One of the game’s most anticipated new course openings is almost upon us, with limited preview rounds of Tasmania’s much-vaunted 7 Mile Beach layout to be available to be booked soon.
Course founder and driving force Mathew Goggin announced overnight that the design collaboration between Mike DeVries and Mike Clayton in Hobart’s east will begin welcoming golfers in about two months.
“I’m pleased to announce that a special preview play period is expected to begin at the end of April,” Goggin wrote in an e-mail to the project’s followers.
Preview play will be in a 14-hole loop and limited to 30 people per day – and just on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays during the preview-play period. Each pass will cost $250 and will allow golfers to play “as many holes, loops and configurations as you like”.
All play will be walking only with bookings of up to four passes per e-mail.
“To start, we’re offering an exclusive run of four to five weeks of play,” Goggin added. “We expect the preview play period to continue through the end of October. As the year progresses, we’ll release additional dates, events and opportunities.”
Clayton said in a recent episode of “The State Of The Game” podcast that this November is shaping as a likely timeline for a complete course opening.
For Goggin in particular, this shapes as the happiest step in a long-held dream for golf in his come city.
“Nearly 15 years ago, I e-mailed Michael Clayton, inviting him to take a look at a piece of land just seven minutes from Hobart International Airport – right on the doorstep of downtown Hobart – to determine whether my childhood dreams of links golf in the dunes of Seven Mile Beach were possible or merely a fantasy,” Goggin wrote.
“After days of hacking through the bracken, navigating the labyrinth of dunes and peering over towering trees in the hope that those distant glimpses of water could be fully revealed once the routing puzzle was solved, ‘Clayts’ had this to say: ‘[Even] if we stuffed this up, it would still be the second-best course in Australia.’
“Now, we all get the chance to find out.”
A second course has already been approved for the land adjoining the 7 Mile Beach layout.
(We will update this story when full booking details are released.)
