Royal Queensland is an historic club influenced by Alister MacKenzie during his whirlwind 1926 visit to Australia.
Built on the banks of the Brisbane River the sandy, rippled terrain and scattering of large trees makes for a terrific landscape for golf.
The Gateway bridge connecting Brisbane to the Gold Coast was built over the golf course in the nineteen-eighties and six holes were suddenly on ‘the other side of the bridge’.
Two decades later the club was forced by the duplication of the bridge to abandon those six holes and build an entirely new golf course on the clubhouse side of the bridge.
In the early 2000’s the club engaged Michael Clayton Golf Design to redesign the golf course and Ashley Mead moved to Queensland for 2 years to oversee the works as the design associate. The new course was a chance to build a more strategic golf course, with wide fairways and bunkers placed to make the path to the green a more interesting one. Much like the courses around Melbourne which influenced the design, greens truly reward play from one side of the fairway or the other.
In 2020 the club was chosen to host the Australian PGA in years 2020, 2021 and 2022 and the club have engaged OCM to continue to refine the design as well as making improvements for play in the tournament. For Ashley Mead it is especially satisfying to remain involved at the club, having spent so much time on the original design and in the years since making improvements to the course.
Project
Royal Queensland Golf Club
Location
Eagle Farm, Qld, Australia
Rankings
#26 in Australia (2020 Golf Australia Magazine)
Details
Ongoing consulting
