Blog 313 – Narrabri

Nomadic_golfer : December 2025 – Narrabri, NSW, review

Par 71 5936m Slope 121 $25

4 par3s 115-174m, 11 par4s 295-390m, 3 par5s 468-489m

Just two hours South of the Queensland border and on the same longitude as Bathurst, Narrabri is a sports-crazy town of around 7,000 people. There are monuments to those who represented Australia in all types of sports, in the main street, immediately adjacent to 3 nice ovals with turf cricket pitches.

The 18 hole golf course, with kikuyu fairways, 328 Bermuda greens, magic old gums and a creek/ creek bed is located within the town limits and looks like it is very well patronised.

At the start of summer, there is a lush feel about the place, with plenty of water on the kikuyu fairways and surrounds. Out wider it looks more like the Aussie summer ground, with firm dry surfaces giving you much more run on your more wayward strikes.

Fairways are of standard width in general, but overhanging branches and a design penchant for pinching fairways in at driving length, make them play much tighter than the yardage width. An ability to shape your driver both ways is a definite asset around here. Grass cover on the fairways was excellent, but not too spongey. Greens were nice and firm, also had good cover and rolled very truly.

If you can find fairways here, you should score well. While the majority of greens are narrow (with a number of them narrow at front, widening as you go further back) and slightly elevated, the kikuyu surrounds protect near misses with soft bounces and relatively easy up and downs. Miss the greens by more than 5-10 metres though, and your miss will be exacerbated by a firm hard bounce carrying it further away. These bounces are the greens’ major defence mechanisms; I could only find 2 bunkers out there.

Whilst all fairways are tree-lined, and there are a lot of medium to large gums, they are typically quite well spread out, with little rough to speak of underneath. The exception is down the very back of the course on 13 and 14. I reckon the low punch, with a little bit of shape, would get a lot of work around here. Boundary fences are also a feature, with the right side of 1 & 2 defended by OB fences, while the fences down the left side of 10 & 11 are very prominent. It would be a very nervy start on the 10th if you were fighting a hook, especially 11 as there is nowhere to start it out right, with that side protected by trees just in front of the teeing ground.

The meandering routing results in both 9 and 18 finishing in front of the clubhouse, and has 3 of the par3s of very similar length (168m – 174m). One of these runs 180 degrees to the other two, so provides some variety, but all three of these are tough to hit, with narrow green openings. The par 4s don’t have a heap of variety in length. After the very tight opener at 295m, 7 of the remaining 4s are between 350 and 390. That 390m hole 17th is the longest 4 on the course and is such a difficult hole. It doglegs hard left around a large gum at just over the 100m mark, narrows up with staggered fairway-lining trees 230-250m off the tee and narrows again at the entry to the green. It does have some safety barrier mounds that feed your ball back onto the green from left, right and back but they aren’t huge and if you miss wider than those barriers, you will be faced with a tough recovery.

The routing utilises the Narribi Creek on multiple holes. There is more usage of it’s dry creek-beds than raging waterways but there is some water in a number of dammed hazards.

The flow of the course is an interesting study. I found the more unique and thought-provoking holes to come early in the round: 2 (353m straightaway with OB just right of a row of trees down the right hand side that the tee-block points at. Trees down the left of the tee prevent you from aiming left, so you must hit it dead straight or work it right to left); 3 (336m with a narrow fairway, narrowing further as you progress, with a 30m wide creek-bed carry at about the 250m mark, to an elevated green); 5 (gorgeous 168m par3 playing diagonally across the dry creek-bed, green framed by 3 or 4 large gums and a water hazard short right, not really in play. The long narrow green runs slightly away from you in the back portion); 6 (324m sweeping left to right around gums on the bank of the river-bed, green folded further right, sitting atop the riverbank); 7 (470m right to left par5 requiring a tee shot into a narrow chute at driving length. The surrounding contours do provide some assistance, funnelling down from both sides into a low point in the middle of the fairway. The green has drop-offs on 3 sides with the left side falling off into the creek bed); and 8 (the second of the 170m par 3’s, in the opposite direction to the 5th, with a carry over the creek bed and anything short falling backwards and right towards a water hazard. It also has a bunker short right). Apart from the par 3s, these holes aren’t at the more difficult end of the scale. The back 9 is more difficult, but doesn’t contain the same degree of character that these earlier holes present.

With defining characteristics of tough tee-shots needing to avoid large gums, narrow openings to greens, wayward shots running much more than straight ones – sitting on very good playing surfaces, Narrabri surprised me on the upside. It is good golf, and at $25 as good value as you will find. They do stage regional qualifying for the Women’s NSW Open here also.