By Jeff Centenera
Golf Australia Assistant Editor
at the Australian PGA Championship
Thanks to years of television coverage, Coolum is one of the more readily recognisable courses to even the most casual Australian golf fan. That’s why there will be some puzzled looks with the beginning of the PGA, as the players set out on a new half-dozen holes that span the 1st to the 6th. As noted course design junkie Geoff Ogilvy put it: “It doesn’t feel like you’re at Coolum until you get to the 7th tee.”
He did add that the new holes will eventually take on the character of Coolum, with time. The course’s original designer, Robert Trent Jones Jnr, was brought back to make these changes, with the layout now setting out from behind the short-game practice area before looping back on the far side of the driving range.
The hole that has earned the most attention is the long 3rd, which has been turned into par-4 for the pros by the modern method of shortening a true par-5 (which is the par the resort guests will play). With a cape-style green, it has the character of a three-shotter. Into a stiff wind, as it was on Wednesday, it’s brutal. Jones deflected criticism of the hole, noting the 4th is a short, drivable par-4. There will be enough threes made there to compensate for the fives on the previous hole. “Take the two together and you’ve got par-8.”
The short par-3 6th, over the green site of the old 1st, has also been derided by players as an afterthought hole, wedged in to make the routing work. Ogilvy was even-handed: “It seems all the new par-3s we play these days are 250 yards, so it’s nice to have a 140-yarder.”
The old opening holes at Coolum encouraged fast starts; despite having two par-5s and the short par-4 in the new half-dozen, Adam Scott and Robert Allenby, among others, thought it would tougher getting away. Jones was as interested as anyone to see how his creations would fare in tournament play. As for the complaints, he responded: “You hear a lot of whingeing from the pros – which makes me glad.”
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