Ep94: St Andrews Beach, with Mike Clayton

Ep94: St Andrews Beach, with Mike Clayton

From Australian Golf Passport by Scott Warren & Matthew Mollica

April 14, 2026 · 1h 39m

About this episode

The episode features Mike Clayton discussing the history and design of St Andrews Beach golf course.

We invited Clayts on to help us profile St Andrews Beach, so naturally the episode opens with a discussion about 1970s house prices, closes with a brilliant Clayts monologue about molded grip trainer clubs and namechecks at least 20 Aussie courses along the journey! Early in the life of this pod, we recorded an episode with Clayts where we discussed a bundle of Mornington Peninsula courses. We thought it was best to go back and revisit some of those layouts, devoting individual episodes to several courses. And who better to discuss St Andrews Beach than Clayts? Co-credited with its creation, he was there when the course was being designed and built, and nobody has completed more laps of the course than Mike. In a wide-ranging chat we talk about the early days of the St Andrews Beach project, when it looked like being a 27-hole project with involvement from Ian Baker-Finch, a 36-hole private club with a buy-in of $50k for a 99-year membership, eventually becoming a publicly accessible 18-hole course, which at one point almost 20 years ago was closed for play and faced with a very uncertain future. Our episode addresses Tom Doak’s work and his views on one of his best and favourite…

People in this episode

Hosts: Scott Warren, Matthew Mollica

Guest: Mike Clayton

Topics covered

  • St Andrews Beach
  • golf course design
  • Mike Clayton
  • Australian golf
  • golf history

Keywords

  • St Andrews Beach
  • Mike Clayton
  • golf course design
  • Tom Doak
  • Australian golf

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tom Doak

Places: St Andrews Beach, Mornington Peninsula, Australia

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