Rotorua Golf Club (Arikikapakapa)

Overview: Rotorua Golf Club’s Arikikapakapa course is an 18-hole links-style layout unlike almost any other in New Zealand. The official course page lists par 70 and 5,799 metres from the blue tees, but the most important feature is the active geothermal landscape: mud pools, steam vents and volcanic forms sit alongside the fairways. The course asks for ordinary golfing discipline in an extraordinary setting, with safe lines and accurate approach shots especially valuable near the thermal features.

History: Rotorua Golf Club was established in 1906 and reached the present reserve in 1912, when the first nine holes were created. The course expanded to eighteen holes in 1918 and was later remodelled by Charles Redhead. Its history is inseparable from the thermal reserve around it, and the club has developed a golf course that works with the volcanic ground rather than trying to conceal it.

Did You Know? The course’s ninth hole can be wreathed in sulphurous steam, and the fourteenth plays around a volcanic crater. Golf has been played on this thermal landscape for more than a century, making Arikikapakapa a rare case where geological activity is not merely visible from the fairway but forms part of the identity of individual holes.