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Avondale Golf Club is a private golf club in Pymble, on Sydney's Upper North Shore, formed in 1926 by a group of businessmen seeking a private club for themselves and their families. The founders purchased more than 200 acres of rugged bushland adjoining Presbyterian Ladies' College, and noted architect Eric Apperly — of the firm Wright and Apperly, who also designed the clubhouse — submitted course plans within a month. The club officially opened on 17 December 1927, with the ceremony performed by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Dudley de Chair.
The course plays to a par of 71 over approximately 6,110 metres (6,133 yards) from the championship markers, routed through the natural bushland terrain that gave the club its site in the first place. The layout has been refreshed over the decades, most notably by Ross Watson and, more recently, by Neil Crafter of Crafter + Mogford, keeping the course competitive among Australia's top-ranked layouts — it currently sits at number 66 in Golf Digest Australia's Top 100.
The course is an 18-hole parkland golf course. It plays to par 71, 6,110m (6,133 yards). Designed by Eric Apperly, the course originally opened in 1927. It is a private members' club. On-site facilities include Pro Shop, Membership, Putting Green, Chipping Area, Golf Cart Rental.
Few Sydney golf clubs trace their origins to a decision made on a train. In February 1927, a group of the city's businessmen, meeting en route to Milsons Point, resolved to turn more than 200 acres of bushland in Pymble into a private golf club of their own.
The land came from Presbyterian Ladies' College, an institution several of the founders had also helped establish. Clearing the site was manual work: greenkeeper George Mayo led a five-man crew using axes and horses, while founding members pitched in to clear stones from the fairways by hand.
The first nine holes opened for play on 18 April 1927. The full 18-hole course and a permanent clubhouse followed by December, officially opened by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Dudley de Chair, on 17 December 1927.
Eric Apperly, already an established golf course architect, designed both the course and its clubhouse — routing Avondale through the same bushland terrain the founders had chosen for its seclusion, while simultaneously overseeing the on-ground implementation of Alister MacKenzie's plans for the New South Wales Golf Club across the harbour.
The result was a course built to work with the site's natural bush contours rather than reshape them, an approach that has held up well enough to still frame the layout a century on.
Avondale's course has been updated rather than replaced. Architect Ross Watson carried out an earlier renovation, and more recently Neil Crafter of Crafter + Mogford has led a further redesign phase — part of a broader wave of renovation among Sydney's North Shore clubs that has also touched Concord, Killara and Castle Hill.
The turf has modernised too: fairways were converted from blue couch to Santa Ana grass, and the greens were rebuilt with A1 and A4 bentgrass in 2017.
Avondale is currently ranked No. 66 in Golf Digest Australia's Top 100 golf courses, a placing built on its bushland routing and Golden Age pedigree rather than modern length.
In 2001 it also became the first — and to date only — golf course in New South Wales certified as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, recognition for the environmental management of the course's bush and wildlife habitat.
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