The property here was originally a racecourse that was converted into a golf course during the 1930s, with the unheralded Gordon Oliver handling the design. Oliver’s greens and bunkers were updated in the 1940s by Vern Morcom, who also made a couple of key routing changes, most notably to convert the par five 9th into two charming shorter holes. Indeed it’s the hogs-back short par four 8th, and treacherous par three 9th at Long Island that most visitors remember best. The preceding holes are also good, however, as are a number of the longer par fours across the back nine.
A real sleeper of the Melbourne Sandbelt, the Long Island Golf Club occupies a nicely undulating tract of golfing ground immediately adjacent to the more famous Peninsula Country Golf Club.
While the routing and greens design is more varied and sophisticated elsewhere in Melbourne, Long Island is a terrific place to play and home to precisely the sort of terrain, vegetation, bunkering and turf conditioning that visitors to the Sandbelt will be expecting.
