Archive for the ‘News’ Category
November 17th, 2015 by Jon
Thomson Perrett are enjoying being back in Indonesia where they are overseeing a major upgrade of the East Course at the Gunung Geulis Golf Club in Bogor, Indonesia. Ross has just returned from a two week trip around our Asian projects under construction in Shanghai, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The Gunung Geulis courses were built in the late 80’s and early 90’s and are being upgraded as part of a major redevelopment of the 500 hectare site in the mountains of Bogor above Jakarta.
A 176 room luxury Hotel is due to open in March 2016 and a high end residential estate and town centre are being planned on the balance of the land. The hotel will service the burgeoning Indonesian golf tourism market.
Several completely new holes are being incorporated into the East Course layout including two that will take advantage of the spectacular Cikeas River which forms the northern boundary of the site. The downhill 5th is a medium length par 3 played to a large green located on a sharp bend in the river. The green site is being stabilised by a series of gabian walls that will be ‘buried’ under the green to prevent it moving from the might of the river surges that are common in the wet season. All tees, greens and bunkers are being upgraded and the fairways will be regressed using a shade tolerant zoisya grass. The already established landscape will frame the course which will be more playable than it’s earlier iteration when it opens in the second half of 2016.
November 16th, 2015 by Jon
Thomson Perrett has been course architect for the Warrnambool Golf Club since 1988 and we are currently renovating the 10th hole. In a story by Turfmate, Course superintendent David Warrner commented that “David Flood and Ross Perrett have done an amazing job on the design, and it’s been great to have David down here actually supervising the whole project, it’s meant I can take care of my staff and maintenance of the golf course at the same time.”
Click here to read the full story by Turfmate.
November 7th, 2015 by Jon
Japanese drinks giant, Asahi Group, which owns the Buckinghamshire Golf Club in southern England, is to invest £2 million in refurbishing the golf course.
Thomson Perrett & Lobb will lead the renovation project, which will be implemented over the next two winters, and will include building an irrigation reservoir, installing a new Toro irrigation system and rebuilding the existing green to tee cart paths. Lake work and a rebuild of the course’s bunkering will complete the works, which should be done by March 2017.
Click here to read the full article by Golf Course Architecture magazine
October 21st, 2015 by Jon
The recent Open Championship at St Andrews marked the 50th year in golf course architecture for Melbourne based firm Thomson Perrett.
Peter Thomson was a special guest of the R&A as he celebrated the 60th Anniversary of his 1955 win at the home of golf. Peter’s great mate, the late Kel Nagle, was also honoured with a tribute to him behind the 18th green acknowledging his passing and recalling his Centenary Open win at St Andrews in 1965. Other members of the Thomson Perrett team who attended The Open includedRoss and Helen Perrett, Tim Lobb, Warren Duncan, Bernie Hogan, Chen Wei Hua and Stuart Rennie.
In 1965 after his fifth Open victory Peter Thomson commenced his career in Golf Course Design when he joined with two Englishmen, Commander John Harris—a golf course architect—and Michael Wolveridge, a recently-retired golf professional. Initially the firm was called South Pacific Golf Pty Ltd, but soon became Harris Thomson and Wolveridge. Early projects included The Wairekei Golf Course in New Zealand, Royal Hong Kong Golf Club in Hong Kong, Bali Handara in Indonesia, Fujioka Country Club in Japan and the renovation of both The Delhi Golf Club and The Royal Calcutta Golf Clubs in India – the latter being the first course built in Asia (1829). In the 1960s and 1970s Thomson was pioneering the Asian Tour by playing across the Asia Pacific which helped the company expand. Wolveridge set up the Melbourne office whilst Harris concentrated on the European market from a London office.
In 1981 Wolveridge met a young Architect, Ross Perrett, who was completing a Mastersthesis on Golf Architecture at Melbourne University. But it wasn’t until 1987 that Perrett started consulting to Thomson Wolveridge. After a hectic few years servicing the Asian Golf boom, Perrett had earned his stripes and was invited to join the business, thus in 1990 the company named changed to Thomson Wolveridge and Perrett. When Wolveridge retired in 2004 the company became Thomson Perrett.
In 2005 Thomson Perrett and Lobb was established to service the European, Middle Eastern and African markets. Tim Lobb is a Melbourne-born golf course architect who has been working in Europe for 20 years. Thomson Perrett currently has offices in Melbourne, London, Shanghai and Hanoi. The company has achieved much over the journey, having completed over 250 projects in over 30 countries. Apart from Australia, the company has been a major contributor to the development of golf in the Asia Pacific Region, particularly in Japan, Indonesia, India, Thailand and China. The focus in recent years has shifted to the emerging markets of the Middle East, Africa and Vietnam.
When asked to name some career highlights, Perrett was typically enthusiastic, noting such accomplishments as: 1990s: designing and building the Dukes course in St Andrews, Scotland and the opportunity to live in St Andrews and to learn from The Old Course. Other highlights include completing courses in Indonesia including his favourite Mt Merapi (on the world’s most active volcano) built entirely by Indonesian village workers under the direction of Balinese golf legend Wayan Tunas; Designing The Capital Golf Club in Melbourne and Ayodya Links in Bangkok – both ultra-exclusive private courses; and completing over 20 courses in China on all types of sites including abandoned fish farms, rubbish tips and sites reclaimed from the sea. In the 2000s, Perrett’s highlights include working on courses like The National, Moonah Links and Sandhurst ; The Hamilton Island Golf Club – the first golf course ever built in a World Heritage Marine Park; and in 2012 – making the final of the RIO2016 Golf Design Competition.
Thomson Perrett show no signs of slowing down and enthusiastically embrace new markets and challenging sites. With new courses currently under construction in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Nigeria and the UK, the team at Thomson Perrett look forward to a bright future.
(This article was published in the August 2015 edition of Inside Golf magazine)
October 5th, 2015 by Jon
Clearwater Bay Golf Club in Hong Kong which Thomson Perrett remodelled over the past 5 years hosted the Asia Pacific Amateur Championships at the beginning of October. Ross Perrett was a guest at the tournament and gave a Keynote presentation about preparing the course for the tournament.
Below is an article Ross wrote for the 2015 Society of Australian Golf Course Architects Journal on the same topic.
Tournament Preparation – Clearwater Bay
By Ross Perrett
Almost every week there is a significant golf tournament being played somewhere in the world and the preparation for these events involves a lot of preplanning by a host of talented people. The global golfing calendar is overflowing with both Amateur and Professional events that are ideally scheduled to be played when the weather and course conditioning is at it’s best for the particular location and when TV audiences can be maximized. The competition for timeslots is such that it is not always possible to optimize the playing schedule.
A relatively new event that is creating great interest in our Region is The Asia Pacific Amateur Championship, an event organized by The R&A in partnership with The Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) and the Masters Tournament. It is particularly significant as a means to promote golf in the emerging market of Asia-Pacific and brings together the best amateurs from each country. The top two ranked players in all 38 APGC Member Associations are invited with the balance of the 120 players made up of the highest ranked players on the World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR). The winner is invited to play in the U S Masters at Augusta National.
The 2014 event was played at The Royal Melbourne Golf Club, the region’s premier course which has given great prestige to the Championship. Royal Melbourne has in recent years made itself available for numerous international events including The Presidents Cup (2011), The Women’s Open (2012, The World Cup of Golf (2013), The Australian Masters (2013) as well as The Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship(2014). There is no doubt these recent tournaments has reinforced Royal Melbourne’s reputation as one of the world’s best golfing venues.
To facilitate the hosting of The President’s Cup, the team at Royal Melbourne under the leadership of Secretary Manager Paul Rak and Course Superintendent Richard Forsyth undertook the massive task of completely re-grassing the course. The greens were planted with Sutton’s mix with seed sourced from their original greens and grown on in New Zealand, the aprons with a blend of fine fescues and the fairways with Legends couch, a derivative of a Victorian native couch. The task also involved a completely new irrigation system which hard lined the fairways to prevent the couch spreading into the native grass roughs. The courser Legend’s couch was preferred over the finer santa annua species commonly used on Melbourne courses as a means to limit ball run on the fairways and to spread wear.
Royal Melbourne was the first course outside of Asia to host the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship following on from the event being played in China, Japan, Singapore and Thailand. The optimum time for a Tournament in Melbourne is in February after a full summer’s growth for the couch grass fairways. Therefore, hosting the event in October posed some challenges for Richard and his team as the couch fairways were barely out of dormancy with no time to grow out the winter divots. Despite this the course presented brilliantly. The real defence at Royal Melbourne was as always the hard and fast greens. A rain free warm spell leading up to the tournament enabled Richard and his staff to present the greens in excellent condition. The mowing heights for the tournament were set at 3 mm for the greens, 7 mm for the aprons and 12 mm for the fairways with greens running between 12 and 13 on the stimp meter. In setting up the course careful attention was given to pin placements in an attempt to present the course in a user friendly manner. This was important especially given that all players were amateurs and that the standard of player varied considerably between countries. Golf is relatively new to some of the competing countries, whereas Australia is a mature golfing nation that has consistently produce world class players such as Peter Thomson, Greg Norman and Adam Scott. The Australian participants had a considerable advantage having been brought up on hard and fast bent greens. Slower warm season grasses are more the norm in the Asian countries. Access to golf is very limited in some emerging countries. For example in Bangladesh there only 11 courses for a population of 152 million people whilst Melbourne, a city of 4.5 million boasts over 100 courses
The scores varied throughout the tournament and especially on day one when many golfers struggled to come to grips with severe winds and Royal Melbourne’s fast sloping greens. The cut after day 2 was 10 over with the eventual winner Antonio Murdaca shooting an impressive 13 under.
In 2015 the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship moves to Hong Kong and will be played at thespectacular Clearwater Bay Golf Club in October. A strong contingent of officials from Clearwater Bay were in attendance at Royal Melbourne to ensure a smooth handover of the event. Clearwater Bay Course Superintendent Darry Koster took the opportunity to spend some quality time with Royal Melbourne’s Richard Forsyth to share ideas on course preparation and presentation. Darry believes October is perfect time to host a tournament in Hong Kong and is confident the course will be at its best. The grassing regime at Clearwater Bay is very different to Royal Melbourne. The greens are planted with Tifeagle, an ultra dwarf bemuda grass and the fairways are planted with Zoysia matrella. Similar green speeds can be achieved with theses grasses but considerably more inputs will be required especially to prevent fungal diseases that can quickly develop in the hot and moist sub tropical climate of Hong Kong. A key consideration will be the wind which usually peaks in October. Many greens at Clearwater Bay are located on the edge of steep cliffs which exacerbates the exposure to wind. Darry will restrict the ball speed to around 11 on the stimp meter in order to prevent stationary balls roll moving in the wind. The changing wind will also affect the putting ,lines on these exposed greens.
Having undergone a major renovation some 8 -10 years ago, the golf club has been on a path of constant improvement ever since. The management at Clearwater Bay has made a number of changes to the course to better position the course for international events. Thomson Perrett, Golf Course Architects were engaged to oversee the changes over a 2 year period which involved the construction of some new tees on holes 1, 3, 4, 6 and 17, new bunkers on holes 3,7 and 17 modifications to greens on holes 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 13 and the construction of a new Driving Range and short game practice area. The 6th green was altered at the front to eliminate a false front and to create some challenging pin placements. An additional greenside bunker was added to toughen up the 7th hole, a driveable short par 4. The mowing heights around the green were reduced to allow balls to roll back into the bunkers and the lake, should the green be missed from the tee.
The most significant work was the redesign and construction of a new 9th green complex and the construction of a Driving Range for use during tournaments. The previous green was difficult to see and lacked sufficient pin placements suitable for 6 days of tournament practice and play. The new green was raised and extended to the right and now has a completely new look. The new Driving Range utilizes the land normally used as a dedicated 9 hole executive course located adjacent to the Country Club sporting facilities that are separate from the Golf Club.
The Asia Pacific Amateur Championship is now regarded as one of the world’s premier amateur events and it will continue to grow in status whilst quality courses like Royal Melbourne Golf Club and Clearwater Bay Golf Club are selected as venues. It will also showcase how quality golf courses can be created in diverse environments and climates. As golf continues to grow in the emerging markets of the Asia- Pacific Region we can expect to see new venues created to cater for the inevitable growth in golf’s popularity.
September 24th, 2015 by Jon
Thomson Perrett designed courses Black Bull Golf Course, Mandalay Club and Sandhurst Club have all featured as the Club of the Month in Inside Golf Magazine during the course of 2015.
Click on course names below for the features on each course:
Black Bull, February 2015
Mandalay Club, June 2015
Sandhurst Club, September 2015
September 22nd, 2015 by Jon
Ayodhya Links which was master planned and designed by Thomson Perrett has been in ranked in the Work Top 100 Courses of 2015 by Golf Magazine who describe the course as having “inspired design and a remarkable set of greens.”
See link: http://www.golf.com/article-list/top-100-courses-in-the-world-2015/ayodhya-links-bangkok-thailand-top-100-courses
August 21st, 2015 by Jon
Moonah Links Resort which boasts two Thomson Perrett designed courses was recently sold to a Chinese group. Thomson Perrett Managing Director Ross Perrett played a key role on the sale, utilising both his knowledge of the project and his network to help both parties achieve a successful outcome. Thomson Perrett has been engaged to be an ongoing consultant to the new owner.
Below is an article by John Stensholt and Nick Lenaghan that was published in the Australian Finanacial Review on 15 August 2015.
Handbury sells Moonah Links to Chinese developer
BRW Rich Lister Paddy Handbury has sold the top Mornington Peninsula golf resort, Moonah Links, to a private Chinese developer for about $18 million.
The championship golf venue, and The Sands Torquay, was put on the market more than a year ago by Mr Handbury, a nephew of media baron Rupert Murdoch.
A key intermediary in the Moonah Links deal was veteran architect Ross Perrett, who runs golf course design firm Thomson Perrett with champion golfer Peter Thomson.
Moonah Links, which has twice hosted the Australian Open, is nestled in the heart of the Mornington Peninsula food and wine district, not far from the upmarket seaside resort of Portsea.
The golf resort is spread over 238 hectares and includes the Legends course and the Open course, both designed by Thomson Perrett.
Moonah Links includes an 88-room Peppers hotel, with a conference and accommodation centre.
A 250-dwelling residential development on the estate is nearly sold out. But an additional 280-condominium project has only been partly developed.
CHINESE GROUP ACTIVE
Mr Perrett said the Chinese development group had been active in Melbourne and China for some years.
As well as the immediate development upside at Moonah Links, golf courses hold strong appeal for investors from China, where golf has become the latest target of the central government’s crackdown on corruption.
Mr Perrett has been to China many times to help design courses there and has also facilitated investment offshore into local fairways.
“The Chinese love golf with a passion. In all Asian countries it’s considered elite,” Mr Perrett said.
“We deal with a lot of Chinese, and Vietnamese, and people who come and are interested in investing here.”
Mr Handbury bought Moonah Links in 2004, adding it to the Torquay resort he was already developing.
With a course designed by Stuart Appleby, The Sands is set near the popular surf resort of Torquay, on Victoria’s south-west coast.
It includes a 112-room Peppers hotel. The Sands residential estate, with 400 dwellings and 150 townhouses, surrounds the resort.
There is another 4000-square-metre parcel of development land opposite the Torquay resort.
Read more: http://www.afr.com/real-estate/handbury-sells-moonah-links-to-chinese-developer-20150814-giz7ko#ixzz3pFWEy7W0
July 21st, 2015 by Jon
Ross Perrett and Peter Thomson recently attended the official opening of the Thomson Perrett designed Club Mandalay.
Below is an article which was published in Inside Golf magazine (http://www.insidegolf.com.au/news/club-news-news/mandalay-celebrates-as-clubhouse-breaks-ground/)
Following the recent completion of Club Mandalay’s 18-hole golf course, celebrations continued this week as Mandalay broke ground on its crowning feature, the $8 million “Club Mandalay” golf clubhouse and recreational facility.
The clubhouse facility will complement the already playable Peter Thomson designed, 18-hole golf course, located in Beveridge, north of Melbourne. Residents, members and golfers alike will enjoy the well appointed bar and bistro facilities, Pro Shop, function room and locker rooms. The Clubhouse will also provide residents with exclusive access to the fully equipped gym, 25m heated outdoor swimming pool and kids’ water play area.
Architecturally designed by Bayley Ward, Club Mandalay will maximise views over the golf course and parkland surrounding parklands with floor-to-ceiling windows and an abundance of natural lighting to complement the building’s natural materials and neutral palette.
Avid Sports Management, led by PGA Professional and Managing Director James Cooper, will operate Club Mandalay. James is no stranger to the opening of golf facilities of this calibre after being instrumental in the opening and development of Moonah Links, The Dunes, Natadola Bay in Fiji and more recently Golf Central Brisbane Airport.
The Par 72 golf course measures 6,285 metres from the black tees and offers spectacular vistas and superb playing surfaces. The Mandalay layout takes players on a journey through the beautifully landscaped parklands and the multiple tee options that offer players of all skill levels an enjoyable challenge. The strategically positioned and visually spectacular bunkers will be one of the more memorable facets of the Mandalay Golf Course.
“The golf course at Mandalay has grown-in beautifully and has matured well beyond its years. The rolling fairways are reminiscent of a Peter Thomson design, and reflect his loves for links golf. The green shapes and bunkers are also incredibly unique, and I believe a standout feature of the Mandalay Golf Course. The clubhouse will put the finishing touches on what is sure to be an awarding winning facility,” said Cooper
“Club Mandalay is a fantastic addition to golf in Victoria and in particular to Melbourne’s North. We have been delighted by the feedback from players who have already experienced the course, and we are already gaining keen interest for membership and corporate events.” Cooper added
For more information: www.mandalaybeveridge.com.au or visit the Sales Office located at 1 Mandalay Circuit, Beveridge (open daily from 11a.m. – 5 p.m.)
