PART OF THE DEAL WITH PAYING THIS KIND OF MONEY IS YOU NEVER WAIT FOR ANYTHING, EVER.
gest World’s 100 Greatest, is no small consolation for not playing No 5 Royal Melbourne West. Situated with three other courses on Little Bay Peninsula, the site was once nearly combined and developed into the antipodal answer to Pebble Beach Resort in the 1980s. But private NSW, true to its logo of a cypress tree bent sideways from wind, held fast against going corporate. We happened to catch it on a calm day, but thanks to my conversation the day prior with David Keeling (distinguished professor of cultural geogra- phy emeritus, Western Kentucky University), I could gaze into the Pacific and consider Captain Perouse, the French explorer whose ships went down with- out a trace in a cyclone in 1788. Had Perouse made it home, it’s possible the French would have claimed Little Bay and beyond, initiating unknowable wrin- kles in centuries of geo-politics, and, oh, what very different fare we’d later be enjoying in the clubhouse for our second lunch. No one can buy a game, and after golf our cohort generally looked just as sun-whipped and hangdog as the low-net strivers at any muny. To wash away the double bogeys, we celebrated our last evening in Australia aboard a yacht cruise with cocktails and canapes. Dinner was in a private hall at the Sydney Opera House, a single long table set as if for visiting political dignitaries, under the serenade of a quintet of classical musicians. I lost count of how many wait- ers, bartenders, guides, drivers, captains, first mates and dock workers assisted in the flow of the evening, but our group of about three dozen cut through the crowded harbour with tactical precision. Humiliating as it can feel to be conveyed through cities by guides like a child, the benefit to doing it in style is that all the other would-be tourist hunters of a city leave you well alone. The wink-wink tail number of our jet was G-AXTW. Leased from Titan Airways by Kalos Golf’s parent travel company, TCS, the idea is to keep it in near continuous use all year to get to profit, especially af- ter the refurbishment of the interior. When it comes to chairs, Italian leather meets air-grade specifica- tions ain’t cheap. Yet at every destination, our plane sat unused at the airport for three or four days while the pilots, crew and chef hung out and collected their
126 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2026
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