Well conditioned

Following a top 25 placing in Australian Golf Digest’s ranking of Australia’s Top 100 courses (January 2020), Golf Digest put the spotlight on course conditioning and subsequently listed the top 25 courses. It published the results in their July 2020 issue. (See below.)

Course Superintendent Adam Lamb said, “We are pleased to see Barwon Heads has come in at number 25 – this is a great achievement for the Club and the course maintenance team.”

Adam explains why he’s so pleased. “It’s important to note that most of the other courses on the list are new or have been fully rebuilt or resurfaced over the past decade or so. Courses with newish surfaces are generally going to present well. Here at Barwon Heads we too have rebuilt the greens (and many tee complexes) over the past 10 years, but the Poa annua surfaces of the greens were retained and reused on new sand profiles.

In addition, he notes that Barwon Heads is the only course in the top 25 to maintain predominantly Poa annua greens, whereas the other 24 courses listed treat Poa annua as a weed.  

Adam gives absolute credit to the course maintenance crew, who work diligently to deliver the course in a condition that earns such great praise from our members and guests –  and he’s proud the course is listed among such elite clubs. He said, “The top 25 list is made up of incredibly well-presented courses, credit to the judges there, however, all those clubs certainly have the resources to present such quality conditions.”

In the end Adam is of the opinion that rating the design or condition of any golf course can be very subjective, and it’s really often a case that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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