Royal Adelaide

Located at Seaton, near Adelaide, the Royal Adelaide Golf Club is an exclusively private club and is regarded as one of the best in Australia. It is also sometimes referred to as the Seaton Golf Club .

History of the course
The Royal Adelaide Golf Club goes back a long way in history. It was first formed in 1870 and was known as the Adelaide Golf Club . However, the club closed down after a few years but was again formed in 1870. Then golf was played at a makeshift course in North parklands but it was moved to Glenelg in 1896 where a nine-hole course was built. In another two years time, the course was upgraded to 18 holes. Owing to differences with the owners of the land the club purchased land near Grange in 1904 where they built an international standard golf course. It was ready for play in 1906. In 1926, the club received the royal charter and henceforth came to be known as Royal Adelaide Golf Club .
The land was ideally suited to build a golf course. It had large sand dunes as well as a series of swamps. However, when the course was first built the sand dunes were left out of the design. They were incorporated in the scheme of things after Dr Alistair MacKenzie, world famous golf course architect, visited the course in 1926. According to him, the course offers a perfect combination of sand dunes and fir trees which were the symptoms of a real-links course. During the last three decades, the flat peripheral holes have been landscaped to give the present links its distinctive character.

Course Trivia

he Royal Adelaide Golf Club was one of the founding members of the Australian Golf Union, which was formed in 1898.

The club also admitted lady members for the first time in 1897. They have also built a second nine-hole course called the Associate Course for them.

The club has hosted nine Open Championships and 16 Amateur Championships. The Australian Ladies Amateur and Open Championships have also been played here.

Over the years, three club members have won individual titles at the national level.

The Royal Adelaide Golf Course perennially ranks amongst the top courses in Australia. It is currently ranked 32 nd in Golf Digest magazine's list of top 100 golf courses outside the US in 2005. As we continue on this tour we will learn about the other top-100 golf courses in the world.