Mike Cocking

of it. And then years later, well, I used to My parents were teachers, and they started They would start school at bit earlier than I would, so that they would drop me at my grandparents' house and I'd just watched TV for an hour before they would take me to school. And one morning the golf was on and it was I reckon. It was the eighty eight US Open, so it was Curtis Strange and Faldo, and I was kind of I found it quite captivating, really because it

was a tight finish. I thought Valdo was cool because he looked like Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones was speaking at the time, so I kind of I was rooting for him, and I went to school and Lullberhold. They tired and so it was a playoff. So the next day I got to see it again and that probably

was what really grabbed me. And then I kind of found my parents' clubs in the cupboard at home and started kind of chipping around the backyard, and so my dad decided to take me to a driving range, and it kind of went from there really and he was keen to take up the game with me, so we sort of started together, and I was probably eleven, then eleven or twelve, and I went from the driving range to a local kind of communi or public golf course, and then I sort of joined a proper golf course

if you like, when I was perhaps fourteen thirteen fourteen. Then I joined Peninsula where we're working now, when I was seventeen. I was there for about twenty years, and then six six years ago I joined Kingston Heath because I lived literally next door to Kingston Age, which is kind of nice.

my attention. And then I I was my boss at the time, I was working in a golf shop when I was about fifteen or sixteen, and my boss got a copy of one of the limited edition copies of Tom Doak's Confidential Guide, and I borrowed that and sort of reading through that started to understand that there was this whole other element to golf courses that I'd never really thought about. You know, I guess, like most kids, just sort of the condition of the course is probably

what how you measure whether it's good or bad. And suddenly he was talking about routings and talking about all these things that I didn't really know what they were. And then as my golf improved, I was in what's known as the Victorian Institute of Sport, which was it was kind of Australia's answer to the college program in America. So it was started in the nineties. Robert Allen, b Stuart appleby Jeff Ogilvie, Aaron Badley, they all came through

that program, and through that I got to travel. I was a good amateur, so I played seat of internationally a fair bit, and I used Tom's book really to find all the courses near where I was playing that are worth seeing, so that it kind of extended from there. And then I was never really comfortable with the idea of playing professionally. I did briefly, but I don't know. Maybe having options isn't a good thing if you're trying

to be a professional golfer. But I'd finished a degree in engineering and I didn't want to be a struggling pro by any stretch. And I was always I was interested in golf course design obviously, but figured it would be really hard to get into. But then Mike Clayton then a couple of other guys who had started a company together, got the job at Peninsula to do some work,

which was where I was playing. And I knew Mike through golf and sort of approached them whether they needed sort of some help or part time work, or whether you know, whether I could how I could kind of get involved in golf course design, and that was in two thousand and Ashley met actually joined that firm at

the same time to help out with construction. So Mike, Ashley and I have worked together for eighteen years and it kind of went from there really and then over time I got more interested in golf course design, less interested in playing, and it just of, you know, I played less golf and worked more in design. So it kind of was a pretty that's how it progressed.

end of it. I always find it hard to look at kind of look at the architecture and play it at the same time, because you get you do get involved with your game, and I find I see a lot more just walking a golf course rather than playing it. So I'm never that fast. If I go overseas somewhere and see a golf course that I've always wanted to see, I'm not that far if I don't play it. You know, in an ideal world you perhaps walk it in the morning and then play it in the afternoon, But really

do you have that amount of time free? So, yeah, I see a lot more kind of walking the golf course.

And I think once they understand, like we talk about it a lot when we have like a committee meeting or something, it's amazing how few people understand the very basics of strategy, you know, and once and it's not really a complicated topic. But I think once they understand that, okay, well, you know, the greens designed to favor play from a particular part of the fair way, and usually around that spot there's a hazard, you know, so if you play

close to the hazard, you get a better angle. If you play further away from it, it's a worse angle. And it's you know, there's shades of gray, it's not black or white. You can aim a meter a little bit to the ride or forty meters to the right, and the shot just incrementally gets harder. And I think once they you can see the light bulb go off when you do explain that, and then suddenly they start thinking about all the holes on the golf course and how they're range. So I think it's in terms of

playing it. I think they need to understand that basic logic and then they can kind of apply it to their own game and their own golf course. I tell you one thing that I find. I've got a set of hickory clubs, which I've got a couple of sets, but it's a lot of fun using hickories and on an interesting on a strategic golf course because you really understand the strategy of the holes. They make more sense because you can't hit you know, with the hickories. Everything

comes out a bit lower and it runs. You can't hit that high spinning nine nine that stops on the green if you're out of position. So the strategy of the golf course really shines through with hickorys. If that makes sense, you have to be It's such a reward for being in the right position and such a penalty for being out of position with hickorys, just because you can't hit that recovery shot. So I think people would understand strategy very quickly, perhaps if they had around with hickrees.

like to give it to a contractor. So I guess in the early phases of a new project or a design, we all kind of get involved with that and sort of chat through some of the big picture ideas. Jeff's still playing of course in America, so he's probably not as involved as you know as long term he hopes to be. And then you know, I guess as it moves into more of a construction probably actually and I have more of a lead role in terms of being on site and working with the guys out in the field.

And you know that can limit how many projects you take on. Usually two sort of big projects in construction is about as much as we want to do because invariably you've got You've also then got jobs that you're pitching on, or there might be two or throw out the jobs that are in design, and you know it's obviously more than just those two that are in construction. So yeah, that's typically how it works in terms.

It's a little bit too hard or a bit too slopy, or you know, because you do get you get so engrossed in that project that sometimes you forget to step back and look a look at the big picture. So that's where it's very helpful having any of the guys come in and really with fresh eyes have a look at it. I mean, Jeff and Mike certainly from a playing point of view, is really helpful as well. I know there's been a I mean, you don't build too

many tournament golf courses. There's on many tournaments in Australia, but we do consult to a lot of courses that host tournaments, and it is sometimes interesting you sort of forget how good those guys are, how far they hit it, what they see as being a reasonable shot to take

on under certain conditions. So it sometimes just kind of puts a different perspective on a whole So that's always interesting versus on your own I mean, perhaps maybe the negative of a collaborative approach is that you may not get those way out ideas because they might always be tempered by in a collaboration. But I think if you come up with an idea and put a case forward to why it's a good idea, typically we'll go ahead and build it and then you just see how it evolves.

You can always I mean by building your own work. It's the advantage. You can build something. If it doesn't look great, you can just change it.

about one hundred years in Australia. So it is tricky trying to you know, so things like I guess most clients in China would expect a past seventy two, for instance, because that's kind of what they understand as being the norm, and you know, four past threes and four par fives and sort of all those things just when you're getting just when you're new to golf design, that the thing is that you kind of understand as being the norm, that that's sort of I guess where a lot of

the golf is at. So that can be a challenge for sure, I know when Bill and Ben were building Shanquin Bay, supposedly that it was so different. I think people were wondering just how the Chinese would react to it, because it was a course that you would expect to see, you know, in America, but perhaps not in a country where most of the golf courses were your typical resort style golf, you know, lots of water, sort of resort style bunkers.

course and we're just it's a redesign. So it may be that the next wave in China is more redesign. It could be that where a lot of those golf courses they're legal, but perhaps they're not as good as they could be, or they were part of, like you said, that sort of wave of signature designs that it might spread it now the idea of redesign work might kind of start spreading into China.

as well, so that became his home. One of the things that I always find fascinating and hopefully to answers your question in a roundabout way, whenever we've looked at courses in America, it's not all courses, but a lot

of the classic American parkland style course. We're always intrigued by the the way they're set up with typically you know, lots of rough around the greens, quite often rough between the fairway bunkers and the fairways, which we find curious because in Australia that the norm is to cut fairways right to the edge of hazards and we typically have a lot of short grass around greens and so it's more of a I think it's more of a British

maintenance style in Australia, so we're really wedged firmly between, you know, a little bit from Britain and a little bit from America. I think with our golf they certainly play firm and fast like they do in Britain, but there's other elements that are kind of similar to America. And what I guess is always interesting and part of the pitch to Shady Oaks or one of the things we sort of talked about was that it's kind of

interesting that Augusta, you know, has been, has been. If you ask most tool players what their favorite course is of the year, most of them would probably say Augusta. Most golfers in America, if you ask it, you know, their dream around or where would they love to go, they probably say Augusta and Augusta it's essentially maintained like a Samdbell golf course. You know, it's short, heaps of short grass, heaps of short grass around the green, short

grass to the edge of the bunkers. It's it's kind of like Royal Melbourne. Really, it's very similar. And yet golf courses went in a totally different direction. They went in another direction, and yet every year everyone goes back to Augusta and loves it, and for whatever reason, it

kind of down this other part. So you know one of the things that not that we're trying to turn Shady Oaks into a SAMD Belt golf course, but certainly we talked a lot about that, trying to create more short grass and perhaps a line a little closer to the way we like golf to be played. And they've really embraced that. I mean in the first brand and I flagged some new fairly lines there and I think they added ten acres in a month of short grass,

and the members have really liked it. So that is always a curiosity to me though, that just the position that Augusta holds in American golf, and yet people struggle to join the dots. You know, they look at their golf course and see the rough and you talk about short grass and they look at you perhaps like you're mad or what are you talking about? And yet you know, come April every year it's there for everyone to see. So yeah, that is a curiosity.

the is the maintenance. I mean when people talk about tool courses and the like, I mean, one of the reasons that many of the sand Belt courses are still so relevant from a tournament perspective is how firm and fast the greens are, you know, because you can't I mean, Kingston Head's not particularly long in sort of US tour standards.

It's probably seven thousand one hundred yards, maybe seven thousand two hundred yards, but you know, it's not just a driver of every tee because the greens are so well designed and firm that if you are out of position, you can't easily hit. Sometimes you can't even hit the green if you're in the wrong spot, So suddenly you're prepared to sacrifice some distance to hit a three iron or hit a two iron into the right position of

the fairway. So but if the greens were if the greens were really soft, then suddenly it wouldn't be quite as strategic, because you could you could play to the greens from anywhere. And if and if you waded it down even further and just built some fairly flat greens and bought the bunkers further away from the putting surface, then it would be even less strategic. Again, so it's not just that you can't just look at the widening

of the fairways. It has to be looked at with the position of the bunkers and the green design too sore. At Shady there were some spots where you could easily add short grass, particularly around the greens, because there was a lot of greens that were perched up and there were some nice sort of hollows and slopes away from them where you could add short grass and not make it easier in some ways. You know, short grass around

the greens. If there's a slope, adding short grass actually makes it harder because a missshot just the ball just finishes further away from the putting surface instead of getting caught up in that little bit rough, you know, between the green and the bunker.

a wedge? Or do you a part of it? But the great thing is for a hacker, for a bad player, they can just pull apart up and they can at least kind of knock it up there and knock it on the green. They probably won't get up and down, but it's a it's a really that's where it's a clever hazard because it's hard for the good player and or confusing for the good player and kind of easy for the average player.

usually that's it. Then they go they might go down to Tasmayania to play Bamboo Junes or king Owen and then they're gone. And as a result of that or this has actually influenced that that mindset that there is a big gap between those four elite sand Belt clubs and kind of everyone else on the sand Belt. So their challenge and our challenge is to kind of turn four into five. You know, when people come to Melbourne, they want to go to Poeninsula Kingswood, so that, yeah,

there is a lot of pressure attached to that. I mean, we've assembled a really good team down there, and so far the results are showing that, you know, it's looking really promising. But it's a hard nut to crack that elite sam Belt club, if you like, because they've had you know, they had one hundred years and copious tournaments

that have kind of created their reputation. So it's hard to We're trying to do fifty years work in three, you know, and that's so it's even if we get the product there, it's still going to take a little time for I think for that to influence rankings and how people view the golf course both here and overseas. Yeah.

We used some we used the local stonemason to kind of create the impression that was like an old ruin, I guess, so sort of it was interesting because he was clients typically judged how well he did a job by how perfect the rock work was the draysten wall, and we were like, no, no, no, we don't want it perfectly, want it rugged and old and sort of, you know, almost falling apart. So he really enjoyed it because it was totally different from what he was used and so we did that on one hole and it

worked out so well. We ended up creating that crete network through a number of holes. So in a way that became a bit of a signature of the of the South course, whereas the North is a bit more elevated, it's a bit more undulating, sandier, and so it's probably more and the vegetation is better, a lot more heath than kind of almost a monas stand of the Manicum, which is the kind of the the tree which most would identify with a lot of the sand belt courses.

So it's probably more of a typical sand belt experience. And whilst the South is a sand belt course, it's just that the creek kind of creates a little bit of a point of difference between the North in terms of the greens and the bunkers though they probably they probably weren't. One of the big drivers of the project was conditioning. They've never really had firm fast greens, which are kind of you know, synonymous, I guess with SAMD

belt golf, so a lot of work. We basically created a new sort of a different style of construction with the green. So a lot of there's been a lot of USGA greens on the sand belt built over the last thirty years, but people have struggled, They really struggled to get in the firm So we went with a different construction technique, a different grass, and one of the things we've noticed on the old greens was that the bunkers weren't They were very much out of scale with

the greens. If you look at sand belt holes from the air, the bunkering around the green is bigger than the green. So really that's what helps create the scale of the green sites on the sand belt. People look at Royal Melbourne's greens and think they're enormous, and they are big, but they're not that big. The reason they feel big is because it's so expansive around the green. The bunkering is really expansive and a lot of short grass. So they're these big, they feel like, these huge, elegant

green sites. So we very much borrowed from that concept with the green sites of Peninsula. We cleared out a lot of space around them, and the bunkering now is much bigger, much more, more of the sort of capes and bays that people you know, people talk about Mackenzie bunkering, but it's probably a different topic. But yeah, so more of that kind of classic bunkering style that you would

see at rom Melbourne and Kingston. A more short grass. Yeah, and we've cleared out a fair bit of vegetation to try and return it to what we hope is what the property would have looked like, you know, one hundred years ago before there was a golf course there.

be afforded that amount of license. But as a result, what will happen is that, you know, the North is the Sandburg golf course that so many of the other Sandburg clubs want to be, you know, so they really do have the potential to leap frog a whole bunch of clubs, and you put themselves as a thirty six hole venue. You know, they should be. It should be the place to join in Melbourne.

I think he got paid two hundred pounds and to help pay for that fee, they sort of farmed him out to a lot of other golf courses and they did a deal with him to split the fee so for any other work that they could find for him, he would go halves on his consulting fee. And he was seriously active. I mean he came here to Melbourne. He did the design for Roal Melbourne. He consulted to Kingston Heath and the Explorer and did a bunker plan.

So you know, at that time it was quite common for courses to get built and then they would do the bunkering scheme after they opened, so they would kind of see how people played the gold of course and then figure out for where to put the bunkers. So that wasn't uncommon at the time. So he did an scheme for Kingston Heath, He did a plan for Metropolitan, He did a bunkering plan for Victoria. He went to Adelaide and did a plan for a design plan for

Royal Adelaide. He went to new stath Whale and went to New Sos Golf Club. Royal Adelaide. He consulted by Doon. He consulted at two or three others. He went to Queensland and consulted I think Brisbane Golf Club in Dropilli Golf Club, all in ten weeks and he saw really nothing built. He saw the fifth Wester at Royal Melbourne either built or partly built, which is that kind of famous iconic path three from the elevated tea elevated green

and hit across the valley. And he supposedly saw a little bit of fifteen at the uphill path three which was previously what could only have been an odd hole. It was a blind path four over the hill. So he brought the green back to the top of the hill. And I think he saw some bunkers built on the thirteenth ro Royal Adelaide and then he was gone. So but he influenced. He struck up a relationship with Alex Russell, who became a designer in his own right and designed

a pretty cool set of four golf courses. He did the Royal Melbourne East, he did Lake carrn Up in Perth, he did Yariara and he did Parapari in New Zealand which is a great links course. And he also taught

a father and son team of construction guy. So Mick Morecambe who was the Royal Melbourne superintendent, he built all his work there and then he built the work where they did a couple of greens at Metropolitan and did work at Victoria and basically what you know is the sand belt look with bunkers is very heavily influenced by Mick Morcomb or his son Vern, and Vern became the superintendent at king Sneve where he was for forty six years, and he changed that golf course a lot, he changed

the bunkering a lot. He readed greens, he readed teas. So it's always interesting with Mackenzie just how much people talk about the credit, the big unknown factor, like the primary. His primary influence was ten weeks long, maybe not that much. Did a couple of plans but never saw them built. So he never really wrote about in his books how great the work was in Australia because he never saw it. But his secondary influence I think was huge. That's the thing.

You know. He was clever that he found guys that were talented I guess, educated them and then they then went on and that then influenced the next generation and the next generation. So it was a it was a defining moment. Those ten weeks really changed the course of golf course design in Australia. So as an Australian, to get back to your question, he's clearly front and center in the Mount rush more of golf.

bit of a too. You kind of wonder with golf course design, whether the just have whether like art movements, whether we'll go through a different you know. I mean a lot of the new courses built now I sort of look and feel similar. It'd be kind of nice, and I think it'd be cool to for someone to build a super geometric Rainer style, still strategic, but just visually quite different golf course. I would love to see that.

a Dan Suitor course. Mackenzie did this plan, Vern Morecombe was, Mick morcamb built some work there. Vern Morcambe was a superintendent. I mean, we're the consulting accent now, but it would be totally wrong to credit us to it. And then you've had all different captains and presidents over the years

that have influenced it. Yeah, the golf course today is the best it's ever been in a hundred years, and to try if you tried to restore it to any particular era, even the so called Mackenzie era, it would be a worse golf course. No way would it be as good as it is now. So it's kind of like, I don't know why. I mean, magazines are just obsessed by labeling each course with an archeced I would rather they didn't just call it, you know, Kingston Heath.

But it's always a tricky one because people ask us that question, would you go? But it's so it's such a big country and not that i'm you know, there's not the depth of golf in the other major cities as there is in Melbourne. I mean you could extend that if you wanted and play ten courses on the sand belt, whereas if you went to New So if you went to Sydney, you know you might play New

South Wales and perhaps the Lakes. That's two. You know, if you went to Queensland, you're probably playing Royal Queensland maybe maybe one other. And Perth there's really like Karen up Adelaide, there's Royal Adelaide and maybe one or two other. So there's just not the depth. So to really get bang for your back, I think you're better off staying in one place and doing it properly rather than trying to fly all around the country. So I think it's

been knowing up guys pretty much. Did that trip. I think it was Melbourne, predominantly Melbourne and then go down to Tasmania.

over the years, but never really seriously did it. And to be honest, it was only when I got into golf course design there was a reason suddenly to draw, because it was very helpful I think when I first started working in it, because no one else really could draw. It was an advantage to if I had an idea for a whole to be able to get a bit of paper and draw it on it in the field

and say what do you think of this? Suddenly it was something that everyone could see and everyone could understand, and it was a really good way of getting your point across, whereas otherwise, you know, everyone's just pointing. It put me at various things and as it was confusing,

so there was a reason to draw. And then you know, if you're in a committee room or sometimes I would draw for a plan, you know, to like do a worked up sort of drawing to do as part of a presentation, so I think that certainly got me interested in it again. And then it's then when Barbougle Dunes was built, Richard, the owner wanted a course guide. He

wanted a yardage book. And I'd done ones before when I was playing just sort of all little ones and this, but suddenly this needed to be like a commercially produced one. I was pretty comfortable I could do it, and that

was really the first one I did. And then out of that just not really I didn't really ever advertise, but just word of mouth, people asked me to do other course guides, and then I was quite keen to get to improve my proper painting, so not just horse guide drawings, but actual landscapes and things, and so I just over particularly the last ten years, I've probably spent a bit more time doing it. And yeah, I mean I don't have as much time to do it as

I would like. I tend it's only when people ask me to do a painting or commission me to do something, it tends to sort of maybe a panic and think, okay, now now I've really got a knuckle down. So that kind of forces me to really spend my spare time painting for a month until I can produce something that's really good and then yeah, but then it's not like I'm sitting at home each night just yeah with the paints out, sketching and the like. But yeah, well to enjoy it.

how perspective works. That would you would go a long way to improving your drawing. You don't have to worry about I mean, even if you can't. You don't have to be able to draw a lifelike people or life like trees, but just a simple line drawing just to

kind of green and bunkers. It's so helpful. I mean, that's where it's helpful I think in design is just you don't have to be brilliant at it, but it's very helpful to Like, if you're with someone on a machine and you want them to build something that no one looks in plan view, no one sort of really understands if you draw something as though. It's because most plans are all from the air, it's very hard for people to understand how that translates to what's on the ground.

Whereas if you can just do a really simple drawing in either in the dirt or on a bit of paper, suddenly it all makes sense. You know, how high a bunker lip's going to be, or the fact that, okay, you can see the left half of the green but not the right half of the ring because it's covered by a bunker, or the bunker comes a third of the way across the green, or you know those things in a very simple sketch. Suddenly it's you can give someone enough detail to spend the day building something that

means you can go off and do something else. That's where it's really helpful.

They're quite intimidating when you see when standing up on it behind lakes. I've played golf tournaments before where you know, you hit your ball need the kangaroos and you kind of you don't really want to go in there and get it. So they're pretty intimidating.

let's get back on here. Overrated Underrated golf in Japan.

there are pockets. I mean we used to think twenty or thirty years ago, you know, you didn't necessarily think of Asia as having all these great sites, but they do. You know, there's some really good land through through Vietnam, China, there's some really good sites. So they're around absolutely, and there's some really good sites in Australia. It's just that we don't have the population too, you know, the build

it and they will come kind of concept. Is it's hard here, you know, we just don't have the population base of America really to make it work. Yeah, but there's some Perths very This is some brilliant land in perse up and down the coast where you can drive an hour up north of Perth and it is incredible land on the water, sandy ground, undulating, beautiful vegetation. But they built a number of years ago, they built a really good golf course over there, only forty minutes from person.

No one goes there to play, so you can't convince them to go. Great so you could, you could build a sand valley, but just trying to get the people there to be the challenge.