"We're really good for selling real estate"

Thanks to reader Hugh for this Martin Blake story on Karrie Webb cutting back on her schedule, with this nugget:

The good news for Golf Australia, which is bringing the national women's Open to Kingston Heath for the first time, is that Webb has had an eight-week break at home in Queensland and feels fresh. Retirement is not on the doorstep quite yet, and she will start a short-priced favourite in this week's tournament.

Venturing out to the course for her first practice session yesterday, it occurred to Webb that many people in golf have no clue how good Melbourne's sandbelt is. The LPGA plays three-quarters of its tournaments on dreadful, new courses.

"We're really good for selling real estate," Webb said. "We go to a lot of courses that are new developments. Obviously, it costs money for tournaments to go to golf courses. Newer golf courses will waive the fee or even pay us to go there because they're trying to sell houses. They can say, 'The LPGA plays here'."

Comments

[Greg]

Besides Kingston Heath, I can only think of five really good courses in the Melbourne sandbelt--Royal Melbourne, Commonwealth, Yarra Yarra, Metropolitan, and Victoria. Are there more?

[Smolmania]

Haven't reached that chapter in my Confidential Guide yet, but five sounds like quite a few to me. As I am pretty geographically challenged, how big is the "sandbelt?"

[Greg]

"As I am pretty geographically challenged, how big is the "sandbelt?""

Apparently it's only 25 square miles. So 5 really good courses is a lot.

[Smolmania]

Almost forgot, does Karrie really think that people buy houses on golf courses where the LPGA plays? Pretty hard to imagine that happening very often. . .

[Josh]

Greg,

You need to do your math again. You listed SIX courses yourself and Royal Melbourne is EAST and WEST so SEVEN 18 hole layouts. Add WOODLANDS to that list, one of my favourites down there and overshadowed by it's loftier piers but can stand up against most of them. Actually I don't think you even listed really good courses, you listed great courses. So for me that makes EIGHT great 18 hole layouts in very small area which would challenge any other area the same size in the world.

Huntingdale is there but below all them and wouldn't be considered great, especially since all the changes. There are other good ones as well but lest just stick with great since there are so many of them.

The Sandbelt pops up again further south and you then get Peninsula North and South, Long Island and further away Portsea and Sorento. What a golf rich area The Melbourne Sandbelt down to the Mornington Peninsula is. Nowhere in the world equals that stretch of land.

The only place I can think of would be Long Island, USA but I don't know the area comparisons.

[jneu]

It's a little shocking to read that Aussies have to be reminded of how good (how great) the Sandbelt courses are. That's a little like Americans forgetting that the Monterey Peninsula has some pretty good courses, because they've been so dazzled by their nearby TPC.

[La Habra Art Department]

Greg,
While I have never been to the Sandbelt, I can attest from what Josh and others have shown me in the past, it is not to be missed. Your not a golfer if you haven't been there.

Five, six, seven, it could be just one and it wouldn't matter. It's all about the quality, not quantity. I have found that to be the most prescient thing about traveling in search of GREAT golf.

[Greg]

"You need to do your math again. You listed SIX courses yourself and Royal Melbourne is EAST and WEST so SEVEN 18 hole layouts."

I said that I could think of five great courses BESIDES Kingston Heath. But I apologize for omitting Alex Russel's East course at Royal Melbourne.

"Actually I don't think you even listed really good courses, you listed great courses."

I'm not qualified to differentiate between "really good" and "great."

[JackM]

Gee Karrie, there are people willing to pay you $millions to hit a little white ball, but those bastards make you play courses you don't like.

And YUCK! they sell real estate!! How icky and low-born.

Life sucks.

[Pickworth]

"the world doesn't boast a finer spot for a swinger than Melbourne, a city which sits in what is known as the great sand belt. On it are located some of the world's finest golf courses. Just outside of town they have a veritable 'golf city' with ten courses bordering on one another, each one rating with the finest in the world. Any of our American 'golf widows' who think things are rough in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago can thank their lucky stars they don't live in Melbourne. They'd just never see their husbands." (Jimmy Demaret, My Partner Ben Hogan, 1955, p12.)