46 to play; even if not, if you have friends there, will they still be friends after you have dug up their course? Australian architect Lyne Morrison first saw the Royal Canberra course at the age of six, when she went there to watch a golf tournament with her mother. “The course was amazing – I had never seen anything like it before,” she says. “That piqued my interest, and I began to play golf when I was nine. In 1976, I joined the club as a 16-year-old. I played with adults – because there were no juniors – and I saw people of all levels playing the golf course, and how they approached it. Playing with men, I’d realise how much stronger they were than women, and that helped me develop an interest in how courses played for women and those with slower swing speeds. The course didn’t have great practice facilities, and I always enjoyed practice, so I thought that was a shame. I’d see bunkers that were poorly drained or shaped, and again, I’d think to myself, ‘That needs fixing’. And that was the seed of me eventually becoming a golf architect.” Morrison moved away from Canberra at the start of her career but later moved back after establishing her own firm. “Coming back many years later, the things I’d observed as a junior were still there,” she says. “The course had been extended from 18 to 27 holes while I was away, and the new nine was links-style, in what is really a parkland environment. This beautiful classic course had an overlay of links-style architecture with deep pot bunkers – on clay, with no drainage. Women would take a penalty to get out of them. “Somewhere along the way, the superintendent had a chat with me. At the time – in the 1990s – it was becoming obvious that stronger players were beginning to overpower the course. He had some ideas about extending the course and, over time, we did that. It was fairly obvious that the bunkers needed work. The “ I had a perception of the course from my young eyes, but as their architect, I had to look at the course more broadly” HOME COURSES Practice facilities at Royal Canberra were designed by consultant architect Lyne Morrison, who grew up playing at the club
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