here have been pleasantly surprised about when they first set foot on the course – the landscape now ‘moves’. The understory plants, such as Wallaby grass, pick up the breeze and create scenic movement in our landscape which we simply did not have before.”

In addition to installing SubAir infrastructure, the club also has a new irrigation system, which is fed by a new dam and pump station. “The new dam now holds 8.3 megalitres of water, whereas the old dam had around five megalitres of accessible water,” said Marchant. “The significant upgrade in capacity will guarantee that the club now has the on-site water levels to manage the needs across our entire property. There are also four bores located within the Royal Sydney property – these have been rerouted to feed into the new dam to ensure constant water supply.

“The project has provided a huge leap forward when it comes to our ability to maintain the course. We are already seeing the impacts of our new construction methodology and technology, with bunkers draining faster and staying in-play, greens remaining firmer and more consistent and areas that previously had poor drainage now recovering rapidly following rain.”

The club has also invested in fairway drainage, especially in areas that historically suffered from severe pooling of water. Heavy rain events in 2024 also provided the project team an opportunity to assess areas of the reconstructed golf course that would benefit from additional drainage.

“In early 2025, we installed a network of near-surface drainage lines,” said Marchant. “Typically located in low-lying areas where water may pool, these drainage lines serve to disperse pooling water more quickly.”

Crucial to the project was work relating to trees and native plants, with Harley Kruse developing a landscape plan that has been implemented in conjunction with the Hanse renovation.

“A big part of Gil’s design philosophy is to have a course that sits naturally in its landscape,” said Marchant. “What was here prior to the project was a parkland style, mainly comprised of paperbarks with mown turf underneath. It’s a common landscape design, particularly in American and European environments – but it wasn’t necessarily a landscape that was in ecological harmony here in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

“So, now we have a beautiful heathland links completely comprised of natives that are endemic to the area. There are now small- and medium-sized floral species to complement the large trees. In quadrupling our floral diversity, we have also been able to provide year-round flowering that will add to the beauty and interest of the course. But that’s not to say the choice was simply about aesthetics. The new native landscape was something that we committed to for its wider benefits. More trees, combined with a flourishing native understory, will attract a wider variety of wildlife – which itself brings great character to the golfing experience.”

The club initially removed 595 trees that were either older and failing, non-native, created safety and playability issues, or they would have negatively impacted the native landscape and understory the club had planned. In their place, Royal Sydney planted 2,187, making for an overall increase of 1,592 trees. Combined with the creation of native heathland and endemic plant choices, this will contribute to the club reducing watering and other inputs, with Marchant expecting this work to save 70 million litres of water every year.

“Tree removal of any kind is always a sensitive issue, and we did encounter some members of the community who were concerned, especially in the early stages of the process,” said Marchant. “We listened to that and saw it as our responsibility to work as closely with the community as possible – to be transparent and communicative with them, and committed to the native landscape restoration we had set as our goal.”

Royal Sydney worked closely with Woollahra Municipal Council as well as state and federal parliament representatives Kellie Sloane and Allegra Spender to ensure the public was informed as possible. The club plans to continue planting further understory flora as well as conduct biodiversity monitoring as part of its ‘Biodiversity Management Plan’.

Mulcahy adds: “Designed by one of the world’s great course architects, and featuring the latest methodology in green, bunker and irrigation infrastructure, our aspiration is to marry modern design with technology and to deliver a consistently world-glass golf experience. The ‘Bay course’ is also now one of the most important sanctuaries of native flora and fauna in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.”