Gailes

The following extract is taken from the club’s booklet Gailes Golf Club - The First Fifty Year - 1925 to 1974:

“The allocation of the 1955 Australian Open to Gailes set off a wave of enthusiasm in the club that paralleled that of the founders. Scores of members and associates stayed with the job for months and both locker rooms were lined and ceiled and the whole of the clubhouse, including the pergola, was painted.

The approaches to the clubhouse were concreted and gangs of members under Norm Whitworth manicured the course. The new ablutions block was built by contract and that was the only improvement about the clubhouse prior to the Open which was not the voluntary work of members and associates.”

It’s believed that the course once had 184 bunkers that were maintained by patients from the adjacent hospital facility and a 16mm film produced many years ago clearly shows a nest of bunkers on the inside dogleg on the 5th hole and church pew bunkers like Oakmont’s between holes 13 and 14. Today, the course has only 69 bunkers, the result of ever-increasing maintenance costs.

The Club has also hosted an Australian Amateur in 1972 and five editions of the Queensland Open, as well as a Queensland Amateur and Australian Senior Amateur. The course was for many years surfaced with couch grass but for the last twenty years or so the club has used Tifton 328 grass on the greens and wintergreen on the fairways and tees.