AHEAD of celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, Burleigh Golf Club is continuing with its beautification and course upgrade program.

Last year the popular Gold Coast club engaged renowned golf course architect Graham Marsh to redesign the par-three 17th hole and the third green.

Last month the new-look lakeside 17th hole opened for play with the members giving it the thumbs up despite the hole being lengthened by 20m to 178m off the tiger tee block.

Still, all levels of golfers are catered for with five tee boxes – 178m, 147m, 129m, 124m and 104m.

“Two tee grounds were levelled and a new tiger tee installed,” said long-time course superintendent Darryl Edwards. “Then we completely rebuilt the 17th green to a Graham Marsh design and installed two new greenside capillary concrete bunkers.

“We also dredged the lake to get rid of leaf litter and silt that had built up and now the lake has a depth of 2.5m, which definitely comes into play.”

A new sandstone wall has been erected around the greenside of the lake, which has added an aesthetic quality to the hole.

“It looks tremendous,” Edwards said. “We rebuilt the green and solid turfed it with 328 bermuda grass with a buffer zone of tiftuf grass right against the green. Then we reshaped and drained the surrounds and that has winter-green grass.”

The new green is 600sq/m in size.

Golf course architect Graham Marsh (right) checking on his design work with Burleigh GC superintendent Darryl Edwards and assistant GM Shane Tempest.

“It has two tiers, but they are only slight and actually gives us three levels of putting surface and more pin-placement options, which was part of the brief,” Edwards said.

Meanwhile, the short par-4 third hole risk-and-reward will have a brand-new green in a different position to the old green that was affected by shade through the winter months.

“We got Graham Marsh to move the green to the right and out of the shade line,” Edwards said. “And we incorporated a number of swales, additional drainage around the green and rebuilt the bunkers – one greenside and two cross bunkers. It’s now a risk-and-reward hole that could take the driver out of the hands of the longer hitters.”

The hole stretches to 282m (black tees), 267m (blue) 257m (white), 251 (red) and 245m (yellow).

Edwards said Marsh, who he has worked with previously in Malaysia, is taking the course to another level by building new bunkering on 11 holes.

“It’s all systems go here at Burleigh with more bunkers to be upgraded. In December, we started work on enlarging the 15th green by 120sq/m,” said Darryl, who in 2023 received the Superintendents Industry Recognition Award for outstanding work in the industry by the Queensland Golf Industry.

Edwards said members and visitors had not been inconvenienced by the ongoing works as the club has a spare (19th) hole. 

About David Newbery

Chief writer David Newbery has been living, breathing and writing and editing golf for more than 30 years. His extensive knowledge of the game comes from covering golf around the world. Hired by Inside Golf in 2009, David previously worked as the editor of The Golfer for 25 years and before that worked for numerous daily newspapers in Australia and overseas. The Brisbane-based journalist describes his golf game as “a work in progress”, but has had the privilege of playing golf with some of the game’s best players including nine-time major winner Gary Player. David enjoys travelling, reading, music, photography and spending time with family and friends – on and off the golf course.

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