Old Course

Few courses announce their ambitions through a name alone quite like this one. Cape Schanck sits at the wild southern tip of the Mornington Peninsula, where Port Phillip Bay meets Bass Strait and the coastal scrub runs low and tough against near-constant wind. This is linksland in everything but the passport — open, exposed, and demanding of a shot-shaper's imagination rather than just raw power.

The Mornington Peninsula has quietly become one of Australia's finest concentrations of golf, home to layouts that regularly feature in national top-50 conversations. The Old Course at Cape Schanck sits within that tradition, a layout shaped by terrain that does much of the designing on its own. Elevation changes, coastal vegetation, and shifting winds conspire to make the same hole play like 2 different holes depending on the day.

For visitors making the drive south from Melbourne — roughly 90 minutes — it completes a region worth building an entire golf trip around. Come prepared for the weather to have its say.