A new chapter in Royal Queensland Golf Club’s proud history is officially being written following last week’s Queensland Government approval of their new nine-hole short course. Deputy Premier, the Honourable Jarrod Bleijie, announced the approval of a Ministerial Infrastructure Designation for the project which will deliver a new nine-hole golf course, pavilion and upgrades to the existing golf course to support the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games being hosted in Brisbane. Royal Queensland was confirmed last year as host venue of the men’s and women’s Olympic golf events in 2032 after the sport made a successful return at the Rio 2016 Games. 

The new short course will be constructed on land on the eastern side of the Gateway Bridge that had previously housed six holes of the original Royal Queensland layout. The club lost those holes due to the duplication of the Gateway Bridge in the mid-2000s, with the championship course redeveloped by Michael Clayton and re-opened in 2007. Despite retaining custodianship of that 35-hectare parcel of land it had remained unused, until now. 

The approved plans include a nine-hole short course designed by OCM Golf, a new riverfront pavilion, as well as a 4500 square metre Himalayas style putting green and water storage (see overall site image above). 

Royal Queensland course superintendent Adam Mills says that construction on the new holes has already started, coinciding with their work to ramp up preparations on the Championship course which hosts the 2025 BMW Australian PGA Championship in late November. 

The team from Atlas Golf Services has completed their preliminary work on site, including setting up WHS and erosion control measures and stripping certain areas, and have now commenced construction. Mills is confident that four holes will be turfed by the end of this year with all holes to be well progressed and midway through grow-in come next winter. The short course is slated to be completed late in 2026. 

The new course will boast USGA-spec TifEagle greens, line-planted Tahoma 31 fairways, tees and roughs and a new liner in the bunkers. The turf varieties were chosen following extensive trials on the club’s reconstructed 19th hole which was carried out ahead of the 2023 PGA.

TifEagle was installed on that green (the existing greens on the Championship course are 328), while the fairway was stolonised half/half with Tahoma 31 and IronCutter couchgrasses. Over the course of the past couple of seasons Mills has been monitoring their performance, with Paul Spencer from Greenway Turf Solutions providing an independent assessment to help inform a final decision. 

“Both IronCutter and Tahoma 31 performed well in our conditions,” explains Mills. “After considering all of the parameters (low thatch accumulation, renovation and divot recovery, density, colour, seed head production, drought tolerance and salt tolerance) it was clear that Tahoma 31 was the right choice for Royal Queensland.
 
“TifEagle was always going to be the choice for the greens. It’s pretty tried and tested now. I like it because of its ability not to change through our seasonal variations. While our 328 is great, it can be susceptible to those changes and it’s all about having a grass that can provide us some more consistency.”

While the new works will be a key focus for Mills (pictured right), he also has the not too small matter of hosting a fifth consecutive Australian PGA Championship from 27-30 November. The club has held the tournament since 2021 after it shifted from RACV Royal Pines, with the impending works ahead of the Olympics likely meaning that this year will be its last. In preparation for the PGA, the crew spent all of last week undertaking their usual course renovations. Greens were cored using high-speed Maredo heads and verticut, while all tees and select areas of fairways were scarified. 

“It has been a busy few weeks with everything going on, but the renovations on the Championship course are the kick off for us coming out of winter and putting things in place to build up ahead of the tournament,” says Mills.

“We have done a fair bit of work over winter on our bunkers which we do every year – decompacting, working on our shapes – and the past week was all about thatch removal. The 328 greens are pretty good, but it was more about targeting some of the thatchier areas on our fairways.

"We’ll be more aggressive in December once the tournament is over, but this will have us in a good spot for the tournament."   

Story and pictures by Brett Robinson