It has been 20 long years since Australia’s major golf championship was played on a Melbourne Sandbelt course and surely no one disagrees it’s too long to have been absent from one of the finest groups of courses in the world.
It’s one-eyed parochialism to suggest the Sandbelt is the finest group of courses in the world because it’s competing with all the great golf in New York, Philadelphia, and London but to be mentioned in the same company makes Melbourne one of the most significant centres of golf architecture in the world.
Originally the Sandbelt was the construct of intrepid golfers seeking out better golf. Previously they had made rudimentary courses on the heavy, clay soils close to their homes in the inner-city suburbs before traveling by car became the norm.
They understood better golf was both possible and necessary if the fledgling game was to develop and they looked to the south-east of the city where there
