Date: August 26, 2016
Author: Mike Clayton

Hole 4 – Royal Sydney Golf Club – Par 4

This is the first difficult par four on the course and it plays down from the tee then turns to the left and goes up to the green at the high point of the hill.

Trees both left and right narrow the fairway at driving length and those driving left to the inside corner of the dogleg are confronted with a number of trees just off the fairway that block the view of the green. That is an oddity and I wonder if this would be a significantly better hole if the trees were removed and replaced by bunkers. The effect would create a hazard on the ground as opposed to a hazard in the air or ‘bunkers in the sky’ as the old Scots referred to trees that interfered with the golf.

There is a massive bunker to the left of the green that must give the members some serious grief and few will scrape a par out of the 4th hole if they miss the green in the one of the deepest bunkers in the country.