Onga Onga Golf Club

Small-town New Zealand golf at its most elemental — Onga Onga is a rural club serving one of Central Hawke's Bay's quieter corners, a limestone country town of fewer than 200 people that sits inland from the coast, up toward the foothills where the region's sheep and cattle country begins to roll more seriously. The club is very much a community institution of the kind that dots rural New Zealand, kept alive by a tight membership and the kind of understated pride locals take in maintaining a course against the odds of geography and modest means.

Hawke's Bay as a golf region punches well above its weight — Napier and Hastings anchor the area with some genuinely respected courses — but the inland club circuit, of which Onga Onga is a quiet participant, offers something the destination courses can't: turf worn and shaped by decades of the same families walking the same ground.

Expect a compact layout on honest pastoral terrain, probably with tight fairways defined by native plantings and a playing experience that rewards local knowledge and straight hitting over power.