CHRISTMAS arrived early for the members of Oxley Golf Club in Brisbane with the opening of the TopStroke short course in early December.
The mini-golf facility is terrific and is one of the largest built in Australia – just over 3200m2 which includes 18 mini-golf holes along with a further nine-hole practice putting green that has full disability access.
“This (disability access) was identified as an essential component of the facility,” said the club’s general manager Aaron Muirhead.
More than 140 people including sponsors, board members, life members, ladies committee members and people that assisted in building the project attended the VIP opening in late November.
The opening of such an important VIP event wouldn’t be the same without a politician attending and the Federal member for Oxley, Milton Dick, was there to say a few words and congratulate the forward-thinking club on providing its members and guests with an additional facility.
In the lead-up to the VIP opening, the club invited members to “test drive” the course.
“We had a members’ night two weeks prior to opening to test out some of our systems and 318 members came along to play between 5 and 8.30pm,” Muirhead added. “The feedback we received from members was fantastic.”
The fully-floodlit mini-golf facility and putting green was designed by golf industry legend David Pelz, a former coach of players of the calibre of Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh.
“David is a renowned short-game coach and he designed the facility in conjunction with course designer Paul Jansen, who was the head designer at Nick Faldo Design,” Muirhead said.
“This facility has been designed to appeal to all golfing levels and abilities – young and mature.”
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. 
