Alistair McKenzie is renowned as one of the best golf course architects of all time. His stable includes Augusta National, Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne and many other famous courses. McKenzie spent a couple of days a few decades back having a play at some land West of Auckland, and the output, Titirangi Golf course is something special.
I must confess that before this year began, I had barely heard of Titirangi GC. Yet, on our travels we have consistently heard that this little McKenzie track is, without a doubt, one of New Zealandâ??s best.
Looking at the card, Titirangi looks like a walk in the park. It is short â?? par 70 and barely 6000m long off the black tees. But the typical McKenzie design requires strategy and placement. You donâ??t stand on the tee with your driver and smash it as hard as you want. Tee shots require careful choice of iron or fairway wood, often with some shape, to place your ball in the best place to approach the green. It is a feature of the design that holes can seem simple when played well, but monstrously difficult when not.   The course was in awesome nick, playing fast but very fair. The greens were glass and the moral of the story today was do not leave your ball above the hole!Â
I will briefly mention a couple of features of the course. The par 3â??s are beastly. 170m + iron shots to a green, surrounded by bunkering and native kiwi scrub. And the greens are intense. For example the 7th green has three tiers and when you get above the hole (as Jamie did today) you need to exhibit sheer brilliance to stop the ball on the tier below (as Jamie did today!).  Golfers with far more talents than Jamie and I would be very content with pars on each of the short holes at Titirangi. The stroke 1 hole, the 12th, is an awesome hole cut through the bush and measuring no less than 420m off the tips. Another par to Jamie on this hole effectively saw the end of the four-ball match as with it, he and Phil Leishman went 4 up. Not ideal.  I can't do the course justice in a short blog, but to give you an indication it is up there with Paraparaumu for me as one of NZ's best.
We were joined today by not only Phil Leishman, but his camera crew shooting footage for the UBS golf show. Fortunately the producer, Pete, is a regular at Titirangi and proved to be a walking course guide which was crucial. We were also joined by Craig Heatley. Craig brought The First Tee to New Zealand in 2005 and is the Chairman of the Board of TFT. He would make for a great mentor â?? a self made man who started out running a couple of mini golf courses, went on to start up the Rainbows End theme park and then brought Sky TV (cable) to NZ in the late 80â??s. But importantly, Craig is a down to earth guy who was only to keen to share with us some of his experiences. Craig is a fanatical golfer, and spends a fair bit of his time heading the media committee at Augusta GC. I guess he has to make sure that characters like Leishman behave when filming at that iconic event. Craig is a handy golfer as well and has won a couple of pro-am tournaments in the US playing with both Freddy Couples and Phil Tataurangi. However today, he was paired with me and we were smoked by Phil and Jamie. Phil made the most of his 9 shots, and his peculiar and somewhat gay 'putting dances' were frequently followed by his ball dropping in the back of the cup for a "four, net three" (and some cheeky quip about the match score). JP also played some good golf and was looking at a handy score until he hit the self destruct button on the 15th. Perhaps this had something to do with the entourage who joined us from that hole on.
In sum â?? the match score was 5/4 to JP and Phil, but Craig and I â??pressedâ?? on the last four holes and won our money back (read â?? we did not have to eat weetbix). I held on for the stablefords to beat JP on the day. Scores 81 (33)Â - 85 (30).Â
Today we started a wee filming exercise we will do when we play with some of the characters along the way. Have a look at Puregolf2010 TV, edition 1, below.  We welcome suggestions of questions to ask people on the way around. Â
Peace
M
P.S A huge thank you to the guys at Titirangi for hosting all of us today. Â
P.P.S I have used my judgment to edit Phil's 3rd question from the video below...
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