Golf Australia August 2020

To paraphrase the great American author, Mark Twain … the reports of our death were greatly exaggerated. After three months hiatus, Golf Australia is back. When it was decided to suspend publication of the May, June and July editions due to the COVID-19 pandemic it didn’t take long for some to spread rumours through the golf industry about our demise. Knowing these rumours to be false, and with a comeback plan in place, our resolve to bring you the best possible golf publication every month has only been strengthened. We are Australia’s No.1 golf magazine – according to two readership survey agencies –and we aim to keep it that way by continuing to deliver to you the most interesting feature stories from award-winning writers, instruction from the world’s best players…

It is 35 years since the first balls were struck on a Perth golf course laid across such dramatic terrain few would have imagined the game could ever be played there. Thanks to the creative mind of American course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr, the 27-hole Joondalup Resort remains as exciting to play as it did all those years ago. Jones’ career began alongside his famed father, Robert Trent Jones, in the early 1960s before forming his own design company in 1972. In the nearly five decades since, Jones has created or remodelled more than 270 golf courses, across 40 countries and six continents. During an eight-year period in the 1980s and early 90s, Australia almost became a second home for the Californian as he oversaw the design and construction…

THE COURSE LOCATION: Country Club Blvd, Connolly, Western Australia, 6027 CONTACT: (08) 9400 8888; (08) 9400 8811 (pro shop). WEBSITE: www.joondalupresort.com.au DESIGNER: Robert Trent Jones Jr (1985). GREEN FEES: $99 (18 holes, Sunday to Friday including twin share cart); $119 (18 holes, Saturday including twin share cart). $70 (resort guests, Sunday to Friday including twin share cart); $95 (resort guests, Saturday including twin share cart). COURSE SUPERINTENDENT: Ashley Watson. PGA PROFESSIONALS: Kerrod Gray (Director of Instruction), Ackzel Donaldson (teaching professional), Jessica Speechley (teaching professional). THE CLUB MEMBERSHIPS: Joondalup Country Club offers a range of membership types and categories including Non-Transferable (Term Membership), Membership Shares, Junior and Corporate Memberships. As a member, you will enjoy golfing rights to the course, access to the clubhouse, use of the resort facilities and services…

Just in case you haven’t heard, the major championship we all think of as the US Open won’t be happening this year. Not really. Which, I hasten to add, is understandable in these unprecedented times. Faced with the harsh reality that their usual multi-tiered qualifying system would be both impractical and unworkable, the blue-blazered, blue-blooded brain-trust that is the United States Golf Association has decided to put on something a bit different. So it is that the field at Winged Foot in September (by way of June) will accumulate via the invention of yet-to-be-decided exemption categories. In other words, one privileged few have (typically) charged themselves with the task of identifying another privileged few. What could be more USGA-ish? Despite much prolonged and high-profile evidence to the contrary (who of…

There was a time when professional golfers earned more money playing exhibition matches than they did competing in tournaments. The exhibition matches of today – the likes of The Match I and II, or the Tiger v Rory match in China a few years back – are a lucrative sideshow to life on Tour. That wasn’t always the case though. The great Walter Hagen (pictured right) was one of the first professionals to cash in on his fame and talent. Hagen won 57 tournaments as a professional, including 11 majors, but it was the huge fees he was able to charge to play exhibition matches that lined his pockets and made him a rich man. “Winning (US) Opens may have put champagne in my glass but it was beating some…

Two-time Australian Open champion MATT JONES says he is unlikely to return home to defend the Stonehaven Cup, no matter whether the event was held in its traditional end-of-year timeslot or moved to February. “If it’s in December, I’m not coming back if I have to quarantine for two weeks. I can’t,” Jones said. “I’m not sure what (the February date) would conflict with over here on the US Tour schedule … That would be another tough one for me to be able to come back to.” The PGA of Australia, Golf Australia, Golf Victoria and Sandringham Golf Links Management have announced plans to build the AUSTRALIAN GOLF CENTRE. The $18.8 million project, largely funded by the Victorian Government, will create one of the country’s premier golf facilities across the…