How Brisbane has joined the race for golf tourists

By Peter Owen

WITH football teams firmly entrenched at the top of AFL and NRL ladders, a community eagerly preparing to host an Olympic Games, and with a host of sophisticated dining and drinking venues operating, there’s a distinct buzz about Brisbane right now.

Toss in its sublime year-round climate and a host of surprisingly good golf courses – many of which have benefitted from recent renovations – and our most northerly state capital has suddenly become a surprising authentic golf destination in its own right.

Brisbane’s Royal Queensland Golf Club will next month again host the Australian PGA Championship, an event that vies with the Australian Open as this country’s most significant tournament. 

And only a few weeks ago, Brisbane’s first new public golf course in 70 years – the innovative 18-hole Minnippi Golf and Range, based at Cannon Hill in the city’s southeast – opened its gates to a whole new army of potential golfers.

There’s a new feeling of confidence and assurance in this city which, until recent years, was considered by residents of the southern states to be a ‘big country town’, populated by hillbillies and retirees. And, to be honest, the quality of some of its facilities helped fuel that sentiment. 

Twenty-five years ago, professional golfers were so disenchanted with Brisbane’s golf courses that they quietly lobbied for the Australian PGA Championship to be moved away from the capital, and so began the Hyatt Coolum’s decade of hosting the great event on the Sunshine Coast.

But the Aussie PGA is now back at Royal Queensland, and nobody’s complaining any longer. The course has benefitted enormously from a redesign 15 years ago by Mike Clayton and his team, which transformed the course.

It’s still basically flat, but there are now subtle contours to add interest, and the wide fairways, small greens and well-placed hazards throw up choices for golfers on almost every hole. 

RQ, as Queenslanders refer to Brisbane’s premier course, was founded in 1920. Carnegie Clark, a three-time Australian Open champion and a gifted designer of golf equipment and courses, was commissioned to design the original course.

However, a few years later Dr Alister MacKenzie, the golf course genius perhaps best known for creating Royal Melbourne, paid a visit, inspected the course and made a few suggestions for improvement.

MacKenzie’s visit came after officials of Royal Queensland, Brisbane and Indooroopilly clubs offered the Scot one thousand guineas – a huge amount in those days – to inspect their courses and advise on how they could be made better

Soon after his visit to Brisbane, MacKenzie flew to Georgia, in the deep south of the United States, where golfing legend Bobby Jones asked him to design a golf course on an old fruit plantation he had purchased. The result was Augusta National, the home of the US Masters.

Jens Holland, who now runs the clubhouse at St Lucia – a popular public course which was the original site of the Indooroopilly Golf Club – jokes that the great golf architect must have taken his inspiration for Augusta National from the Brisbane courses he had so recently visited.

Like RQ, Brisbane Golf Club has undergone a recent transformation, largely a result of the influence of architect Ross Watson and new course superintendent David Mason, who had previously been in charge at Melbourne’s Metropolitan Golf Club.

Brisbane Golf Club, situated 8km south of the city at Yerongpilly, has the great good fortune of having three excellent ‘spare’ holes – the 19th, 20th and 21st – which can be called into action when work is being carried out elsewhere.

A classic golf course, the only one in Australia with Champion Ultradwarf Bermuda grass greens, Brisbane has hosted the Queensland Open 21 times.

A few kilometres north of RQ is the recently redesigned Nudgee Golf Club, which now hosts the Queensland PGA Championship. The club undertook a full 36-hole redevelopment of its two golf courses under the supervision of course architect James Wilcher.

Largescale renovations are also taking place at Pacific Golf Club and bayside Redland Bay Golf Club as Brisbane clubs take advantage of the resurgence in golf to improve their facilities.

Like St Lucia, where the emphasis is less on tradition and more on just enjoying golf in as casual a fashion as you choose, Brisbane’s new Minnippi Golf Club is as much a community hub as a golf course.

Situated at Cannon Hill, 20 minutes from the CBD, the club offers a three-hole loop for those short of time, programs for women and juniors, and caters for golfers of all levels – even absolute beginners.

“We don’t have 100 years of tradition so we can write the rules from the start,” said Anthony Lawrence, CEO of Clublinks, which won the contract with Brisbane City Council to operate the facility.

“Golf is at the core of everything we’re doing but we’re able to bring a contemporary thought process into and around it.”

After golf’s been played, Brisbane offers nightlife and dining opportunities as sophisticated as any Australian capital city. Much of the focus is on the Howard Smith Wharf, a former dockland situated under the northern approaches to the Story Bridge.

Dubbed the ‘beating heart of Brisbane’s entertainment city’ and accessed by an elevator from Bowen Terrace, this vibrant precinct in the heart of Fortitude Valley is home to 13 restaurants, cafes, bars and a hotel, the hub dominated by the award-winning Felons Brewery, which seems to attract full houses every night.

A few kilometres downriver, a similar entertainment precinct is taking shape at Portside Wharf, on the waterfront at trendy Hamilton, where work is continuing on a $20 million makeover to expand existing outdoor dining and entertainment options.

It’s no surprise that Brisbane should be named Australia’s top sports city in a 2023 BCW Ranking of Sports Cities, which placed Melbourne second, in front of Sydney and the Gold Coast.

With $19 billion of projects in the pipeline, Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said: “Brisbane is alive with opportunity and on an exciting growth trajectory.”

In the 12 months to March 2023, 7.4 million people visited Brisbane, up nearly 50% from the previous year, while 2.5 million chose to holiday in the city – up 62.3% on the previous year and 7.7% up on pre-Covid 2019.