When I am pressed to identify the “Best Golf Course in the
World,” I always beg off, saying that there are too many great courses to pick
just one. But if asked which is the ideal golf course, I can narrow the
candidates to two: Royal Melbourne and St.
Andrews’ Old Course. That’s why I believe that everyone interested
in great golf courses must visit Australia sometime in his or her
life.
Royal Melbourne is the masterpiece of Dr. Alister
MacKenzie, who never bragged about it like his other courses because he never
saw it finished. He came to Melbourne in October
1926 on the recommendation of the R&A, taking a fee of 1,000 pounds
Sterling but
agreeing to pay a 50 percent commission for any other consulting work the club
located for him during his trip. Seven weeks later, MacKenzie left
Australia having consulted on 19
courses, so not only did Royal Melbourne receive his best work, they actually
turned a profit on his visit.
Two of those 19 courses are the West and East courses at
Royal Melbourne, though there is some controversy about whether one should rate
the two courses separately, or just the Composite course played for
championships. To me, the point is moot: The West is a 10 on the Doak Scale and
the Composite is slightly better.
There is also some controversy locally about the whirlwind
nature of Dr. MacKenzie’s visit and how much credit he really deserves for all
of his Australian work. When he arrived in Melbourne the club assigned one of
its members, the Australian Amateur champion Alex Russell, to work with
MacKenzie and to follow up his recommendations after the architect left the
country; they also assigned their superintendent, Mick Morcom, to work closely
with MacKenzie in constructing the changes to the course.
The three men got along famously, and during his six weeks in
Melbourne,
MacKenzie instructed them on his design philosophy and his ideas about
natural-looking golf course construction. They only worked on the course a
little bit—building, I believe, the par-3 5th on the West course while MacKenzie
was on site—but by the time he left, Russell and Morcom were as capable of
continuing his work as any partners the Doctor ever had. When the West course
was finished, the two men went on to build the East course in the MacKenzie
style, even though only a handful of the holes had been contemplated by the
Doctor himself.
