Bali Handara Kosaido Country Club - Bali, Indonesia
Bali Handara has
long been the holy grail of golf, a
tantalizingly tropical course cloistered in the
central highlands of Bali. The course is laid
out in a lush volcanic crater 3,500 feet up the
wooded mountainside of Mount 13atukaru that
rises to a cloud-covered 7,500-foot-high summit,
making it a welcome escape from the coastal heat.
Designed by Peter Thomson and Michael Wolveridge
in 1974, construction was supervised by Guy
Wolstenholme, who won the English Amateur. The
course is routed through an old dairy farm and
the subtropical jungle between two large lakes,
near the village of Bedugal. It was built
entirely by hand, with a workforce of more than
a thousand local laborers, most of them women.
The fairways are a mix of Kentucky bluegrass
imported from the u.s. and native
Bermuda, broken by jigsaw piece-shaped bunkers.
There are ponds between the eighth and ninth and
16th and 17th fairways and a jungle stream that
crosses the third, fifth, sixth, and seventh holes.
Kauri Cliffs Golf Course - New Zealand
Kauri Cliffs, on the northern tip of New Zealand in Matauri Bay, opened on February 1,2000. The course
and the luxurious 16-room Kauri Cliffs Lodge were
developed by Julian Robertson, a New Yorker by way
of South Carolina who founded Tiger Hedge Funds.
During a family trip to New Zealand, Robertson
became entranced with the prospect of building a
golf course on the 4,000 acres of rolling coastal
farmland above the ocean cliffs overlooking the
Cavalli Islands, Waiaua Bay, and the outer reaches
of the Bay of Islands. Robertson bought the land and
hired Florida-based golf architect David Harman, who
made more than 50 trips to the site in three years.
The holes on the landward side play through
sprawling meadows and stands of native puriri,
totura, and the namesake kauri trees. Robertson
planted more than 300 kauri, among the world's
strongest trees, which covered much of the top half
of New Zealand's North Island before the arrival of
European settlers. The coastal holes play across
ravines above the ocean to stair-step fairways. The
par-five fourth hole is named "Cambo" in honor of
New Zealand golf star Michael Campbell; the sixth
hole is "Waterfalls" as the footbridge over the
ravine crosses directly over a waterfall; and the
parfive
18th is named "Tane Mahuta" (Maori for "Lord of the
Forest") after a particular kaui tree that is the
largest such specimen in the world.
Bali Handara Kosaido Country
Club, Bali, Indonesia and Kauri Cliffs Golf Course, New
Zealand
