WORTH THE WAIT

Fifteen years in the making, 7 Mile Beach has opened to great fanfare.

- EDITED & PICTURES BY JK TAN

Good things come to those who wait. And for professional golfer and proud Tasmanian Matthew Goggin, it’s taken a decade and a half.

That was how long it took for his vision of a beautiful golf course by the dunes near Hobart to come to fruition. And to say that it’s met every expectation is an understatement.

New golf courses in Australia don’t come very often. The country is filled with some of the best layouts in the world, and frequently punches way above its weight where the world’s top 100 golf courses are considered. With the opening of 7 Mile Beach at the end of 2025, you can probably count on another one boosting the nation’s sterling golf reputation.

“I grew up playing golf at Royal Hobart Golf Club and hitting balls along the beach with my grandfather,” Goggin recalls. “My friends and I always wondered why there wasn’t a golf course in the dunes at 7 Mile Beach. When Mike Clayton was building Barnbougle, I mentioned to him that someone should build a course here. Quite a few years passed and Barnbougle became very successful.

“Eventually, I contacted Mike and asked him to come down and look at the land to see if it was as good as I thought it was. When he left, he said the land was spectacular, and that gave me the confidence to pursue the project.”

Why there was ever any doubt that the property would make for a very fine canvas for a golf course must surely be a puzzle. What was a “forgotten peninsula, covered with impenetrable plantation pine forest” masked the bones of a world-class course. It just took someone with Goggin’s vision, and Clayton’s technical skills to unravel it.