French Chardonnay in the Napa Valley

There’s something slightly disarming about arriving at Brambles. Not because of what it is, but because of what it isn’t trying to be. In an era where new golf courses tend to arrive fully dressed for the part, pressed, polished, and pre-approved by an imaginary panel of investors and Instagram architects, Brambles feels… unfinished. And that’s precisely its charm.

Opened in 2024 in Middletown, this is a course that doesn’t present itself as a final statement. It plays more like a question than an answer. There is a visible restraint here, a willingness to leave space for the course to evolve rather than forcing it into a fixed identity too early. It suggests an open-minded curiosity from its creators, not just about what the course is, but what it might become.

The approach to 16 Green.

Because modern golf development, particularly in the wake of the game’s recent boom, has leaned toward two predictable poles. Commercially safe imitations on one side, echoes of what has already worked, repackaged with just enough variation to feel new. On the other, courses that lean heavily on spectacular settings, where the land does most of the storytelling and the golf simply follows along politely. Brambles resists both. It feels less like a finished product and more like something in flux. Alive, slightly unsettled, and all the better for it.

And perhaps the best way to understand it is through wine.

Chardonnay, in 2026, broadly lives in two worlds. There’s the French expression, restrained, mineral-driven, lightly touched by oak. It doesn’t announce itself. It unfolds. Texture over power. Precision over presence. Then there’s the Napa Valley style, rich, full-bodied, unapologetically buttery. It arrives fully formed, confident, immediate.

Brambles is unmistakably the former, set right in the heart of the latter.

Within reach of Napa Valley, where boldness has long been the prevailing language, Brambles feels almost rebellious in its restraint. A French Chardonnay in Napa country. It goes against the grain, not loudly, but quietly, confidently.

There’s a sensation here that’s difficult to articulate but instantly recognisable. Playing Brambles today feels akin to stepping into the early life of the courses we now revere. Not as museum pieces, but as living, breathing experiments. Before the edges were refined, before reputations calcified, before mythology took hold. For better or worse, it evokes something like Augusta National Golf Club in its infancy. Not in grandeur or ambition, but in spirit. A place still figuring itself out.

And that lack of polish is not a flaw. It’s the point.

There are moments where the ground feels unresolved, where lines are still being discovered rather than dictated. Greens that don’t yet feel like they’ve settled into their final expressions. Edges that blur instead of declare. But within that ambiguity lies the thrill. The golf is engaging, often surprising, occasionally uneven, but always alive. It asks you to participate, not just execute.

This isn’t a blight on the course. It’s what makes it compelling. Inspiring, even. There’s ambition here, but it’s patient. It trusts that time, play, and subtle iteration will reveal what Brambles ultimately wants to be.

The risk & reward of the 9th fairway.

That philosophy feels deeply aligned with the work of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, whose fingerprints are all over the place, alongside the very real dream of their long-time associate James Duncan. This isn’t architecture chasing applause. It’s architecture willing to wait.

Because Napa didn’t become Napa by accident. Robert Mondavi and his contemporaries helped define a style that was confident, expressive, and immediately recognisable. Big wines, fully realised, built to leave an impression. In many ways, modern golf architecture has followed a similar path. Capable of delivering finished products from day one, polished and complete.

But standing on the ground at Brambles, it’s hard not to feel the appeal of something else. Something a little less resolved. A little more patient. Like those French Chardonnays that don’t give you everything up front, that ask for time, and reward it quietly.

Brambles doesn’t quite tell you what it is just yet.

And that might be the most interesting thing about it.

Happy Golfing,

One of my favourite clubhouses.

The Whole Carcas

The smell of diesel cuts through the frozen spring air. A dozer idles somewhere behind me, its engine coughing quietly in the cold, and the ground beneath our boots is only just beginning to soften after a long winter. The machines leave not so faint tracks in the damp soil and I’ve lost feeling of my extremities. They will not be felt until I return back home to Australia.

This is not a grand reconstruction. These projects will not set the internet on fire. There are no dramatic unveilings or launch videos being edited somewhere. Just existing golf courses getting a bit of attention before the season properly begins.

Just a small construction zone on an existing golf course. A bunker in need of restoration. A fairway grade that never quite worked. A green edge that can finally accommodate a dubious pin location. It’s small work. Patchwork work. And when you stand inside a little piece of land like this, your mind naturally shrinks down to the details. Not the whole golf course. Just the ground in front of you.

How much can we get out of this small moment? How resourceful can we be with what is here? It is a surprisingly useful exercise and work I really enjoy doing.

The off season back home leaves a lot of room for observation. The world of golf architecture tends to keep moving while you are not looking. Destination golf continues to surge forward and the old Field of Dreams logic of “build it and they will come” keeps pushing projects further and further toward the edges of the earth. Remote peninsulas. Clifftops and Hidden Valley’s

The landscapes are spectacular and the architecture placed upon them is often very good. Some of the finest minimalist architects working today are shaping those places with real care and restraint. The photographs are breathtaking. And most of these courses will open to immediate discussion about where they belong among the best in the world.

But after staring at enough of those images a small question begins to linger. What exactly are we celebrating? Many of these new places feel like a sequence of individual golf holes interacting with a spectacular landscape. A green sitting against the ocean. A tee perched above a cliff. A fairway weaving through dunes that look as though they have existed forever. Each hole becomes its own moment between golf and scenery. Individually they can be extraordinary. But taken together something about it can feel slightly indulgent. The land is so dramatic that the architecture becomes a series of beautiful placements rather than a complete act of use. The landscape becomes the ingredient rather than the whole animal.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach. The results can be breathtaking. But it is not quite the flavour of golf architecture that resonates most strongly with me. The courses that stay with me tend to operate differently. They feel devoted to golf.

Alwoodley in Leeds is a good example. Once you cross the road and step into that broad paddock of land the entire place feels as though it exists purely for the game. The land is not presenting a handful of dramatic stages. It is simply being used.

Kingston Heath works in much the same way. Its beauty lies in small reveals and glimpses of other holes through the trees. Golf that has just happened. Golf that is about to happen. The entire property feels like a continuous conversation with the game.

Kingston Heath’s routing uses the whole carcass

And then there is the Old Course at St Andrews. A place where the land has been used so completely that the course feels almost infinite. Fairways overlap. Holes share corridors. Golfers move across the same ground in several directions.

It does not feel indulgent.It feels efficient. The land is not hosting the golf. It has surrendered itself to it. This is where the chicken carcass comes in.

A competent chef can carve a chicken into beautiful pieces. Breast here. Thigh there. Each portion plated neatly on its own. But the best chefs use the entire carcass. The bones become broth. The scraps become something else entirely. One ingredient becomes several meals. Great golf land can work the same way.

Some courses carve beautiful portions out of spectacular landscapes. The ones I admire most feel like they have used the entire animal. Every fold of ground. Every corridor. Every slightly awkward piece of land that had to be solved rather than admired. Nothing wasted.

Standing here in the smell of diesel and damp earth, working inside a small corner of a golf course that just needs a bit of care, that idea keeps returning. How much golf can a piece of land truly hold? How much of it can be used? And perhaps the better question is simply this. Do we prefer courses that borrow spectacular landscapes for golf? Or the ones that surrender the entire landscape to the game?

Happy Golfing

2016

The internet has a knack for turning even the simplest ideas into something divisive virality or mildly dangerous. No matter how edible Tide Pods might look. But the recent trend of sharing your digital footprint from ten years ago is one I can get behind. Mostly because it arrived at exactly the right moment.

Looking back at 2016 now, with a decade of distance, it becomes clear how much of what followed was quietly shaped that year. The sacrifices, the half-formed ideas, the chance conversations. At the time it all felt loose and temporary. In hindsight, it was anything but.

In 2016 I had been out of school for a few years and was working as a caddie at the exclusive and infamous Capital Golf Club. I had been looping there on and off for about six years, drifting without long-term commitments or a defined plan. I was looping ‘Australia’s Shadow Creek’, chauffeuring wealthy locals and international high rollers, trying to stay useful and invisible at the same time.

I roped in friends, family, and eventually my girlfriend to work there too. No arm twisting required. My girlfriend at the time, Lillie, was studying an environmental degree and juggling four jobs. We lived with two other girls, also studying, in a knock-over weatherboard house in Oakleigh South that is somehow still standing. Our neighbours were the local primary school, Metropolitan, and Huntingdale Golf Clubs. Hopefully the statute of limitations has passed, but we had what might have been the toughest par three on the Sandbelt playing from our driveway. Only one par was ever recorded. It was disputed.

The founding members of the (redacted) Street Golf Club. Home to the hardest Par 3 on the Sandbelt.

I was making good money for someone in their early twenties and had the kind of freedom that makes you reckless in the best way. Enough independence to chase curiosity wherever it wandered. At night, I fed that creative energy into music, working out of a spare room that barely qualified as a studio. In 2016 alone I made somewhere between five to six hundred music files. That included a full album produced exclusively for Lillie’s twenty-first birthday, featuring her friends absolutely destroying the vocals of her favourite songs with enthusiasm and very little accuracy.

Most days were indistinguishable from one another. Work hard, play hard, repeat. I had no degree, no real investments, unless you count a small and poorly timed crypto portfolio. What I did have was time, and a growing sense that the world was bigger than the loops I was walking. I would recommend that phase to anyone. Just not forever.

By 2016, Lillie could see it too. That my time drifting in the sun was nearing its end. We talked about long-term investments, mostly in yourself. Saving money. Learning your craft. Taking the thing you love seriously enough to risk it failing. Maybe, if you were lucky, turning it into a life.

I loved golf. But more than that, I had developed a rough, unpolished obsession with golf course architecture. It felt like a career from another era, something that disappeared along with milk deliveries and corner butchers. Except it had not. There were still a small number of people doing this work, shaping land with intent and restraint, and I was quietly convinced I could belong among them. It promised creativity, travel, and rewards that were directly tied to effort. The problem was obvious. How do you even begin?

The answer, it turns out, was not through a grand plan.

From the back tee on the 8th hole Par 3 at Capital Golf Club

At Capital, it was common for me to be on standby whenever the course owner, Lloyd Williams, decided to appear for a casual nine or eighteen. In 2016 there was a stretch where he frequently played with David Evans. Their rounds were filled with conversations about golf, but more specifically, about construction, maintenance, and the invisible work that makes great courses endure.

David owned a property past the Black Spur, winding its way toward Lake Eildon. His ambition was to build a course that belonged entirely to the Victorian landscape. That place would become Cathedral Lodge. Over weeks and months, David would provide updates to Lloyd as they walked Capital’s fairways.

They did not need a caddie. They certainly did not need me. But Lloyd knew about my primitive fascination with golf architecture and allowed me to hang around. I stayed quiet. I listened. I learned. Walking alongside those two men became one of the most influential classrooms of my life, whether any of us recognised it at the time or not.

Looking back at the 17th Green at the Cathedral Lodge, roughly 10 years ago.

Once Cathedral Lodge was built, I began caddying there on the odd occasion. For David, for members, for guests. On one of those days, Cathedral hosted a match against the newly opened Tara Iti. Walking those fairways was Tara Iti’s newly appointed superintendent, Brian Palmer.

We spoke about golf architecture with the enthusiasm of people who probably should have been paying attention to something else. Brian made the mistake of giving me his contact details. For nearly the next decade, I would make full use of them. Questions, ideas, observations, all fired his way. He became one of my most important and unofficial mentors, whether he agreed to the title or not.

That meeting with Brian would not have happened without the chance to caddy for David. That opportunity would not have existed without Lloyd Williams. And none of it would have happened if I had not been caddying at Capital in 2016, aimless but curious.

In 2026, it is easier to understand how fragile and random those moments were. How easily they could have been missed. One different roster. One skipped shift. One moment of choosing convenience over curiosity.

So when I think about 2036, I try to remember that lesson. That the most important doors rarely announce themselves. They arrive disguised as small talk, shared walks, borrowed time, and chance encounters that feel insignificant until they are not.

I have not yet achieved anything of note in the field of golf course architecture. But I am ready. I am paying attention. And I know now that the next decade will be shaped less by grand plans and more by showing up, staying curious, and recognising the quiet moments that might one day change everything.

Because that is what 2016 taught me.

Sun setting on the 18th hole at the Capital Golf Club.

Season One: 7 Mile Beach Review

The anticipation to play 7 Mile Beach had been simmering for years. Like waiting for a new HBO prestige series that teases with glimpses of drama and cliffhangers, but never confirms the premiere date. Some people have been waiting nearly a decade. Matty Goggin has been waiting his entire life. My own anticipation began in 2020 when I was approached to help with the branding. Suddenly, it felt like stepping onto a carefully lit set, each dune and fairway waiting for its scene.

Goggin is the producer, the Hobart native with a vision too big to be contained. The director is Mike DeVries, who loves getting his hands dirty on set, framing every shot and shaping the action. Beside him is co-creator Mike Clayton, acting as the seasoned show runner. While DeVries manages the technical production, Clayton focuses on the narrative arc, ensuring the pacing is right and that every scene flows logically into the next. Lukas Michel, the script supervisor, working within the margins to ensure continuity, subtly nudging the production back on course whenever the plot threatens to drift.

Episode One opens like a slow tracking shot over a quiet dune. The fairway introduces the cast and characters but saves its best action for the final reveal. The green unfolds like a secret location revealed at the climax of a scene. Elegant, refined, and deceptive in its simplicity. You only notice the subtleties after stepping off, the contours and movements whispering, the ball rolling with a life of its own. It is a green that sets the tone, a promise that the story will reward those paying attention.

Episode Two is a par 3, a tight and dramatic bottle episode with a panoramic reveal. The green sits high and halfway up a dune overlooking Tiger Head Bay. The wind tugs at your clothing, smells of salt and grass drift together, and the horizon stretches like the opening credits of a sprawling saga. You sense the vastness of the course in that single view, the world that you’re embarking on and the drama of the season waiting to unfold across every hole.

Episodes Three and Four toss in plot twists that feel designed by writers who enjoy toying with their audience. Episode Five is a marketing dream. The poster shot. The still frame that sells the whole series. Then the run from Eight to Fourteen begins and the show stops caring about your emotions. It simply hits its stride and gushes creativity. These holes feel alive. They feel like the late night binge watch when you promise yourself you will stop at one more episode before bed but then find yourself three episodes deeper and fully hypnotised.

The Double Header Monster 8th

The middle stretch from Episodes Eight through to Fourteen is pure cinema. Twists and turns, subtle tricks, moments that feel like the true realisation of the 7 Mile Experience. A hypnotic montage of brilliant and surprising moments. The fairways roll, sand brushes against shoes, the ball teeters unpredictably. Gusts of wind whip across the dunes, carrying the scent of wildflowers and salt, each hole a minor drama building toward a crescendo. Episode Thirteen is my personal favorite. A sequence so unique it could exist nowhere else. The kind of episode that leaves you breathless, the ball a tiny actor in a grand production.

The finale, Episode Eighteen, is cinematic in every sense. A long par 5 that feels like the closing act of a season finale. A giant central bunker sits ahead like a prophecy carved into sand. It looks fatal. It looks final. You think the scene will claim a beloved character, a last-minute heartbreak. Then the illusion breaks. There is still 150 yards of story left to play. The bunker is a teasing interlude, the green a wild and jagged stage, nothing like the elegant opening of the first hole. Sunlight catches the slopes, wind rustles the dunes, and every step, every putt feels like a final shot in a beautifully directed scene. Some players will embrace the chaos. Others will drift into their own fan fiction, imagining the practice green perched higher on the dune as the true finale. Great prestige television teaches us that endings provoke debate, and 7 Mile Beach delivers with confidence, leaving you with the want of replaying the television series again and again.

The tasteful artwork placed within the halfway house/shelter, wonderfully showcases local talent and compliments the art that exists over the 18 holes of golf. A nice touch.

What lifts the entire production into something distinctly Australian is the world surrounding the course. The halfway house refuses clichés. No gaudy images of fairways plastered on walls. Instead, walls are adorned with genuine Australian art. The smell of freshly baked meat pies fills the air, local pastries and produce reminding you that this is home. The merchandise celebrates Australian makers and identity. No imported gloss, no awkward imitation of overseas luxury. The entire experience feels grounded, authentic, and distinctly Australian.

The best scene of the day, however, was unscripted. As we left for Hobart, a handful of schoolgirls hopped out of a car with clubs over their shoulders, ready for a twilight round. The future of junior golf in Tasmania glimmered at that moment. Young Australians taking ownership of a space built for them, a quiet but compelling post-credit scene hinting at what the next season could hold.

Season One of 7 Mile Beach is a triumph. A uniquely Australian story told with ambition, courage, and flair. DeVries delivers a compelling narrative with tension and character. Goggin has willed a dream into existence. Australia now has a new series to celebrate. Something grand. Something alive. Something with enough cliffhangers, twists, and cinematic moments to keep you hooked until the next season arrives.

Happy Golfing

The Bayonne Burger

Picture a Wall Street worker. His eyes are glued to the Hudson from the 40th floor. His brain has been melted by markets, deals, and endless numbers. He is starving for something simple, indulgent, and immediate. He wants a burger from Hamburger America on the way home to his West Village apartment. He wants a round of golf. The craving is urgent and unpretentious. Bayonne Golf Club is that ferry ride, the wrapper in his hand, the sizzle on the grill, the quick bite that satisfies without demanding contemplation.

The course coils and twists like a boa constrictor’s stomach. Fairways squeeze, angles tighten, and approaches close in like a digestive muscle around prey that has nowhere to run. You feel it pressing, constricting, shaping your shots without ceremony. It is not elegant. It is not refined. It is alive in the bluntest, most immediate way, demanding your attention.

The Bayonne-Constrictor

The borrowed landscape does most of the heavy lifting. Factories rise like sentinels, churches spire skyward, and the Statue of Liberty appears off in the distance. These are foreign ingredients in a strange recipe, points of aim that turn mundane shots into moments of unexpected delight. Watching them is like perching on a stool at the bar of Hamburger America. You see the line of cooks at work, taking basic elements and somehow making something worth enjoying. The water flashes silver, the mounds rise and fall, and suddenly the ordinary site has rhythm, choreography, and a sly grin hidden in the details.

Bayonne does not ask for reverence. It does not pretend to be Noma. Each hole is flavorful enough to make you nod in approval, fun enough to leave you smiling, but none are revolutionary. The satisfaction is immediate. You bite into it, chew, swallow, and move on. The taste lingers for a moment, enough to remember, but not enough to redefine your standards. It delivers what it promises, and it does not promise more than it can give.

Playing here feels good. It scratches that craving like a burger in the late afternoon. It fills the moment with pleasure, indulgence, and a touch of cunning. The fairways, the skyline, the twists of land all combine to create something lively and spirited. You walk away content. You enjoyed it. That is the experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

Bayonne Golf Club is a burger. Savory, indulgent, slightly messy, and clever in ways you might not expect. It is not world-class. It is not transformational. It is exactly the kind of thing you want when the craving hits. And sometimes, that is more than enough.

Happy Golfing

Quintessentially American

Well, I’m having trouble knowing where to begin with Sleepy Hollow. Just as much trouble, in fact, as knowing where to end. I could save us both some time by summing it up in a single line: Sleepy Hollow is the most quintessential American golf course. There. Done. No elaboration required. Move on with your life.

But maybe I need to sleep on that notion. It is October after all, and my brain may be swimming in a pumpkin-spiced fog. The leaves on the deciduous trees are in full retreat, our tee time was delayed by autumn frost, and here we are, playing golf on what feels like Halloween’s home turf. Maybe I’m just under the influence of a holiday that I have always tied closely to this country.

It could be the way the course looks over the Hudson River, that wide tidal estuary that once carried the economic lifeblood of a nation inland, linking canals and tributaries that pushed America’s industrial heart westward. It pulled the centre of gravity away from the colonial ports of Boston and Philadelphia and into a new era.

Or maybe it is the Gilded Age history baked into the property. This land once belonged to Colonel Shepard and Margaret Vanderbilt, who envisioned a manor of unapologetic opulence. Then came the titans: Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Astor, Vanderlip, Harriman, Macy, Choate and Colgate. Their vision was to reshape and reprogram the land with golf, and for that they summoned Charles Blair Macdonald, the godfather of American golf architecture. Macdonald’s fingerprints are all over the nation’s early great courses, his designs setting a blueprint for what American golf would become.

The focal lone tree located central to the course.

Not long after, Albert Warren Tillinghast added his own eccentric brilliance. He was a man who designed as though possessed, free, unfiltered and untethered by modern constraint. The early twentieth century was golf architecture’s golden age, and Sleepy Hollow stands as a living, breathing artifact of that time.

Standing on the property, looking across the broad, sweeping landscape, my tiny brain struggled to make sense of it all. The place is enormous. The beauty, almost theatrical. The course matches nature’s energy with grand, deliberate gestures. At times it drapes itself elegantly over the terrain, flowing down hollows and across rocky shoulders. At others, it thrusts greens high into the air, connected by ornate footbridges that seem as if they have always belonged.

That is what I love about the Macdonald, Raynor and Banks style. They did not simply blend their work into the environment. They formalised it. They celebrated it. They took the drama of nature and set it to a template, like a jazz musician riffing on a familiar tune. It is not subtle. It does not need to be. The course wants to be part of the story, like a mascot on the sidelines, waving its arms and urging the crowd to join in.

Sleepy Hollow is Halloween, Gilded Age grandeur and American golf mythology all rolled into one. It is a love letter written in stone, soil and template greens. Like any great American story, it is part history, part theatre, part self-mythologising, and entirely unforgettable.

Walking off the 18th green and you don’t need to be a golfing savant to know that you’ve completed a special round of golf. A round of golf that perfectly encapsulates golf in America.

Happy Golfing