The Best Golf Courses In New Zealand

We take a look at the best golf courses in a country rich with golfing landscapes.

The Best Golf Courses In New Zealand

New Zealand is a country that regularly features among conversations on the most beautiful countries in the world and as a result its landscapes have created some truly incredible golf courses.

Below we have taken a look at some of the best.

Tara iti

Get used to seeing the Tom Doak-designed Tara-iti, which debuted in 2015, among world ranking lists. Set alongside the Pacific Ocean in Mangawhai, 90 minutes north-east of Auckland, this outstanding but private course opens its doors to the public.

You have to send a letter from your own club, speak with the management team and you have to stay on-site too which is all a small price to pay for such an incredible experience.

Cape Kidnappers

Cape Kidnappers is another Doak design worth playing. It lies just south of Napier on the North Islands east coast and as you can see above the scale of this amazing property is almost overwhelming.

Jacks Point

A 20-minute driver from Queenstown, Jack's Point has dazzling scenery thanks to being surrounded by the aptly named mountain range, The Remarkables. It is the kind of golf experience where scores do not matter.

Paraparaumu Beach

Alex Russell, the man who often gets overshadowed by design partner Dr Alister MacKenzie, created this fantastic links course which has features that would look at home in the rolling hills of Scotland.

The fairway contours are incredible; random humps and bumps which vary in severity and height create differing lies and new problems for the golfer to solve. The winds of the Kapiti coast are always lurking too.

Kinloch Club

Jack Nicklaus created this course at the centre of the North Island. It has over 100 bunkers, heavily contoured fairways and elevated greens which all combine to make it one of the country's toughest tests. The views out to Lake Taupo are stunning too.

Kauri Cliffs

Some parts of the planet are just so ridiculously attractive that it would seem wrong to do anything to change them.

Kauri Cliffs, in the extreme north of New Zealand, is one such place, but the resulting David Harman design is so outstandingly lovely that any golfer will be won over.

It would be hard to imagine a better setting – this is simply spectacular clifftop golf. Six holes hug the precipice edge, and the views out over the Pacific and the Cavalli Islands are the stuff of fantasy.

Arrowtown

The only bunker at Arrowtown Golf Club is next to the practice green and given it is less than 6,000 yards, many have falsely assumed the course is a pushover.

It most definitely is not thanks to tight fairways, rocky outcrops and small greens.

Notable Mentions - Arikikapakapa, Titirangi, The Hills, Royal Wellington, Wainui Golf Course

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