IT has already hosted the best golfers in Australia – and come out roses.
Yet most golfers in Sydney probably still haven’t heard of Oak Point Golf Club.
That’s because it was originally Liverpool Golf Club, hidden away on the banks of the Georges River in the suburb of Lansvale.
And it’s a layout that impressed many when it played host to Peter Lonard and other big-name pros when it hosted the NSW Open there in successive years.
That looks certain to change – thanks mainly to the departure of Kogarah Golf Club from our golfing landscape.
The closure of that club at the end of March this year has brought an exciting future to Oak Point with the amalgamation of Liverpool and Kogarah into a club that now has money in the bank and is gearing up for a bright future.
“I guess you could say the place just needed some love,” says Oak Point chief executive officer Robin Taylor, who took the reins at the club earlier this year.
The spate of horror weather in the past couple of years took its toll on Sydney golf courses – and Liverpool was no different.
With the area prone to flooding, the club lost some members, frustrated by their lack of golf when the course was too wet to play.
Thanks to renowned course designer James Wilcher and his company Golf By Design, a whole new design is now before Fairfield Council and the future looks bright.
Wilcher was thrilled to get the chance to improve a layout he feels can become one of the best inland courses in Sydney . . . and one that would be perfect to host some major events in the future.
And he promises the finished result where wetlands will be a feature, rather than a hazard for golfers looking for a challenge.
Oak Point, formerly Liverpool Golf Club, is set to undergo a significant upgrade.
“It wouldn’t be fair to keep it all to ourselves,” says Taylor.
“We plan to have a layout that would be perfect to host some major championships.
“We now have a clearer picture of what our membership base is going forward. We have about 750 members post amalgamation and are progressing with infrastructure planning so we can press the button in nine to 12 months’ time.
“The DA has been submitted and we just have to work out how to program the works and associated funding.
“The original layout was top 100 in Australia as recently as 2002 and offers a variety of different shots and has always been a good challenge.
“Liverpool’s challenge was revenue generation and one of the things that fell by the wayside was drainage.
“The past five or six years the weather has knocked us around. In fact, 2022 was particularly bad and we lost about 108 days of golf and subsequently we lost about 300 members.
“It was about then that Kogarah began looking around for clubs interested in amalgamation.
“And the thing that attracted Kogarah’s board was the fact Liverpool owned its own land and because of the recent exodus of members, there was the capacity to move their members across without putting too much extra strain on the time sheets.
“The sale of Kogarah brought around $60m and the idea is we spend a proportion of that on upgrading the course, the clubhouse, green sheds and we also need to build a standalone cart shed for insurance purposes.
“And the balance of the fund, we’ll have $20m to $25m left over to put in a future fund to ensure the smooth running and reinvestment in the club in future years.”
Taylor said four architects were approached before settling on Wilcher, who proposed a dramatic re-working of the course, with changes to every hole.
And while some members might have been happy to leave the course as it was, the opportunity to improve the course for the benefit of all Members and to eliminate some existing inherent weaknesses, is a unique one and one that should be pursued.
Wilcher said 6500m off the tips might make Oak Point as long as any course in Sydney.
“We’re taking the problems of the site and using them to our advantage,” Wilcher told Inside Golf.
“And it will look mature in six months.
“I think the result will be a layout as good an inland course as any course along our coastline.”
