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Southland, New Zealand |
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Southland Golf Club
Oreti Sands
Links Road
Otatara
Invercargill 9840
New Zealand |  | Sloan Morpeth (1971), Turner MacPherson (2009) |  | None |
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 | +64 (0) 3 213 0208 |  | 6 miles SW of Invercargill, off the Links Road |
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Golf Club Website
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 | Welcome |  | TBC |
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The location of Southland Golf Club’s Oreti Sands course is about as peripheral as it gets on the golfing map, seeing as it lies at one of the most southerly points on New Zealand’s South Island, near the city of Invercargill. Such is the remoteness of the course and its exposure to the elements, it’s rare to play the course with the same weather conditions two days running.
When the respected golf journalist John Huggan talks about how impressed he was after playing such an “elusive hidden gem” then you are bound to sit up and take notice, as Mr Huggan does not hand out plaudits lightly! With two loops of nine that each return to the clubhouse, this 18-hole layout is routed over wonderfully free-draining, sandy soil and features some of the most enormous greens to be found in the country.
Southland was Sloan Morpeth’s architectural swan song and the links opened for play in 1971. In a very positive step for the long-term future of the course, Southland engaged the Turner Macpherson golf design company (Greg Turner, former Kiwi pro turned designer and Scott Macpherson, his assistant) to update the course. Four new holes were created (2,3,4 and 17) and four holes were changed substantially. Two further holes received new teeing grounds (creating tee shots to angled fairways). The outcome of this redevelopment was completed in March 2009 and many now expect to see Oreti Sands climb even higher up the national rankings.
Two of the new holes are par threes. Off the club tees the 3rd, called “Tuapuke”, with Stewart Island in the background, measures a mere 148 metres and the signature 17th, called “Oue”, is 176 metres from the tips, but both holes require very accurate and lofted tee shots to elevated greens. Watch out for the water on 17, which waits to catch anything hit too far left. | |
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In the section below, headed “Your Reviews”, are golf course reviews posted by visitors to the Top 100 website. There are no specific rules for reviewing a golf course except you MUST have played the golf course first. Merits of each course are left entirely to your discretion. Important factors, such as course location, condition (or presentation), course difficulty and historical importance are all left for you to judge and we have developed a simple rating system where you can allocate one score to each course. | |
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 |  | | Average Reviewers Score: |  | | Took the two and a half hour trip down to Invercargill early one Sunday morning, after hearing about the changes made by Greg Turner and Scott MacPherson to the Oreti Sands layout (Oreti Sands is the name of the links, Southland is the name of the club). They essentially have taken some prime links land to the south of the existing course (by all accounts, a worthwhile layout), and added 3 new holes that looked from the website photos like the sort of wild rollercoaster amongst the dunes that you’d normally associate with County Kerry. There’s not much of that sort of thing about in New Zealand, so I was curious to see what version I would find in this remote corner of the South Island.
It’s hard to sum up Oreti Sands in a nutshell – it is indeed a true links, but it travels through some very distinct phases. It feels like this is partly a reflection of the fact that Turner and MacPherson only created or reworked some of the holes, but mainly because you have three different landscapes all within the same course – the rugged dunes to the south, the wetlands to the east, and the patches of pine forest scattered throughout the centre of the land.
The first 6 holes are classic linksland territory, with 2, 3, and 4 being the new holes. You could easily be in Scotland here – you can’t tell the difference, it’s pretty much indistinguishable from its UK counterparts, and of similar quality. I say you can’t tell the difference, but that’s until you hit it in the rough. This is not the wispy brown rough you’d find near the coastline at somewhere like Royal Dornoch, this was the thickest and deepest rough I ever saw in my life. This was ‘don’t even bother looking’ rough, even if you saw exactly where it landed. Some of it was only 5 paces from the green apron. I found it interesting to read on the Turner MacPherson website about their distaste for deep rough and penal golf, because that’s exactly what they’ve created here. It may be that this distaste was superseded by a wish to create a course that doffs it cap to the way golf might have been played more than a century ago – it’s not manicured, and you have a strong feeling that it’s not meant to be. This seems even more likely when you consider the number of blind or semi blind shots on offer, especially from the tips. The new 3rd hole is a case in point – from the championship tees, its 148m to a green that looks like it’s a dune with the top sliced off; a severe plateau. Not so much the upside-down saucers of Dornoch, more a Chinese soup bowl. A truly classic and intimidating green complex. But it’s claustrophobically surrounded by ‘don’t bother looking’ rough, and from the tips, all you can see is the top of the flag. This seems a particular shame, as if you’ve got such a wonderful green site, you probably want to show it off (and fortunately, the members and ladies tees get a good look). But maybe this near contradiction is also what is charming about the place.
Having said all this about penal golf (and you’ll probably have your own opinion about it), Oreti is not an unfair course – the fairways are generally pretty wide (although there’s little semi rough), and the fairway undulations are not the sort that kick a well struck drive into the cabbage. The greens are large and fairly flat in the main. And the penalties for waywardness are not quite so severe in the back nine. If you’re straight and long, you’ll get your just desserts – this place is only merciless on the wayward. Nor is the design without its strategic value. Lots of different questions are asked of your game – from 573m double dogleg par 5’s to near a driveable par 4 up against the wetlands; a shortened take on the ‘Cape’ blueprint. Some architectural tricks are used more than once, such as asking for a driving line tight to one side of the fairway to avoid a blind second (2 and 13), or a tight and highly penal entrance to a long par 4 or reachable par 5 (4 and 9). The squeezes into those par 4½’s led me to using some of the more defensive course management I’ve ever managed to humbly accept in myself. This is not a course for the gung-ho cavalier.
A quick word about the final par 3, the new 17th. Off the backs, it’s a mid to long iron to a green nestled above the wetlands spanning the left and front. What’s I loved about it was that it was a perfect example of how to place a water-dominated, ‘target golf’ par 3 into a links course without even spotting the seams. The hole looks like it’s been there forever. Beautiful.
The condition of the course is not fantastic – if you’re expecting the sort of pacey greens and tight lies of an Open rota links, you will be disappointed. There is only one full-time greenkeeper here, and apparently the members help out with what was reported as ‘vintage equipment’. The greens were on the slow side when I played, but I cannot fault their trueness. Fairways were a bit scrubby, but better than can be seen on Southland’s website. But to be honest, I’m not sure any of this really detracted - the rustic conditioning felt fitting, given the type of throwback that this place is.
Overall, it’s a very worthy addition to the links courses of the world, with its diverse elements, challenges and decisions (and I played on a fairly still day). If you compared it with the links courses of Britain and Ireland, you’d have to like it as an Open Qualifying venue if the conditioning was more in line with that type of tournament. I feel confident in saying that it is the best bona fide links course in the South Island, to my knowledge (it leaves Nelson and Chisholm Park far behind in its wake), and although I have not played places like Muriwai and Kaitaia, I would imagine that it is must be second only to Paraparaumu Beach in the whole of New Zealand, and perhaps not by too much either. And I would also be very surprised if there was a better course in the world with a green fee of £20 (and only £8 if you’re an NZ affiliated golfer). But unless you’re near scratch, stick to the white tees, keep your new Pro V1’s at home (I recommend your practice balls), and as a recent e-mail to Top 100 suggested, ignore the stroke and distance rule. Apparently the members pool all the lost balls and take from them when needed - I’m not surprised, it would cost them a fortune otherwise. Matt Richardson  | | 01 May 2010
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| Response: | | | ian shirkey | 02 May 2010 | | One of the best challenges I have seen on the planet in over 50 years of golf and have in fact taken country membership. All done on a budget of one full-time green keeper and member volunteers with vintage equipment – CONGRATULATIONS – Just take plenty of balls and play the hazard rule not stroke and penalty rule! | | | Andy Fraser | 21 May 2010 | | The Turner Macpherson www.tmgolfdesign.com alterations to our course have certainly added a new suite of challenges to what was already a course that deserved respect from all grades of players. The rear tees are best left to the to the near scratch golfers although quite a few club members have taken up the challenge. The three sets of forward tees allow the higher handicapper players to play a shorter version of the course with less intimidating tee shots to fairways which are, as your reviewer indicates, quite wide at some 40-50m in many places. Yes, go beyond that you are going to lose a ball more often than not. The approaches into several of the greens do require a lot of care and many mid to higher handicappers find themselves laying up rather than ‘going for it’. The players who keep the ball in play are well rewarded. In recent times community funders, The Community Trust of Southland and the Invercargill Licensing Trust have provided funds to allow the purchase of contemporary green and fairway mowing equipment, and the club has taken on a second greenkeeper. |
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