Coffin Bay Golf Club | South Australia
Course: Coffin Bay Golf Club
Town: Coffin Bay
Region: Eyre Peninsula
State: South Australia
“Everyone I spoke to at the nineteenth hole at the Coffin Bay Golf Club were proud of the course and what the clubs volunteers had achieved”. Here’s my review:
Miss Linda and I parked ‘Fork the Bus’ up in the remarkable seaside town of Coffin Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. Our old mate Benda had to take off for work and left us the key to his home. His only real instructions were, “Stay as long as you like”.
So we backed ‘Fork’ down the driveway and used the time to catch up on some ‘Finchys Australia’ business. What a great location, perfect accommodation and all the toys I have in ‘The Shed’ are getting a workout. The harley, the kayak and today, it’s the golf clubs turn.
Black scrapes or Green greens
I found an old article online about the Coffin Bay Golf Club that pretty much said that due to the black scrapes instead of greens the course was average. This article was written in 2011 and maybe I should have investigated further but it didn’t matter because I was going to play the golf course anyway. Well ! Didn’t I get a pleasant surprise!
Incredibly well priced green fees
It was a lovely early Autumn day in Coffin Bay and I thought to myself right, I will grab my trusty Callaway and TaylorMade clubs and go play 9-holes at the Coffin Bay Golf Club. The first thing I noticed was the watered fairways and greens, not blacks as I had thought but greens. So with renewed interest I chatted to some locals about the course, paid the incredibly well priced $15 green fees and teed up on the par 3 first.
Just so you well aware of my golfing credibility I will let you know, I am an average to poor golfer.
I am the reason people made up the old joke: Q: What is your handicap? A: Golf.
This doesn’t faze me, I love the game and there is PLENTY of room for improvement. There is no point getting too cranky about my slice, shanked shots or lost balls because then, I would not enjoy the game of golf. Every now and then you play a good shot or have a series of reasonable holes which rekindles the interest and pushes you to become that extremely high paid pro golfer that you know you can be.
“Anyway, the Coffin Bay Golf Course is an absolute ripper”.
It has a bit of everything. It has two par fives, five par fours and two par three holes all in excellent condition. The course is surprisingly undulating and the setting is stunning amongst dunes and natural scrub. The greens were a tad slow but I think that was only because they had been watered recently and as I played they dried and became a little quicker. For the first hour and a half I had the course all to myself which is always nice and then a small group playing comp started but I didn’t really see much of them and there was no queues or waiting on greens.
Tree lined fairways and undulating greens
The golf course has lots of challenges besides my own lack of ability. The fairways are generally tree lined and can be quite tight and narrow in parts. The rough under the tree is very clear of scrub and undergrowth so for someone like myself who spends little time on the fairways this was a bonus. The greens are all in excellent condition and can be a little tricky to read due to their undulating nature.
Overall this was a pure delight of a course to play and what was an added bonus is that although it is a 9 hole course, many of the holes have separate tee blocks for the back nine. These different tee off positions do change the nature of the hole and because of this I decided to play 18 holes. You not only got the feeling you were playing a different back nine you also got the opportunity to redeem your mistakes from the front nine. Oh! And bye the way I didn’t find much redemption.
After a thoroughly enjoyable 18 holes of golf I had a couple of cold beers with some incredibly friendly locals who had real pride in their golfing facility. I got to chatting with Pauline who had just played in a winning bowls grand final at the adjoining Bowling Green facilities. I got the feeling Pauline is an active member of both the Bowling and Golf clubs and she was certainly full of pride about the golf course and the dedication of the volunteers who have made the course the delight it is.
Linda and I have played crucial roles in a community sporting club in the past (the Mt Burr United Football Club) and we are well aware of the importance of volunteers in the running and upkeep of sporting clubs and facilities in small regional communities. Everyone I spoke to at the nineteenth hole at Coffin Bay Golf Club were proud of the course and what the clubs volunteers had achieved.
Community pride & acheivement
As it turns out the bowling club did a deal with the golf club several years prior. When they changed the Bowling Green to an artificial surface they donated all the grass to the golf club to change their black scrapes greens to proper grass ones. According to Pauline as a direct result of this the golf club were able to convert 8 of the 9 greens and they only had the cost to convert one green to grass. The whole project was done by volunteers and the club now has doubled their membership as a result. I love the way small communities in various locations around Australia ban together and donate time and effort to make real positive change for their communities.
The glaring results of such efforts is communities with pride and ownership of their facilities and for me a great place to play a ripper golf course and meet some great Aussie characters doing great things.
Well done Coffin Bay Golf Club!
Finchy
