Royal Sydney Golf Club (Bay Course)

Overview: The Bay Course is Royal Sydney’s current 18-hole championship routing in Rose Bay, where the course now returns to a more open coastal-heathland character. The new design was created by Gil Hanse with landscape architect Harley Kruse and reopened in 2025 after a major reconstruction. Royal Sydney describes two loops of nine, ribbon-style tee areas, modern bunker construction and newly shaped greens. The playing ground is defined by sand, native vegetation and changing angles into the putting surfaces, while the setting keeps the Sydney shoreline close to the experience without turning the course into a purely scenic exercise.

History: Royal Sydney’s club history reaches back to 1893, and the Rose Bay course evolved through several phases before the current project. The championship course closed in late 2023, construction began in early 2024, and the new Bay Course reopened in 2025. The work was more than a design refresh: it re-established coastal heathland across parts of the property, modernised drainage and irrigation, and replaced the previous tree-heavy character with a landscape intended to support native habitat as well as championship golf.

Did You Know? Royal Sydney’s project team reports a net increase of 1,592 trees and a planting programme of 500,000 native understory plants. The landscape plan also quadrupled floral diversity and created the Paperbark Wetland wildlife sanctuary, making the Bay Course an unusually visible example of ecological restoration integrated with a modern golf project.