Royal Melbourne Is The Real Presidents Cup Star

“The compartments, the bunkering, the green sizes and green shapes, you can tell the they’re distant cousins but they’re in the same family.”

— Ben Crenshaw comparing Royal Melbourne to Augusta National

The Presidents Cup is all about the players but the real star of this week’s matches is the golf course — The Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

It’s the best course in Australia, a country dotted with great layouts.  But there in the Victoria Sandbelt sits the course designed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie, architect of The Augusta National Golf Club.

Ben Crenshaw, who builds and designs superb layouts with partner Bill Coore, made the comparison above.  But what we’ll see this week at the matches is a composite course that will use 12 holes from the famous West course and six from its little sister — the East course.

MacKenzie gets the credit for the design but Crenshaw brought up a name most golfers around the world won’t recognize.

“He was only there a few months,” Crenshaw said of MacKenzie.  “His paperwork and skeleton are there, but the greatest stroke of luck (for him) was to meet Mick Morcom.”

Morcom was a greenskeeper and he’s given great credit for constructing the West Course, following the plans MacKenzie drew up.  The construction was completed in 1931, about the time with MacKenzie was getting involved with Bobby Jones on Augusta National, which would be his design.

Royal Melbourne doesn’t have monster length, in fact, it’s short by today’s standards — less than 7,000 yards but it will require superior shot-making to avoid trouble.  Don’t short-side yourself this week or you’ll pay the price.  There’s plenty of trouble and there will be plenty of long putts, given the size of the greens.

Wind could also be a factor.  There will be some of it every day with the first day’s matches looking at breezes that could range 17-25 miles per hour.

Could be a slight advantage for the Internationals, the U.S. players didn’t exactly tear it up on day one of  the Hero World Challenge when the gusts hit 20-25.

American architect Tom Doak summed up Royal Melbourne quite nicely with this observation:

“Royal Melbourne, I think, is the course Augusta wants to be – wide enough for anybody, but brilliantly routed to make use of the topography and bunkered to reward bold play and bold decisions.”

Yes there will be bold play this week and bold decisions.

Count on it.