Best Golf Courses in New Zealand
5 ranked courses in New Zealand
New Zealand has five courses in this guide, all on the North Island: three links and two coastal courses. Tom Doak had a hand in three of them. Cape Kidnappers Golf Course at Te Awanga in Hawke's Bay, his 2004 design, runs out along ridge-top cliffs above the Pacific, and The Farm at Cape Kidnappers provides lodge rooms on the property. Tara Iti Golf Club at Mangawhai in Northland followed in 2015, a links over coastal dunes on land that was once pine forest; it is private, and play is by member invitation. Further along the same coast at Tomarata, Te Arai Links sells tee times to visitors on two walking-only courses: Doak's North Course and a South Course by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, which opened in 2022. Kauri Cliffs, David Harman's 2000 course at Matauri Bay in Northland, is the other resort course, with fifteen of its eighteen holes in view of the Pacific and six along the cliff tops; The Lodge at Kauri Cliffs opened alongside it. The oldest design is Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club on the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington, Alex Russell's 1949 links on old sand dunes. It is semi-private, takes visitors who book ahead, and the New Zealand Open was first held there in 1959.
— Top 5 Rankings
Top 5 Best Golf Courses in New Zealand
Updated
About Golf Courses in New Zealand
Northland is the main trip: Kauri Cliffs at Matauri Bay, then Tara Iti at Mangawhai and Te Arai Links at Tomarata on the coast north of Auckland. Paraparaumu Beach is about 50 kilometers north of Wellington by road or rail, and Cape Kidnappers is a separate stop in Hawke's Bay, about 30 kilometers from the airport at Napier.
- Ranked courses
- 5
- Course styles
- links 3 · coastal 2
- Access
- resort 2 · private 1 · public 1
- Opened
- 1949–2015
- Playable without membership
- 4 of 5