The Royal Sydney Golf Club

Royal Sydney was established in 1893 and settled at Rose Bay, on sandy ground between the harbour and the eastern suburbs, a site that was open dune country when the club took it and is now some of the most valuable land in the city. It received the royal title in 1897. The club is a sporting institution rather than a golf club alone, with tennis, bowls and croquet on the same property, and it has staged the Australian Open many times.

The main course, now called the Bay course, has just been comprehensively rebuilt by Gil Hanse. He first presented the plan in March 2017, members approved it in November 2019, and it then sat for three years while a New South Wales Land and Environment Court case ran its course. The obstacle was trees: the proposal involved removing close to 600 of them, and residents’ groups and environmentalists fought it. The compromise that unlocked the project included planting 250,000 new plants, mostly low heathland species of the kind that give the Melbourne Sandbelt its texture. The course reopened to members in March after more than a year of construction.

What it asks of you

A par 72 on sand, which means firm turf and quick greens, laid out among ti-tree and native scrub that has been thickened and thinned repeatedly over a century of argument about how much of it there should be.

The Hanse rebuild has changed the character considerably. Removing the tree cover restored the open dune landscape the site started as, and the new heathland planting defines the corridors with low vegetation rather than with canopy. The result is a course that plays firmer, wider and more strategically than the one members knew, and that looks like nothing else in Sydney.

There is a second nine on the property, which is where most casual and social golf happens.

What players say about it

Guests play by member introduction, so the public record consists of guest accounts, architecture writing and the extensive coverage the redesign attracted. The notes below summarise recurring themes across those public sources. They are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we do not name or quote individual reviewers.

What comes up in its favour

• The Hanse work is very well received by people who write about architecture, several of whom describe the new course as a different level from the old one.
• The heathland planting is singled out as the decision that gives the course its texture, and reviewers draw the comparison with the Melbourne Sandbelt approvingly.
• Firmer, more open ground has restored a genuine sand-course character to a site that had lost it under tree cover.
• The club’s facilities beyond golf, and the setting between the harbour and the eastern suburbs, come up in every guest account.

What comes up against

• The tree removal was genuinely contentious. Local residents and environmental groups opposed it for years, and that opposition was about the neighbourhood rather than about golf.
• The project took close to a decade from concept to reopening, and the members lost more than a year of play.
• The course is new enough that the review record is still thin, and much of what exists comes from people with a stake in the outcome.
• Access is by member introduction only, at one of the most exclusive clubs in the country.

Getting there and when to go

Rose Bay is around fifteen minutes from central Sydney and half an hour from the airport, on the harbour side of the eastern suburbs.

The course plays all year on sand that drains. Spring and autumn give the most reliable weather. Guest play is arranged through a member.

Green fees

Guest conditions and rates are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, Wikipedia and published architecture, planning and news coverage for the history and the Hanse redesign, and the club’s own site for access. The opinion section summarises public commentary and guest accounts read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we do not reproduce or attribute quotes.

We have not played this course, and nothing here is a substitute for that. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say in what it says. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.