Lake Karrinyup Country Club is widely acknowledged as Western Australia's premier golf club, and was home to four Australian Opens, the Johnnie Walker Classic in 2002 and 2003 and will host the Perth International in 2012. Just 13km north of Perth's CBD, Lake Karrinyup is a tranquil botanical haven for wildlife including native birds and kangaroos.
As the only Australian mainland state Dr Alister MacKenzie did not visit during his whirlwind 1926 tour, Western Australia retains a connection with this golden period of design thanks to the work of his understudy and design partner, Alex Russell.
The course opened for play in 1928, after which Russell admitted the course was "a little tough". Over the next 80 years the course went through many changes namely from course architects Peter Thomson and Michael Wolveridge, who acted as course consultants from the early 1970’s to 2000's, strengthing the layout by adding more than twenty greenside and fairway bunkers and building nine new championship tees to adapt to the changing modern game.
The most significant re-design stage, however, occurred when Michael Clayton was enlisted in 2007 to bring the course back to one of the top in the country after its rating had fallen. In the process all 18 greens were redesigned, bunkers removed and added and the general aesthetics of the course changed to a more ragged look to reflect Russell's initial intentions. Like much of Clayton's work, the member response has been polarised - however most golfing critics agree that his work has been an improvement. This is shown by the course jumping 7 spots from its ranking in 2008 to 2010 to becoming Australia's 12th ranked golf course by Australian Golf Digest.
The most memorable holes on the course include the signature 8th, a 200m par three which includes a water carry to large undulating and heavily bunkered green, and the short 270m par 4 14th which is a fantastic example of risk-reward golf design.
As the only course in Western Australia to have hosted a national Open, Lake Karrinyup has enjoyed decades of recognition as the region’s golfing jewel. Despite a string of well regarded modern tracks bringing renewed competition to Perth, threatening this existing order of ascendancy, Lake Karrinyup remains the West’s best classic.
