Gisborne

Much of Vern’s design remains. Indeed, the architects of the major transformation in the late 1960s and eartl 1970s, Eric Horne and Horrey Brown, made ‘every attempt to preserve as much of Morcom’s layout as possible’. Hore and Brown’s remodel saw the clubhouse shifted further into the property, necessitating alterations to the surrounding holes, the nines flipped and the dam behind today’s 4th green planned.

The larger dam east of the clubhouse was added in 1974. Morcom’s stretch of holes from the 2nd to 9th became the 10th to 17th, and his sequence from the 11th to 15th became the 3rd to 7th. Of his five holes that didn’t survive, the unusual split-fairway 10th might have been the greatest loss, eliminated to make way for water storage. Although Vern had strongly recommended turf greens and teeing grounds, golfers played to sand scrapes throughout the 1950s and 60s. Expanded dam capacity allowed irrigated grass greens and tees to be opened for play in 1972.”