Transforming an older course into a new one is difficult; there are usually too many remnant pieces that stand in the way of a total re-routing. The open nature of the Cups land south of Melbourne provided an exception to the rule.
The previous Ocean course was considered the least of the three courses at The National – difficult but uninspiring. The emphasis of the redesign has been to make it interesting and fun, even on windy days. Wide fairways dispel the need to search for balls in the rough [or leave them to the snakes], but which side of the fairway you’re on matters greatly on the approach to the green.
Seven new greens were created on land that had been undisturbed by the previous construction; it was much more work to erase the old green sites than to build the new ones.
