The Peninsula Country Golf Club is located half way down the Mornington Peninsula, the arched finger of land that begins in Melbourne and sweeps down to the windy promontories of Cape Schank to the southeast and Portsea to the north and west. The lands between Frankston and Portsea are rich golfing lands, somewhat akin to the northeast of Scotland in the way in which each small town seems to have its own golf course. It would take a better part of a very happy month to play them all. Tucked in behind the courses are the various wineries of the Mornington Peninsula ideal growing lands for cool climate grapes.

Although most of the courses on the Peninsula are set back from the shoreline, all have the tang of the sea being sand based.

For many years it has been said in Australian golfing circles that The Peninsula North course did not quite make the most of the wonderful land on which it sits. At the end of the last decade, through the work of Melbourne professional Mike Clayton, it has received the brush-up that it deserved and has been much more highly ranked since.

Although it is not a tiger lengthwise, its 6,097 metres parring at 72 is enough of a test. If you are not driving the ball well, the course will feel a little tight and beyond the thin band of semi-rough there are some places from which few balls will be recovered.

There is fantastic variety on the course, good elevation changes, interesting turns, irregular greens with wonderfully true surfaces but if there is an area in which the course falls a bit short of Australia’s top flight it would be in the par 3s. None of them are poor holes; it’s just that the locations and green complexes are not as fine as the best around Melbourne. Of course in saying this we are holding a candle against the best collection of par 3s in the world.