Peter Williams: Fairways worth the drive

1.00pm - COMMENT

The Coromandel has long been a mecca for fishing, boating and water-based fun but pretty ordinary for golfers. There's a considerable turn for the better this weekend, with the opening of Lakes Resort near Pauanui. The course is open to the public as from tomorrow.

To be honest, it would have been preferable to wait another few months to allow the entire course to become fully mature and get more of the infrastructure completed. But the course is very playable now and, considering the time it's taken to get this far, the desire of the owners to get people on the course for the summer season is understandable.

The property on the road into Pauanui, about 5km from the holiday town itself, has been in development for the best part of six years. It's a basin of mainly flat land, including natural wetland areas, in a ruggedly hilly part of the country. A golf and residential community was started back in the late '90s but there were problems with both money and design.

Original owner Gary MacDougall brought new partners in a couple of years ago to rectify the financial issues and Canadian course architects Sid Puddicombe and Associates modified and completed the layout. Construction was completed in April this year and while most holes are now well established some, especially on the back nine, show understandable signs of immaturity.

But my first impression on playing there last weekend is that this course will become one of the really worthwhile golfing experiences in the country, a place to rival Wairakei, Gulf Harbour and Kauri Cliffs.

It is demanding but not stupidly penal. At 6171 metres off the back tees it is not outrageously long and for the most part it's bereft of blind landing areas from the tee and greens where you can't see the bottom of the flagstick.

Course superintendent Simon Forshaw, formerly of Millbrook and Balmacewan, reckons there are 55 bunkers around the layout. Some of them, especially those on the corners of the dogleg par fours, are huge. One, on the right hand side of the par five 17th, actually merges straight into a tidal water hazard. The old golfing expression of hitting your ball "on the beach" is a truism here.

The best feature of the place is the condition of the playing surfaces. The tee blocks are level and spacious. The ryegrass fairways are as good as any I've played. They're devoid of the bare patches that couch grass produces in our climate and if you hit the ball on the fairway you'll get a good lie.

The greens, grown in a new bentgrass developed at Penn State University in the United States, are devoid of outrageous undulations and offer plenty of pin placement options on each hole.

There's plenty of water, although the par three 10th is the only hole where your knees might be knocking on the tee. It's 155 metres off the back blocks with nothing but wet to the green.

The wetlands have been well used in a sequence on the back nine. The expansive nature of the first 11 holes suddenly changes to a more claustrophobic environment as native trees encroach upon narrowing fairways.

In keeping with the philosophy of a golf course becoming more difficult the further you get around it, the 12th to the 15th is the best stretch, with the 14th, at 403 metres, the most difficult of all.

Richard Ellis, chairman of the New Zealand PGA, left his job as the founding director of golf at Gulf Harbour and its associated glamour status to take a similar job here.

Ellis will never get to be host pro for a New Zealand Open at Lakes Resort because it's a bit too far from Auckland but, even in a bumper-to-bumper holiday crawl along SH2, it's only a couple of hours from the Harbour Bridge.

Give this place a year and it'll be one of the best in the land.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY