- Address18 Langford Rd, Sorrento VIC 3943, Australia
The Sorrento Golf Club was formed as Sorrento and Portsea Golf Club in 1907 but, within two years, “Portsea” had been dropped from the name. Why? Who knows? Whatever the reason, it would take until 1924 before Portsea golfers set up their own golf course to the west of the Sorrento property.
The original 9-hole course at Sorrento was extended to an 18-hole layout by the club’s part-time professional, James Douglas Ardeley Scott, who joined the club in December 1925, having arrived in Melbourne from England earlier that year. Scott only stayed for a couple of years before moving on to design courses in Brisbane, Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand.
Course superintendent James Scott built the course to J.D.A. Scott’s plans but the two men may have had a falling out which lead to J.D.A. Scott’s early departure, before the full eighteen holes were ready for play in 1929. Part of the delay in opening the layout may also have been due to the “toning down of the severity of the bunkers” as mentioned in a Greens Committee report.
Laid out near the tip of the Mornington Peninsula, the Sorrento course is one of the oldest in the area and its hilly, sand-based fairways are set within densely forested terrain, ideally suited to all year round play. Accuracy is all-important here so golfers who can plot their way round the layout will have the opportunity to score well.
The outward half is regarded as easier than the back nine though the left doglegged, short par four 4th is a hole where a big number can easily be carded if played carelessly. The par fours at 8 and 12 are two of the hardest holes on the course and must be tackled with caution whilst the par threes at 2 and 13 are the best of the five short holes at Sorrento.
The course has been altered down the years, of course, including changes made by former club member Peter Thomson and his associate Michael Wolveridge.
Sorrento is a course that splits opinion. In Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, his fellow raters scored the course 6, 3 and 5 out of 10. “The undulating fairways are the star and typically brown out in the summer months and impart a genuine links feel. Those fairways are also spacious, with the ti-trees being well back from play so the golfer is encouraged to hit out and not steer the ball… This is the exact sort of fun golf to which course rankings do an enormous disservice...”
Neil Crafter and Paul Mogford of Golf Strategies were appointed in 2012 to remodel the 9th hole bunkering in three stages, enhancing the strategic and aesthetic values of the hole. The green for the 10th was also repositioned in 2013, adding some 30 metres to the length of the hole.
A Concept Master Plan was drawn up for the course in 2015, with the primary objective being the unification of course bunkering, starting at the 4th, 6th, 9th and 10th holes. A new 19th hole was then created on the site behind the 11th green in a turf nursery area.
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