Royal Melbourne (West Course)

Favorite Hole

No. 3, par 4, 354 yards

At first glance, the third hole at Royal Melbourne seems simple, even plain. The fairway is unguarded aside from a pair of bunkers off to the right, about 200 yards from the back tee. Proficient players may not even notice these. 

The strategic game of the hole is governed by the green, which slopes substantially from front to back. Swing your tee shot out to the right — ideally to the elbow of the dogleg — and your approach will play across this slope rather than down it. If you go for the green and come up short in the scabby rough, however, you will face a tricky recovery to a target that runs away from you.

A knowledgeable player in my group told me that the third fairway used to extend farther out to the right, where the club currently maintains an irrigation pond. Perhaps, then, the fairway bunkers I mentioned earlier once had a clearer strategic purpose: you could carry them to attain an advantageous angle of approach from the right. That angle is still available, but not as generously so.

The third green, too, seems simple initially, falling away at a steady clip. But closer inspection reveals an array of intricacies: the undulations within the fronting swale, which send running approaches in unpredictable directions; the small but sharp falloff in the back; the two bunkers eating into the left side of the green, and the variety of faint ripples in the putting surface, which generate hard-to-read breaks. While covering the Sandbelt Invitational last December, I spent about 10 minutes lingering around and taking photos of this green, never quite feeling that I understood everything about it. The upshot of its design is simple, though: as short as your approach on the third hole might be, you will have tremendous difficulty getting close to any pin because of the green’s tilt and sneaky intricacy.

{{royal-melbourne-west-favorite-hole-3-gallery}}

Overall Thoughts

When Alister MacKenzie arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1926, he was not yet Alister MacKenzie. Don’t get me wrong: he had done some good and eye-catching architectural work at Alwoodley, Moortown, Sitwell Park, and many other courses in Great Britain and Ireland. But he had not yet created the masterpieces in California, Michigan, and Georgia that now define his legacy. Even the leaders of Royal Melbourne Golf Club, who had paid for him to make the month-long journey from his home in England across the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, didn’t seem to have much familiarity with him. They had wanted to hire Harry Colt. They were simply trusting Colt’s word that MacKenzie was the next best thing. 

What MacKenzie had done, however, was write a book explaining his ideas about golf course design. Like many upstart golf architects before and since, he established his authority in the profession with the pen more than the shovel. And MacKenzie’s words were potent. In Golf Architecture, published in 1920, he set forth a philosophy that revolutionized Australian golf and turned Melbourne into one of the game’s meccas. It’s a remarkable story, especially given that he spent only 10 weeks on the continent.

As a theorist, MacKenzie was the descendant of two innovators. First, he subscribed to writer and R&A power broker John Low’s notions of hazard placement. Low argued, and MacKenzie agreed, that 1) no hazard was “unfair” wherever it was placed because, as MacKenzie put it in Golf Architecture, “it should be obvious that if a player sees a hazard in front of him and promptly planks his ball into it he has chosen the wrong spot”; and 2) the purpose of a hazard should not be to punish a poor shot by a poor player, but rather to thwart a nearly great shot by a proficient player, making the game more engaging for the skilled and less arduous for the hapless.

Second, MacKenzie endorsed his friend and former design partner Harry Colt’s approach to construction, which emphasized naturalism and the blending of manufactured landforms into the preexisting terrain. “The [ideal] course should have beautiful surroundings,” MacKenzie declared in his book, “and all the artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself.”

MacKenzie brought these cutting-edge ideas to Australia, not only through his own, voluble conversation, but also in the many copies of Golf Architecture that he freely distributed among Royal Melbourne members. “The way he thought about golf was what formed golf here,” Mike Clayton, architect and Melbourne golf dignitary, told me in 2024. MacKenzie’s keenest students included local landowner Alex Russell and greenkeeper Mick Morcom, who went on to carry out MacKenzie’s plans between 1926 and 1931.

Royal Melbourne West embodies the Low-MacKenzie school of strategic design as faithfully as any course in the world. Large, intimidating bunkers guard the ideal positions in the fairways of par 4s and 5s. Greens tilt away from bail-out zones and toward lines of charm. Subtle but complex green contouring creates pin positions of differing intensities and strategic implications. Does this sound repetitive? It doesn’t feel that way. While the philosophy stays consistent from hole to hole, each implementation of a bee-line bunker or a tilting, rolling green is unique in orientation, challenge, and aesthetic.

The West Course’s opening sequence is astonishing: a series of doglegging par 4s and 5s, with one par 3, the famous fifth, mixed in. Each hole is more striking than the last. The first is the plainest, curving left around some motley rough and tea tree to a simple green enlivened by a gully at its front-left corner. The short par-5 second introduces drama, with a huge, flashed bunker protecting the inside of the dogleg and two others, built in the same grand style, creating a right-to-left entrance into the elevated green. The third hole, profiled in the “Favorite Hole” section above, is an introverted, beguiling short par 4, followed by an extroverted par 5, vaulting up and over a cluster of bunkers cut into a ridge, then swerving to the right to reach a green tucked into a grove of trees. Those who take on the center-line bunkers and succeed earn a forward kick and a much-improved chance of reaching the green in two. The par-3 fifth plays over a small valley halfway up a large dune to a terrifyingly tilted green surrounded by one of the most beautiful arrangements of tie-ins and bunkers ever created. Finally, the par-4 sixth, featured on many lists of the world’s best holes (including the one in my dog-eared 1980s copy of The New World Atlas of Golf), dares players to challenge the long-right side of a diagonal stretch of scrub and bunkers in hopes of finding an angle into, rather than across, the severe slope of the putting surface.

{{royal-melbourne-west-opening-sequence-gallery}}

As he does after the duneland stretch of Nos. 6-9 at Cypress Point, MacKenzie brings the temperature down at Royal Melbourne West after a hot start. The eighth and ninth holes play out and back along tumbling terrain — good holes, but not mind-melting. But then he hits another high with No. 10, a superb short par 4 where a huge blow-out bunker stands sentinel on the direct line to the small, perched green. Clayton likes to reminisce about watching Seve Ballesteros attack this hole during the 1978 Australian PGA Championship. With all of his competitors laying up, Seve went straight for the green every day, making three birdies.

If the West Course has a weakness, it lies on the other side of Cheltenham Road from the main paddock, where Nos. 13-16 sit. Flatter land means less excitement, and the outside verges of the 14th and 15th holes, both pressed against property lines, are the only places on the course that feel artificially constrained. Even on this separate and inferior paddock, however, there are moments of brilliance: see the fascinating contouring and extravagant bunkering around the 13th and 14th greens, or the overall excellence of the 16th hole, one of the finest long par 3s I’ve played.

{{royal-melbourne-weak-stretch-bright-spots-gallery}}

Still, it was smart of MacKenzie to save one last patch of outstanding ground for the 17th and 18th holes, a pair of emblematic Royal Melbourne par 4s. Both tempt players to save their rounds or catch up in their matches by taking treacherous shortcuts along the insides of doglegs, one left and one right.

{{royal-melbourne-west-17-18-gallery}}

Still, it was smart of MacKenzie to save one last patch of outstanding ground for the 17th and 18th holes, a pair of emblematic Royal Melbourne par 4s. Both tempt players to save their rounds or catch up in their matches by taking treacherous shortcuts along the insides of doglegs, one left and one right.

Royal Melbourne West is MacKenzie’s love letter to the dogleg hole. Only four of the course’s 14 non-par 3s don’t bend significantly in one direction or the other. It should be clear why MacKenzie liked dogleg concepts: almost by definition, they generate forgiveness for lesser golfers, who can just bunt their drives out to the fairway before the turn, and challenge for expert players, who must decide whether and how much to cut the corners.

The West Course also exemplifies MacKenzie’s approach to routing, which emphasized the repeated use of a property’s most prominent and beautiful natural landforms. The center of Royal Melbourne’s main paddock is dominated by a rise that could be called either a small hill or a large knoll, and the opening half of MacKenzie’s routing makes a Michelin-starred meal out of it. The first, third, eighth, and 10th holes play off of it; the second, sixth, and ninth holes play into it; and the par-3 seventh hole climbs to its peak. The course then wanders into quieter terrain before returning to the central knoll on Nos. 17 and 18 — the 17th green is nestled into the base of the slope, and the 18th hole wraps around a shoulder of the hill. 

This focal point of the West Course’s routing casts the property in a flattering light. By using one stellar topographical feature in many different ways, MacKenzie fools the golfer into believing that the land contains more variety than it actually does. (He pulled off the same trick at Cypress Point, Augusta National, and nearly all of his other courses from the mid-1920s on.)

Yes, MacKenzie deserves tremendous credit for importing state-of-the-art British ideas about golf course design to Royal Melbourne specifically and Australia generally. But what makes the West Course unique is not architecture alone; it is the combination of that architecture with stewardship that has hewed closely to MacKenzie’s principles of strategy (enabled by links-like playing conditions) and naturalism. Royal Melbourne’s superintendents, from Mick Morcom to Claude Crockford to today’s John Forsyth, have prioritized firmness over lushness, patina over high-tech agronomics, tawny natives over foreign greenery. They have taken pains to retain the sizes and shapes of the gorgeous, sinuous bunkers that MacKenzie designed and Russell and Morcom constructed. They have forestalled the instinctive inward creep of mowing lines. In recent years, Forsyth and consulting architect Tom Doak have focused on vegetation management, removing trees that were added in the mid-20th century and restoring indigenous heath. Forsyth and Doak still have work to do on this front, but they have made admirable progress so far.

At Royal Melbourne, the theories of Golden Age golf architecture are not merely theoretical; they come to life with the lively bounce and roll of the ball. Except in extreme cases, the West Course is not vulnerable to the aerial attack of the modern game. If you want an advantage, you have to chase an angle. And that’s why Royal Melbourne West is one of the small handful of legitimate candidates for the title of greatest golf course in the world.

3 Eggs

(How We Rate Courses)

The West Course at Royal Melbourne is the epitome of a three-Egg course. Its land, design, and presentation are all supreme. 

Course Tour

{{royal-melbourne-west-course-tour-01}}

Additional Content

Great Courses 4: Michael Clayton Talks Royal Melbourne (Fried Egg Golf Podcast)

Regions of Golf: The Melbourne Sandbelt (Designing Golf Podcast)