"Bill Coore's Lost Farm just may be the strongest golf course built anywhere in the world since Augusta National in 1934."

John Huggan profiles Bill Coore after the opening of Lost Farm in Tasmania.

"Bill Coore's Lost Farm just may be the strongest golf course built anywhere in the world since Augusta National in 1934," says Mike Keiser, owner of the Bandon resort, where all four courses are ranked inside the world's top-100. Bandon, in fact, is the business and golfing model for the Barnbougle pair. Both are in remote locations; both are living proof that the "build it and they will come" philosophy can work in golf.

And, while Keiser's hyperbolic description is perhaps a little over the top, what a course Lost Farm is, one the designer is justly proud of.

"This is still a Coore-Crenshaw product, if only because I have had the same people - Dave Axlend and Keith Rhebb - working with me," says Coore, with typical modesty. "It was an opportunity of a lifetime, a bit like being asked to build a course in Scotland, special places in golf."

Adam Smith reports on the course opening and the direction planned for the Barnbougle resort, noting this oddity with the course (16th hole pictured, right):

Sattler says creating a 20-hole course, with the back nine containing 11 holes, was a point of difference.  

"I don't do anything without Mike Keiser putting his seal of approval on it and when Bill Coore came to him with a set of plans, Mike wasn't sure about a couple of the par threes so he went around and found alternative holes.

"Bill and him couldn't quite agree so they came to me and said 'here is the best 20 holes we can pick, you pick the 18'.

"Well Bill is the best architect on this side of the world, Mike is the most successful developer in the States, and they were asking me, a spud farmer, to pick the best holes.

"The only solution was to build them all."