Ohai Golf Course

Ohau Golf Course sits on the Canterbury-Southland fringe of New Zealand's South Island, in a part of the country where the land opens into wide tussock flats and the Southern Alps form a dramatic western horizon. The course serves the small community around Lake Ohau and the Mackenzie Basin — high-country territory defined by big skies, unpredictable winds off the ranges, and a landscape that feels genuinely remote. Playing here means contending with conditions that no scorecard can prepare you for: gusts that shift direction mid-round and a brightness to the light that makes distances deceptively hard to read.

This is a rural members' club in the truest sense — the kind of course that exists primarily to serve a tight local golfing community rather than to attract touring visitors. Expectations should be set accordingly: honest, unfussy golf on grounds shaped by the terrain rather than by a design budget.

For travellers passing through en route to Twizel or the Ohau skifield, a round here offers something rarer than a polished resort experience — a genuine slice of South Island country golf, played against scenery that would embarrass most destination courses in the world.