The town of Coromandel is a big focus for the latest COVID lockdown. The Coromandel Golf Club should be open as a welcome relief to the good people of this town. If there is a sport that should be exempt from restrictions we all know it should be golf.

This course is a wee bit special. All the holes are named after a gold mine according to the history lesson on the wall of the clubrooms. I wonder if “Try Again” the 10th was a failed 2nd attempt at a gold mine I’d like to think it is.

Just on the edge of town, the course is an unassuming affair. “Scotties” the opener is a simple straightforward par 4. Make the most of this as each hole has its own character – just like a gold mine – I’d imagine.

The 2nd, “Hauraki” takes you straight back to the clubrooms, good if you left your sandwich in the car. A gentle downhill par 4 with a couple of nice-looking bunkers at the green.

A nice run from here, down “Bunker Hill”, up “Union Beach” and a great drive off “Tokatea” – a par 5 which should be a scoring hole if you can keep your cool off the tee. This is a nice and challenging part of the course.

The 5th takes you back to the clubrooms, good if you left your drink in the car!

The 6th is the start of the best of the course, it is called “Success” without knowing the history the hole didn’t look like success. Uphill to an elevated green (again) short but shitty – we all know someone like that.

The par 5 7th and the brilliant downhill par 3 8th leave you enjoying every bit of this golf course. Ending on “Slaughterhouse” is much better than the old standard elsewhere called “Wrecker”.

I find this course very different across the 9 holes. The greens are in good nick, the hole names are some of the coolest around. I like the number of times you get back to the clubrooms. Good for never getting caught short, grabbing a chocolate bar, a cold beer, or fresh pencil.

Definitely worthy of making the Top Nine Holes in New Zealand. A really good place to be, so get out and support our regional courses, when the lockdown levels drop.

If you meet a politician then have a word in their shell-like. Golf should be free to play at any level, if you can ride your bike for exercise then the pleasure of a round of golf will keep the morale of New Zealand up in these tough times.

The town of Paeroa is world-famous in New Zealand since ages ago. I have never been to this legend of a town and I was a bit excited driving down the main street. The Paeroa Golf Club is 6 km from the massive L&P bottle in the heart of the town. Paeroa town is more than just a fizzy drink, there is interesting shopping and it has a cool vibe.

The course was very quiet, sitting lonely at Rotokohu, in the Valley of the Mist. It was a beautifully clear hot day, no idea where that name came from, not today anyway.

The history of Paeroa Golf Club has been very well documented in the “Century of Golf Strokes” published for the centenary celebrations in 2004. It was a pleasure to be playing a golf course with such a rich history and at the heart of the local community.

There is a par 3 to start, just like Thames Golf Club I like this unusual choice of starting hole.

The next 3 holes have a boundary fence tight to the right-hand side of the fairway. I would recommend leaving your slice in the car.

Following the short starter, it gets serious on the 2nd, the longest hole on the course a 482 metre par 5.

And wakey wakey the 3rd is another monster par 5 at 466 metres. Fully warmed up now, I enjoyed the run through the 4th-6th, “Summit” had a great looking approach to the narrow green.

“Elbow” the 5th need a power fade to slide around the corner and get up near the green on the short par 4. I enjoyed the drive here, blind from an elevated tee box.

The hole of the day was the spectacular 6th. There was water on the right and bush on the left to attract your eye. But the view across “Chasm” was enticing. 133 metres down across the steep valley, just lovely in a lovely part of the world.

A new local tee, – the L&P Tee – is slightly high but encourages you to hit up on the ball.

The ninth is a cool hole with a tight corridor of trees to negotiate from the tee. The green is protected by a stream and a couple of well placed bunkers.

The back nine starts with a “Westward Ho” – I have been critical of this hole name previously. From reading the 100 year history of the club this name was in place many years ago. So maybe I need to nod to the past and pull my head in.

But what I did discover from the pages is that the 3rd was called “Donga” in 1948. In 2004 they dropped this name in favour of “The Pines” – good bye Donga and good riddance. ! That’s one for the record books, other clubs take note you can alter your past and move your club forward with better hole names, come on…..

The back nine has good scoring opportunities with mid-length par 4’s and generous fairways. The far end of the course brings you back up stroke hole 1, the 14th, “Homeward” needs 2 good shots to get up to the green.

The closing 4 should set up your card, if you haven’t run out of puff. So keep a can of the good lemony stuff on hand to power you home.

18 is a short 286-metre par 4 taking you back to the clubrooms. “Journey’s End” is apt, enjoy the peace of the valley and remember those that have gone before. A great kiwi classic with a little fizz.

The Kopu Bridge that crosses the Waihou River into the Coromandel is the gateway to Thames. This was the busiest one-laned bridge affair in the country, until 2012 when the new bridge was completed with 2 full lanes.

I stopped before the bridge to fill up the tank and get provisions, unsure if I’d find an open clubhouse at the golf club with drinks on show. The man at the gas station was stout and had a baritone tonality to his voice. Deep but smooth as he bid me a good day.

A quiet car park at Thames Golf Club, but the golf shop was open, I felt a little disquiet as I wasn’t for adding any revenue to the club on this occasion. The lady in the clubhouse shop was dressed in shocking pink and welcomed us with husky gravel in her timbre.

Was there something about this area that attracted this type? Golf club manager by day – Jazz singer by night? She was interested, like most Jazz singers. Where we were from and do we know the course?

I bought a pitch marker repair tool with the Thames Golf Club logo on to make up for the previous lack of confidence in the drink supply.

She pointed out that we start playing toward the hill and this loops back into the flat of the early part of the course. The back nine is back out towards the hill for another loop.

From the car park, I thought the course was on the flat, no she affirmed not so flat. It does venture up the hill. Not quite as testing as the Pinnacles – a local stiff climb which needs a ladder ascent near the summit to get you up top.

Near Death Experience

I played a few weeks back with a couple of older chaps. The conversation turned to which golf courses were the hardest walking. This quickly led onto which course had put my playing partner in the hospital. Waitakere was the obvious first choice. He nodded and mentioned the 18th at Maungakiekie, and how he fell over at Pupuke, ” you need one long leg and one short leg to play there every week.”

Thames Golf Club was not that bad! A few hills out the back of the course to get the thirst up but generally manageable without a cart.

A flat start and a 163-metre par 3, I was glad of this. The driver had a month of excellence but has recently hit a speed bump. Bryson Dechambeau won the US open with only a 41% driving accuracy. I was doing the same but just significantly further from the green.

I had a lesson with the trusty Ross, which gave me a focus on how to straighten the long stick somewhat. We all know it takes 2 games and some practice to get out the other side of a lesson. This was game 1 – it could spell danger!

The course here looks like a simple affair. There was only a handful of game souls out there on the day. So I was full of inaccurate assumptions that it wasn’t much of a course.

The elevation changes start a the 3rd, 15 metres up from tee to green. Then another 10 metres up on the 4th.

The 5th is from an elevated tee in case your legs hadn’t had enough. A 295 metre dogleg par 4. A sloping fairway and tricky green made this shorty much harder than it appeared on first viewing.

The course has 7 par 4’s 300 metres or under. This should make for good scoring if you can get your drive in the right place. My driver was doing okay following the lesson, but I wasn’t feeling it. Too much thinking was getting in the way.

The front nine was a success due to a good run of pars, including a nice par on the 8th – “The Drop” a 169 metre (all downhill) par 3 – followed by a nice birdie on the par 5 nineth. I felt good about my score at the 10th tee, only 3 over the card.

Our Jazz singer appeared on the 10th tee, “not as flat as you thought eh?” she improvised.

Getting Jazzy

Following on from a front nine to be (quite) proud of, the back nine took a hold of me. I slowly realised that my golf life was like being in a big Jazz band. The marriage of golf and music came to me as I hit an off-tempo slice into the trees on the 11th.

I knew my golf game was inconsistent, it was proud and daring and stupid and brilliant. I couldn’t just learn a simple rhythm and stick to it. Always tweaking or improvising. Never happy with the pop song cookie-cutter approach.

I am Jazz in a golfer. There no definitive explanation or definition of what Jazz is. The Jazz musician has a keen sense of improvisation that allows them to thwart all attempts of confinement.

A long line of questions around where the term Jazz comes from has provided no answers. One hundred years of the birth of Jazz was celebrated in 2017, the answers to the questions of its origin and what it actually is, remain elusive.

It is spontaneous, improvised, a syncopation of ideas. This is the accenting of a note that usually would not be accented. Often described as offbeat, the true essence of Jazz. If this is not my golf game I don’t what is.

Add the realisation, the “swing” is a large part of what Jazz is and I now agree with myself that golf is Jazz. The spontaneity of Jazz allows a Jazz man to have no planning, he can walk into a Jazz “Club” that he has never visited, with guys he has never seen, and just play. Golf affords the same luxury.

When you look at a hole called “Temptation” (the 5th ) or the “Devil’s Elbow” ( the 12th) – these are risk or reward holes. If you have seen La La Land – the jazz pianist Seb frets endlessly about what is and isn’t jazz – “it’s conflict and it’s compromise, it’s new every time…” Yip that’s Jazz and that’s the choice between the Driver or the 6 iron, conflict, compromise and a new outcome every time.

I stumbled through the back nine, not playing to my full potential or to the audience. But I really enjoyed this part of the course.

There were 4 cracking risk or reward drives, a short par 5 and a cool 100 metre directly up par 3, called “Summit.” This was the opposite twin of “The Drop” on the front nine.

I’m not sure how I dropped 7 shots over the nine holes to put me back in the pack, but I enjoyed the ride.

Devil’s Elbow required a clever iron off the tee and a precise wedge into the green. The course for me came to life on the back nine and filled me with the jingling sound of a great golf course.

I think running through the hole names of a course gives you a sense of what is in store. Thames had all the classics, including “Donga”, an overly used name that should be impeached. It means a dried up ravine formed by an action of water. Why is it so prevalent across the country?

I do favour the “Hopeful” and “Calamity” they no doubt are phycological warfare on the weak minded golfer.

Back to the quality of Thames Golf Club, it is a great course over some lovely countryside. If you are crossing the bridge into the Coromandel swerve off and enjoy all that this course has to offer.

A morning spent watching the third round of the Masters spurred me into the car and off to golf. A little known Waikato nine hole course in the countryside was a mystery box.

I was surprised to see the club rooms open in the afternoon at Hukanui Golf Club. I was more surprised that the friendly welcome was all genuine. Following the financial transaction the lady in the club talked me through the layout of the course. I headed off down the laneway towards the first, excited by the prospect.

The first is right next to the road, “Roadway”, not Roadhole, it was a drive you don’t want from the first tee. The noise of the busy traffic drew your attention. The group in front were walking the road line peering across the tarmac.

With the tee shot sorted and in the fairway, I found that the green isn’t too far from the passing cars either. A small green which was soft and slow.

Number 2 was into the wind and a challenging hit, 189 metres – with the road still on the left. Following a lavish swish of my hybrid from the tee, I headed off to peer across the tarmac. It was a beautiful high draw that bounced down the road, missing the oncoming traffic thankfully. 3 shots out of my 4 handicap for the nine dropped on the 2nd, this could be a tricky round.

My confidence was still high, I’d scored my best round in the year of lockdown down at Clarks Beach a few days before. Five over the card on the course, that made me feel like a golfer.

Okay, the classic hole names of Homeward Bound and Westward Ho were nowhere to be seen. But we got “Long John” on the 3rd, is this a Treasure Island pirate reference – it could be my new most cringe-worthy hole name.

It was a long par 5, of course. Right-hand dogleg needing a powerful draw from the tee. I imagined the laser tracer thing that follows a drive at the Masters on the TV, bending perfectly around the corner. Nailed it! Visualisation works after all.

The 4th was another par 5, called “not so Long John” – no it wasn’t – but it was shorter and a great driving hole over a ridge to a blind fairway. I nearly hit a random foot golfer.
The club has opened up to footgolf, which is cool and will provide much-needed revenue. The footballers have no idea how hard a golf ball is, so it may end up in disaster.

I was enjoying the course and the conditions but my excitement following the clubhouse lady’s description had lessened at little, nice course but maybe not great.

I was wrong, the uphill short par 4 fifth hole was a great golf hole – fairway bunkers to ask you the question and a hidden gully to stop you laying up. There were wonderful views from the hilltop green. It started a run of 5 holes that were excellent.

The 152 metre downhill 6th, “Beehive” was buzzin’ from it’s elevated tee. I had been told that the 7th over the gully was the course’s signature.

The Canyon

We cracked a can of zero alcohol beer for the occasion and let 2 foot golfers pass through, (very short are these soccer players). If you want a bit of fun at the supermarket ask them why they need a supervisor to the check out to allow you to buy zero alcohol beer, it’s beer you see.

So “Canyon” is the risk or reward hole of the day. Drive over the gully, canyon might make you think of the place in America, not quite as big here at Hukanui Golf Club.

The hole is all risk, OB on the left, trees on the right, a narrowing fairway leading into the green protected by a great deep bunker. Don’t hit the driver, there is no reward.

Just as hole names were improving, we got a “Deception” – the 8th needs a high fade over the corner. DJ was doing it around Augusta all day so why not me. Visualisation saw a perfect DJ like drive ( minus about 100 metres or so)

Walnuts

At the last you get “Walnuts”, the road comes back into play on the left and the clubhouse is 2 paces from the back of the green. You could put your drink order on your ball ready for a quick thinned tee shot. 123 metres to the green it is a lovely way to complete the course.

I was even more pleased to see the bar was still open, not normal for a country course later in the day. Sitting at the back of the ninth enjoying a real beer was very pleasant indeed.

The club claims they have the best 9 holes in the Waikato. I tend to agree, but I’ve only played one other. It ranks up there on the Top 10 NZ Nine Hole Golf Course list.

The course is tidy, the layout is challenging and the clubrooms are very friendly. Cheers Hukanui Golf Club for a great day out.

By accident, on this day I discovered Walton Golf Club. The hidden gem of New Zealand golf courses. A claim made by many but not always backed up. This course could be the real thing.

Following an overnight stop in Taupo, I searched for a course heading north that has appeal on this rustic tour of NZ golf courses. Breakfast on the lake was amazing. I had a quick look at the Lake Taupo hole in one challenge, it was packed with suckers trying to hole out for cash. Like the traveller rigged fairground games – heads they win – tails you lose.

Today’s decision of where to play my round of golf was not dictated by the weather gods. It was the warmest day of the year so far.
When you head north out of Taupo you pass Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary, I slowed knowing that quality lies behind the walls. But this not for today’s challenge, I was going rustic.

I made the decision to pass 2 courses, Tokoroa Golf Club and Putaruru Golf Club, before stopping in Tirau, the corrugated capital of New Zealand. Tirau Golf Club was CLOSED! Arghh bloody coring. The greenkeeper came over to offer an apology that we missed out on the chance to play, he suggested Walton Golf Club. Only a little way up the road near the Cambridge area.

We drove merrily along in search of Walton, through some beautiful countryside with horse stud farms dotted all around the area.

The tree-lined arrival into Walton was a hint to what we had in store ahead of us. The car park looked busy for a little course in the countryside on a Monday. Was there some International COVID
defying event taking place?

There were many ladies in purple around the clubhouse, luckily they were finishing up their round. So we had the course to ourselves mainly.

Lathered in sunscreen for the first time this season and the smell of fresh blossom put a pep in my step.
Golfers should not like trees. I don’t study trees and have little expertise in this field. I do know Onewhero Golf Club has too many macrocarpas.

But here at Walton I maybe have loosened my dislike of a tree. Someone has taken great pride in planting a vast collection of trees here, plenty of cherry blossoms, and well-manicured conifers, a magnolia or two plus more species I need help with. It was a pleasure to see such a spectacular spring day be reflected in the trees all around the course.

There were recognizable tall tall pines trees and wispy
willows plus a rhododendron when needed. The course could easily host a garden tour visit as well as golf.

No hole names here today at Walton Golf Club. The 1st had a nice elevated look at what was coming up. A par 5 first up is always good news in my opinion.

Following a long time sitting in the car getting to a golf course, I always think a wee warm-up should be included before starting the round. I didn’t do that and struggled to find the fairway pulling my driver into a different culture of trees on the first few holes.

The course is longer than most rural courses at 5,725 metres a par 72. There are no easy wins here, the 7th, a par 5, the par 3 8th and the 9th heading back up to the side of the clubrooms was a nice run of holes. All with good bunkering.

I’m not sure of my favourite hole on the course. The 10th through to the 13th was enjoyable. Ending with a cool water pump windmill thing at the back of the green.

After this, the course had more trees and a great outlook in front of me. It was certainly a very pretty part of the course. This golf course had a charm all the way around and it seemed to me that it was comfortable in its own skin.

The greens had been cored 5 weeks before – the Tirau Golf Club greenkeeper told me, so they were hard and difficult to hold the ball on. You needed to drop most approaches onto the front edge. That said they were very true and made for good putting. With my new found putting religion, I enjoyed the short game today.

The area is new to me, the farmland surrounding the course was a good looking affair and well-groomed. There are views out the distant mountain ranges. A thoroughly pleasant place to play golf. I might have found a golf course that has missed the limelight, but maybe the locals like it that way.

Adding Walton Golf Club to the Top New Zealand Golf courses list was an easy decision. I felt the community in the trees, the love in the fairways and all of this with one greenkeeper.

As toilet situations go, they were in pretty locations. Fine loo’s to match the rest of the course. So if you got to go, go to Walton. You will not be disappointed with this country golf course in the heart of the Waikato.