MORNINGTON PENINSULA • VICTORIA
Atick over 25 years ago, five-time Open Champion and prolific course designer Peter Thomson stood on a sand dune overlooking a vast area of grazing land on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. He liked what he saw. He would later proclaim the site as the “some of the finest golfing land to be found in Australia.”
Along with design partners Mike Wolveridge and Ross Perrett, Thomson was commissioned by the developers, Golf Australia Holdings, and the then-named Australian Golf Union to create the first of two planned courses for Moonah Links. Also included on the masterplan for the 196-hectare property in the golf-rich Cups region were state-of-the-art teaching and practice facilities as well as a resort and residential development.
By the time the Open Course was finished in 2001, the Australian Golf Union had changed its name to Golf Australia and Moonah Links was quickly named “The Home of Australian Golf.”
In its first handful of years after opening, Moonah Links gained a new owner in developer Paddy Handbury and hosted two Australian Open Championships – 2003 and 2005 – across the layout Thomson would later
