Hi guys - sorry for missing this over the holiday season. FWIW I'm on the ranking panel for Golf Australia mag so can potentially give some insight into why some of these courses are ranked as they are.
As above a big part of the greatness of Royal Melbourne is that an 18 marker and scratch player can both play the course and have a challenging game where there is little hope of the long marker being humiliated. It's the classic "easy bogey hard birdie" course (Simpson/Reed had one birdie between them in two days of fourball). This is surprisingly hard to achieve in golf design. You typically need a big wide undulating property and outstanding bunkering to pull it off.
I actually agree that the marram is a big draw back to both these courses and Cape Wickham. It's effectively like you have OOB on both sides of 70-80% of fairways and they really fail the "playable for all" test that is a key component of great golf architecture (a la Royal Melbourne). That said both BD and LF are truly world class courses. Be interested to see how many better stretches you've seen than 3/4/5/6/7/8/9 at BD for example.My cat amongst the pigeon comment is that Barnbougle/Lost Farm are massively over rated. Can honestly say have no idea what the who-har is over them. Both are short with the most ridiculously penal rough from which you're forced to take a drop. Golf is hard enough without the course forcing you take a penalty every errant shot.
I've quizzed multiple current Vic raters on KH being ranked lower than Peninsula North and none of us claims to have had the order that way. So I can't explain it and I don't believe there is a slide. I had it very close to the absolute top of the tree. It's as outstanding as ever.What are the thoughts of you guys on the slide down of Kingston Heath?
You didn't say what you had on the other 9Royal Melbourne for me I found to forgiving and felt like it played very short. If i didn't miss a 2 foot put that i didn't put properly because i was upset the birdie put lipped out I would have been +5 after 9 holes (as someone whose ga handicap is 19.2 and playing off 22) For me i was after a bigger challenge, even the fairway bunkers I hit a fairway wood out of twice because they were just easy to get out of.
As above a big part of the greatness of Royal Melbourne is that an 18 marker and scratch player can both play the course and have a challenging game where there is little hope of the long marker being humiliated. It's the classic "easy bogey hard birdie" course (Simpson/Reed had one birdie between them in two days of fourball). This is surprisingly hard to achieve in golf design. You typically need a big wide undulating property and outstanding bunkering to pull it off.