As a Golf Magazine World Top 100 course rater for more than 20 years Bill Hogan has played thousands of golf courses in 57 counties, so the travel executive knows a thing or two about the world’s best.
“People ask me this question all the time,” says Hogan, business development manager for Georgia-based Premier Golf, which has been delivering high-end custom golf vacations since 1988. “If there was one last golf trip you had in your lifetime internationally where would you go? And if it’s just about the golf, I’m going to Australia.”
And that trip would likely include a round — or probably two or three — at Cape Wickham Golf Links, located on remote King Island in Tasmania, more than 50 miles from the Australian mainland.
Opened in 2015, Cape Wickham pulled off the unthinkable recently — dethroning perennial No. 1 course Royal Melbourne West as the top layout in Australia for 2024-25 in the latest Australian Golf Digest rankings. And it was recently ranked as the 14th best course in the world by Golf Digest. .
Cape Wickham golf course co-architect Mike DeVries was shocked when a friend sent him a photo of the magazine cover a few months ago.
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“Royal Melbourne West has been No. 1 for the last 40 years except one year it dropped out because of a bad drought so it was interesting when I received the news,” DeVries says. “It’s great satisfaction to get those sort of compliments and it’s really, really cool.”
Especially for an architect like DeVries, whose office is based in Traverse City, Michigan, and whose modest resume comprises less than a dozen courses in Michigan, New York and California.
DeVries and Australian golf writer and friend Darius Oliver collaborated on the stunning site along the Bass Strait, a notorious stretch of Australian seacoast that is known for its share of shipwrecks over the years.
“We were just focusing on trying to make really good golf because it’s so beautiful, it’s so diverse — you can’t screw that up,” DeVries says of the design work and course routing. “We wanted to make it good enough golf to where people would want to come back and play this or that shot in different wind conditions, that type of stuff.”
The first hole starts along rocks and surf, while the layout closes with a curving dogleg along Victoria Cove beach, which is in play at low tide. In between, there are a series of memorable lighthouse views and crashing ocean wave backdrops that leave golfers wanting more and more. The Cape Wickham Lighthouse, at 157 feet tall, is Australia’s tallest lighthouse.
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“When it came online the first reports out of there was that it was the Australian Pebble Beach with a lot of oceanfront holes, a lot of exposure to the elements and a great design with no weak holes,” Hogan says. “And after playing it I would certainly agree with all of that, but what makes Cape Wickham truly special is it is somewhat remote. You have to make kind of an effort to get there to King Island, but once you do you’ll find it’s one of the best golf experiences you ever had.”
Hogan says Cape Wickham has numerous selling points to his clients who are interested in the long trip from the United States to Down Under.
“First of all, it’s not crowded,” he says. “It’s pretty much you get there and you’re ready to go. And the course conditioning is very good from the standpoint that they don’t have too much play that you might see at some North American resorts. We send a lot of golfers down there on extensive holidays where they’re playing all the great courses of Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria, and I’ve had several people come back and say that the one course they knew the least about ended up being their favorite course on the entire trip and that was Cape Wickham. That’s a great, great testament. If clients come back and say, ‘That was as good as it gets’ then you accept that and say ‘OK, these guys are really, really on to something.”’
DeVries was so in tune with his dedication to the project he actually moved his wife Annie and two teenage children to the remote location for six months while he toiled in the soil.
“Oh, I didn’t even hesitate,” Annie said when her husband asked the huge favor. “I love travel and I love seeing new places. So we went. It was a fabulous experience for our children. Everybody should live elsewhere and learn about other people.”
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“Let’s be honest,” DeVries says. “She was very accommodating.”
In addition to its remote location, the DeVries foursome had to adjust to the island food offerings.
“The best beef and cheese in the world, by far,” DeVries says. “There are about 1,800 year-round residents on the island, and around 25,000 cows and half-a-million wallabies.”
And one stunning golf course, which is priced beyond reasonably for a high-end offering at $270 for 18 holes and $330 for all day play for international travelers. Domestic guests pay a slightly lower green fee.
“In my humble opinion it would rank higher if more (rating) panelists would see it,” Hogan says. “It’s one of those places which is just going to get better as time goes on, similar to some of the newer courses in New Zealand. Some of these destination golf resorts like Cape Wickham are really, really becoming something special.”