Read this story, check out the photos below and then make time to search airfares to New Zealand, because architect Tom Doak’s new North Course at Te Arai Links opened this week.
Doak spent months on the seaside ground about 90 minutes north of Auckland, fashioning a complement to the resort’s highly rated South Course which was designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and opened in 2022. Doak’s routing features seven holes along the Pacific Ocean, with the others flowing into what had been a pine forest on sand dunes high above the beach.
Doak, famous for layouts such as Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and Ballyneal in Colorado among others, also built the ultra-private Tara Iti Golf Club just up the road. By contrast, Te Arai Links offers public-access play as well as private memberships, with private and public play alternating days on the North and South courses.
Doak was hands-on for this project, climbing onto the equipment to shape many of the greens himself during his two-month stay during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022. Doak worked with shapers Angela Moser, Clyde Johnson and Brian Slawnik.
“I’m still not that great on the dozer, but I do love it,” Doak said in a media release announcing news of the opening. “Some of the results are pretty wild, like the greens at 7 and 4. Maybe too severe at first glance. But in the end, they looked really cool and we all agreed: Let’s keep that.
“To be honest, for this course to be spoken of equally, alongside the South Course, we felt we had to do more with the golf. This is legitimately great inland terrain – pure sand and dunesy, with big undulations. But we couldn’t rely on that. We agreed that if we’re going to produce something different, we should probably be a bit edgier. The overall shaping, greens and fairways, speak to that, I think.”
No. 11 of the North Course at Te Arai Links in New Zealand (Courtesy of Te Arai Links/Ricky Robinson)
The media release pointed out that Doak created several half-par holes on the 6,931-yard layout.
“At one point, we had the potential of five or six par 5s out there,” Doak said. “The course will play to a par of 71, but the routing does affect difficulty. There are some very strong par 4s on this golf course. Good short ones, too – but some real beasts. The reality is, everything on the North Course remains very close to the ocean. On any given day, each of the 18 holes can play completely differently depending on…
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