The course & your visit
Kooyonga: the sandbelt classic that hosts Opens
Kooyonga sits on sandy, undulating ground at Lockleys, fifteen minutes from the Adelaide CBD in the city’s sandbelt. H.L. ‘Cargie’ Rymill laid it out in 1923 and remarkably little of his routing has changed since. The current rankings put it 21st in Golf Digest’s 2026 Top 100 and 24th in Golf Australia Magazine’s 2026 list, and the honour roll — seven Australian Opens, most recently the 2026 Women’s Open — explains why championship golf keeps coming back.
Sources: Kooyonga — about the course · Kooyonga — history
Championship ground
Five men’s Australian Opens and two women’s Opens have been decided here, alongside nine South Australian Opens and eight National Amateur Championships. The men’s winners run from Norman Von Nida and Ossie Pickworth through Gary Player — twice, in 1958 and 1965 — to Peter Thomson in 1972. Jin Young Ko won the 2018 Women’s Open at Kooyonga, and Hannah Green the 2026 edition, which the club hosted on its own course pages as the current championship.
The club says it has long been recognised for its conditioning and playability all year round — that is the club’s own reputation claim, not an inspected condition report.
Sources: Kooyonga — history · Kooyonga — about the course
Rymill’s routing, modern turf
Kooyonga describes itself as a classic traditional course on a sandy, undulating parcel, with few changes to Rymill’s original routing since it opened. Crafter + Mogford’s recent work enhanced beauty and playability, and the course facts page names Mackenzie & Ebert as architects from 2026.
The surfaces are a warm/cool-season split: creeping bentgrass on greens and collars, Santa Ana hybrid couch across fairways, tees and surrounds, and common Somerton couch persisting in the roughs and out-of-play areas. Irrigation comes from four bores drilled 180 to 200 metres into the T1 aquifer, metered under authorisation, with an effluent connection held in reserve. The environment page details integrated pest management and centrally controlled watering — the machinery behind the conditioning reputation.
Sources: Kooyonga — about the course · Kooyonga — environment
How a visitor gets on
Kooyonga is a private club that welcomes visitors holding a GOLFLink number, subject to availability, with tee-time enquiries and bookings taken online. Through the year the club runs open days where guests play the championship course at a special rate — contact the club for the schedule. Premium equipment hire can be arranged with the booking, and pre- or post-round catering for small groups runs from a la carte dining in the H.L. Rymill Room to a cheese plate and wine on the terrace.
The ambitious option is the Four Reds experience, run with Golf Explorer and Tourism SA: one trip taking in Kooyonga, Royal Adelaide, Glenelg and The Grange, the four prestigious private courses of Adelaide’s west. That packaging tells you how the club sees itself — not a single round but a destination golfers build holidays around.
Sources: Kooyonga — playing at Kooyonga
A tram ride in 1922
The founding story is worth the telling. In 1922 a train strike forced Cargie Rymill onto a tram to Henley Beach, where a ‘For Sale’ sign on a tract of swamp and dune country called May’s Paddock caught his eye. He broke his journey, walked the ground, and decided he had found the site for a golf course. The club opened officially in 1923, with its first clubhouse built the next year on the site of an old farmhouse called Surrey House.
Kooyonga was named under the impression that it was an Aboriginal word meaning ‘plenty sand, plenty water’ — the club’s own history keeps the careful wording. And the first club professional set the competitive tone immediately: Rufus Stewart won the 1927 Australian Open Championship.
Sources: Kooyonga — history
Researched from the published sources linked above.