Kogarah Golf Club feels the squeeze and proposes to relocate

One look at the state of Sydney’s Kogarah Golf Club and you can see why course owners are proposing to move the golf course.

Tucked in between dense housing and the Cook River, not far from Sydney Airport, Kogarah Golf Club has always felt a little squashed in, but in the past two years it’s been getting a lot more cramped due to extensive construction of the WestConnex Motorway project.

Over 80 years in existence on the current site, owners of the Kogarah Golf Club have put forward a proposal to its members to relocate the golf course south of the M5 motorway (top-left in the image above) in land closer to Kyeemagh.

Lisa Visentin reports at the Sydney Morning Herald:

In 2015, the course was reduced to 9 holes due to the construction of the new M5 twin tunnels as part of the WestConnex motorway project, and the fourth hole remains the site of a ventilation stack for the tunnels.

The club was also concerned about the lack of control it has over other parts of the course, which are owned by the Bayside Council, as well as land around the 6th green, 7th tee, 8th tee and 13th green, which it rents from Sydney Airport on a monthly basis.

The course has extended to a 15-hole layout since November 2016 with a couple of new greens in play – and by all reports the members are enjoying the shorter rounds.

Channel Nine also ran a piece on the story this week:

This is a worrying trend for public golf courses in Australia’s major cities. As the desire for inner-city living increases and developers eye off more land for large-scale apartments, more and more golf courses are coming under scrutiny.

Unfortunately it’s those courses that are the most accessible, the courses that many Australians learn to love the game on that are the ones most at risk.

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