Claudia got me an awesome gift for my birthday: a Coober Pedy golf membership!
You might ask: “why on Earth would you want a membership for a golf course with no grass, 500km into the Australian outback?” Well, it has an awesome backstory! Apparently, a couple of opal miners had a bit too much to drink one night, and had a conversation that went something like this:
– “Hey, we should build a golf course here!”
– “But…there’s no grass here mate”
– “Ahhh, we’ll be ‘lright!”
So they did! They built an 18-hole golf course without grass! Once they were finished, they went even further, and decided that their course was so beautiful, they should get reciprocal rights for some other club; and what better place to start asking than the “Home of Golf”, the St. Andrews Links in Scotland? They jokingly asked the director of the oldest, most famous golf course in the world for reciprocal rights, and he decided to play along! In return for a lease on an opal mine (of which there are thousands in Coober Pedy), they got their rights!
So in short: with this membership I should be able to go play a round at the home of golf! (To be fair: it’s only valid for the cheapest 9 holes of their course, which only costs 15GBP for anyone to play, but it’s the thought that counts ;-))
Of course, I also had to play the 18 holes in Coober Pedy at least once. It was definitely interesting!
We had to wait for a couple of days for the wind to slow down, or otherwise the (surprisingly impressive) first tee-off would have been impossible!
Claudia gave the first hole a go as well, just “for shits and giggles”.
I landed on the “green” straight away though! Here, they use black sandscrapes as putting greens.
Things got a but rougher after that…
If you’re lucky enough to land on the “fairway”, you’re allowed to use your personal foot of AstroTurf as simulated grass!
Almost looking like a pro 😉
Naturally, you don’t play in the middle of the day here, when it’s 35 degrees and there’s not an inch of shade in sight… So you play as close to sunset/sunrise as possible. Makes for beautiful views though:
Thanks CP golf club! I hope to revisit some day 🙂