INSIDE SEVEN MILE BEACH
I was playing a mid-1990s tournament in Sydney with Mat Goggin when he told me about a piece of land at Hobart’s Seven Mile Beach.
“You can’t believe how perfect it is for golf. One day I’m going to build a course on it.”
By 2010 he’d formulated a plan involving pesky things including dealing with leasing the land, the inevitable local, non-golfer opposition to anything to do with golf and the necessary investment. Someone once asked Ben Crenshaw his view of the most important element of golf course design. Crenshaw bypassed all the predictable answers, instead plumping for the one thing without which nothing happens.
“The money.”
It wasn’t a reference to his design fee but rather a client with the necessary backing to get a course built.
It takes time – in this case more than a quarter of a century.
The site is as good as Mat promised. It’s undulating, sandy, runs all the way down to the edge of the water but the dunes are not so big the holes are compromised, or the golf becomes a hill climbing exercise.
People often ask how the site compares to Barnbougle. It’s much different. Barnbougle had almost no trees whilst Seven Mile is covered in Radiata pine, most of which will be removed to make way for the golf. Barnbougle was a long, narrow strip of land linking the beach to the farmland and there were only a couple of ways to route the golf course.
In Hobart the site is enormous, something both a blessing and a curse. Every direction you look there is a great hole but with so many options, you can never be sure if the routing is the absolute best one.
At Sand Hills in Nebraska, Crenshaw and Bill Coore spent a year on that phenomenal site finding the first tee, so perfect was the land and so many options did it throw up. Seven Mile Beach is very similar but, unlike Sand Hills, we will get the clubhouse less than a mile from the 1st tee!
My design partner, Mike DeVries of Cape Wickham fame was in Australia just before the world went COVID crazy in March of 2020 and we came up with a routing we think is very good.
As the trees are peeled away and the promise of the holes is revealed they will no doubt be tweaked but it’s a site promising to add much to Tasmanian golf.
Twenty-five years ago, the state was hardly a showcase of first-class golf course architecture but Barnbougle, Lost Farm, Cape Wickham and Ocean Dunes have completely changed the perception of the island’s golf. It’s now world-class and more importantly all of it is public golf and at prices far below those of equivalent level courses in the United States, New Zealand and Britain.
With Seven Mile Beach, Hobart gets to join Tasmania’s golf party and whilst Mat has given us no brief, the words of Richard Sattler and his perfect instructions for Barnbougle Dunes ring in our ears.
“I don’t care what you do – just don’t screw it up.”
can be found amongst tall sand dunes east of its elder sibling, places a premium on good strategy tee-to-green, while the routing takes you to each point of the compass.
“Every time I play Bill Coore’s masterpiece on Bass Strait, I find some ground feature or pin position I had never previously noticed. It’s a close-run thing for the title of ‘Best Course at Bridport’, but for the fine details of Lost Farm raise it slightly above its rugged, dramatic sister next door,” Scott Warren, Golf Australia magazine Top-100 judge, said.
The two courses at Barnbougle eventually became the catalyst for an explosion of golf tourism in Tasmania. Their success provided much-needed confidence for investors and developers alike, who were essentially given all the proof they needed that the cul-de-sac of the world had the ability to attract global golfers.
“Barnbougle absolutely put us on the map and god bless the potato farmer Richard Sattler. He took that risk and it’s truly outstanding what they’ve done there,” Tourism Tasmania Chief Executive Officer, John Fitzpatrick, said.
Five years after the creation of Lost Farm, in 2015, Mike DeVries and Darius Oliver designed another world-beater for Tasmania on the remote, picturesque King Island. Cape Wickham Links wasted no time in bursting its way onto just about every golfer’s bucket list, with its stunning location, diverse landscape, impressive design and clever routing each combining to see it quickly become Australia’s No.1 ranked public access course.
The immensely beautiful setting often overshadows the truly magnificent design of the layout, with many believing that on its day, Cape Wickham tops Royal Melbourne as the greatest golf course in Australia.
“Now fully grown in, Cape Wickham is putting a great case forward to be included in the argument as the best course in Australia. The firm fully fescue surfaces make it the best conditioned course in the country, especially around the green sites where every club in your bag is an option to play short game shots with,” Rich Macafee, Golf Australia magazine Top-100 judge, said.
Forty-five kilometres south of Cape Wickham lies the tremendous Graeme Grant-designed Ocean Dunes, which opened for play in 2016 and was ranked sixth in this magazine’s list of Top100 Public Access Courses for 2021.
Ocean Dunes lays claim to some of the best seaside holes in the country – such as the opening quartet and the 10th and 11th holes – and presents a strategic challenge that is likely to test any level of player. Its inland holes are to be praised too, however, boasting superb views across the property and beyond, as they examine every area of your game.
King Island’s gems and the two offerings at Barnbougle are already working in tandem to attract tens of thousands of golfers to Tasmania every year – but several key people believe these numbers will only increase, as further developments are completed throughout southern areas of the state.
Even established layouts like Royal Hobart Golf Club and nearby Tasmania Golf Club have undertaken major redesign projects in recent times to modernise their layouts and take advantage of the growing interest tourists have to play golf in Tasmania.
“The Tasmanian Visitor Survey says that we’re attracting about 22,000 golf visitors per year. Once the southern courses have been completed, we would expect those numbers to grow significantly in the next five to 10 years,” Fitzpatrick said.
“We’re all aware that the golfing community wants to play in the best locations, on the best courses in the world. That’s what Tasmania has got and will have more of in the future. I think our geographical position, coupled with the golf offering that we are producing, will only make us stronger over the next decade.”
Those thoughts were echoed by Ramsay, who, together with course architects Neil Crafter and Paul Mogford, is currently working to develop the highly anticipated 18-hole golf course at Arm End (see breakout for details) outside of Hobart.
“I think ultimately, we’ve just got the right landforms and the right temperate climate to deliver a very, very premium experience at a very reasonable cost base,” said Ramsay, who grew up in Tasmania on Australia’s oldest operating golf course, Ratho Farm.
“It took a long time for me to explain that to people, but a great benefit of links golf is that if you use the right designers, it can be relatively low-cost to put designs on those natural landforms.
“The discerning golfer is always in pursuit of that raw, natural experience. Whereas, maybe for a couple of decades, there was a bit of a movement towards these very artificial, manmade constructions, which ultimately were extremely expensive to build and maintain.”
In essence, Tasmania’s topography, savvy course design and bold ideas from determined minds, have allowed it to become one of the world’s leading golf destinations in less than two decades. Thankfully, it sounds as though it’s only going to get better, too.
“Tassie could honestly have six or more Barnbougles with the access it has to worldclass land. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster getting to where we’re at now, but the state is pretty well poised,” Ramsay said.
So well poised, in fact, that Barnbougle itself recently added another layout to its already impressive stable in the form of the 14-hole Bougle Run.
The Bill Coore-designed short course – consisting of 12 par-3s and two par-4s – opened in March this year and lies adjacent to
Lost Farm. It took just 124 days to build and was constructed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The design work was done by John Hawker here and Bill Coore in the States, so it was all done by video footage, phone calls, pictures and drone footage. It even shocked me how we managed to get it done in 124 days of actual onsite construction,” Sattler said.
“It obviously hasn’t been open for very long and we’ve tried to keep the numbers down while it’s still growing in, but the response to Bougle Run has been amazing.”
Following the completion of another ‘must-play’ course in the north of the Apple Island, all eyes have now turned to the developments in the south of the state.
“The opportunities around Hobart in particular are very exciting,” Ramsay said.
“Mat Goggin’s property Seven Mile Beach (see breakout for details) is very different to Arm End. But by God, it’s an awesome property and I think they’re going to get a great outcome there as well.”
Added Fitzpatrick: “We’ve got four of the best public courses in Australia and I sit here – perhaps somewhat biasedly because I myself am a golfer – incredibly optimistic about the future of golf tourism in Tasmania.”
No argument here.
WE’VE GOT FOUR OF THE BEST PUBLIC COURSES IN AUSTRALIA AND I SIT HERE INCREDIBLY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE FUTURE OF GOLF TOURISM IN TASMANIA
– TOURISM TASMANIA CEO, JOHN FITZPATRICK