It has been listed in the top-10 friendliest cities in the world and you will also find it on a roll call of 20 of the world’s best waterfront cities. Check out any list of cities from around the globe voted the most liveable, and you’re likely to find Auckland somewhere in the top-10.

But chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re a golfer and you’re in luck as Auckland is all of those aforementioned things, as well as being the gateway to one of the hottest golf destinations on the planet.

If – like nearly 75 percent of the international visitors embarking on a Kiwi journey of discovery – you touchdown at Auckland Airport, you can be on the 1st tee at the world-class Royal Auckland and Grange Golf Club less than 25 minutes after clearing customs.

Royal Auckland and Grange is the oldest ‘new’ golf club in New Zealand. As the name suggests, the current club was formed in 2015 through an amalgamation of neighbouring Royal Auckland (established in 1894) and The Grange (1924).

Two years later, The Grange course was closed, and construction began on what the club called ‘Project Legacy’ – a 27-hole layout spread across land previously occupied by both clubs and created by Chris Cochran of Jack Nicklaus Design.

The first phase of construction saw 13 new holes built on the former Grange course, the building of two long span bridges linking the two properties and a new clubhouse. The second phase saw the remaining 14 holes and a driving range constructed on Royal Auckland’s Middlemore property. There is also a large Himalayas-style putting course alongside the new clubhouse.

The merged club officially opened its 27 holes – with three nine-hole loops named Grange, Tamaki and Middlemore – in 2021 and soon gained a reputation for some of New Zealand’s best prepared playing surfaces – aided by state-of-the-art SubAir systems, like those found at Augusta National – beneath its greens and surrounds.

Titirangi GC. PHOTO: Supplied/Doug White.

The Grange nine boasts arguably the club’s best golfing terrain with good undulations, while most holes feature macrocarpa trees. The Tamaki nine is split evenly between the Middlemore and Grange properties, with the par-3 6th hole being memorable for the tee shot that must be played over the Tamaki Estuary, a mangrove filled hazard that flows through the heart of the layout.

The Middlemore nine, which were completed last year, is very much a parkland setting with tree-lined fairways and slightly smaller greens. But the bunkering, greenside and otherwise, is dynamic and memorable. Many believe the Middlemore layout offers the best collection of holes – with the well-bunkered opening trio setting the scene –across the entire property.

Less than a year after the 2015 closure of The Grange ahead of its merger with Royal Auckland, another well-established club – just 20 minutes’ drive to the south – was embarking on a new era.

Windross Farm opened in 2016 after the members of Manukau Golf Club voted to sell their course, which had been their home since 1932, to residential developers and move to the new site six kilometres away.

The club moved from a tight, tree-lined parkland layout to a wide, windswept links style course designed by Brett Thomson, who had previously worked alongside John Darby in creating the highly acclaimed Jack’s Point and The Hills courses near Queenstown on the South Island.

Thomson and the construction team moved heaven and earth to transform the flat site into a dune-covered terrain, dotted with bumps, hollows, bunkers and swales. The entire site was sand capped during construction to ensure the links would lie well above the high water table and play firm and fast in all conditions.

Within a year of opening, Windross Farm hosted the LPGA sanctioned NZ Women’s Open and today it is generally regarded to be in the top-20 courses on the North Island.

You certainly won’t find another course in Auckland like it, nor will you find a restaurant like Orbit – New Zealand’s only rotating restaurant offering 360-degree views of the city and Hauraki Gulf from the top of Auckland’s Sky Tower.

I’m sure I was salivating in anticipation during the 30-minute drive from Windross Farm north into the city for dinner. I wasn’t disappointed either … citrus braised pork belly, followed by Hawkes Bay lamb rump accompanied by a brilliant merlot from the same region.

Titirangi GC. PHOTO: Supplied/Doug White.

Delicious! A word that might also be apt in describing the next Auckland layout on the itinerary – Titirangi Golf Club, New Zealand’s only Dr Alister MacKenzie-designed course, which can be found 20 minutes’ drive from the Auckland CBD.

MacKenzie’s trip to Australia in 1926, to primarily design Royal Melbourne’s West course, ended with him designing or consulting on several more courses including Kingston Heath, Royal Adelaide, Victoria and New South Wales – all of which remain ranked among Australia’s finest courses.

Having learned the ‘Good Doctor’ was in Australia, the directors at Titirangi arranged for MacKenzie to stop over on his return voyage to the United States. Although the club had been in existence since 1909, the idea for redesigning the course had been proposed for several years prior to MacKenzie’s arrival in early 1927.

MacKenzie was confronted with a layout spread across a sometimes dramatically undulating landscape with several natural water hazards and pockets of native trees and shrubs. He stayed in Auckland for a month and oversaw the initial redesign work. Of his visit, he wrote: “on the Fringe of Heaven (better known in Maori as Titirangi) the ground was exceptionally well adapted for golf … it is undulating without being hilly and has many natural features such as ravines of a bold and impressive nature.”

By the mid-90s the course had become rundown and overgrown in many parts. English-born course designer Chris Pitman, a long-time devotee and student of MacKenzie’s work, was then commissioned by the club to return the layout to its former glory. Pitman did not change the routing, nor did he change any green sites. His major changes came in the form of modifying greens and bunkers as well as the removal of overgrown, and old, Pine trees that had encroached onto playing lines on many holes.

Using MacKenzie’s original sketches, Pitman embarked on an almost decade long redesign of Titirangi with outstanding results.

This tight little course is rich in risk/reward options. Most holes play uphill or downhill to smallish, steeply tilted and multi-tiered greens. MacKenzie – as we have come to expect with all his designs – wows all and sundry with his bunkering and his par-3s, with the quartet at Titirangi regarded, arguably, as the best in the country.

All four of Titirangi’s par-3s were left virtually untouched by Pitman with only some modification of the bunkering and the putting surfaces. The par-3s are so good the club puts up a ‘MacKenzie Award’ in certain competitions for any player who can par all four holes in their round.

In my opinion, the best of them is the 161-metre 11th, known as ‘Redan’. The green is perched on a plateau beyond a valley and above the level of the tee. The putting surface sits diagonally to your approach, which must carry three large, deep bunkers short of the green, which slopes gradually from back left to front right.

The lasting impression a round at Titirangi presents is one of fun and excitement. This is not a long course but the variety of shots you have to play across this wonderful golfing landscape will leave you wanting more.