Royal Melbourne Golf Club: West

Alister MacKenzie's 1926 routing fits snuggly into the contours of the rolling sandbelt land. His greens are miniature versions of the surrounding topography. His crisp bunkering, with vertical edges possible due to the unique compaction qualities of the Sandbelt soils, stand a foot high—or sometimes taller—and chew into fairways and putting surfaces. Most holes are doglegs, so distance means nothing and angle into the pin is everything. For championships, holes 8 and 9 and 13 through 16 are skipped in favor of six from the East Course, which is ranked 18th. That "composite course" was once ranked among the best in the world by several publications.