Travelways

THERE'S a furious north-westerly sandblasting golfers at Barnbougle Dunes when Brett Patridge steps up to the fourth tee. Can play a bit, this Partridge bloke. Might have helped Australia donkey-lick the rest of the world in the Eisenhower Cup in the 1990s and had his moments on the professional golf tour. The fourth is Partridge's favourite hole at Barnbougle.

A straight drive will need great carry to clear the large fairway bunker. There's a bit more space on the left but it takes you away from the hole. That north-westerly might catch your ball and carry it towards the rough.

To the right there's an inviting tongue of cut grass but slice a little and you have donated a ball to the sand dunes.

You can also gun a drive straight at the pin and set yourself up for an eagle.

"You decide how much you want to chew off," says Partridge.

Through technology, golf is becoming a longer game and some courses seek to combat this by building longer courses.

Partridge maintains that small targets, such as many of the greens around Barnbougle, are the best way to keep scores at a consistent level.

I've arranged to play a round of golf with Partridge under the premise that it would be good to assess the course from a good golfer, bad golfer perspective.

I'm providing the latter and Barnbougle is providing the former, in the form of employee Brett Partridge.

Partridge came off the professional tour several years ago to spend more time in his beloved North-East and was quickly recruited to be part of the team at Richard Sattler's dream dunes course.

Barnbougle was opened to the public in spring 2004. Designed by American Tom Doak and Australian Mike Clayton, it exploded onto the world golf scene.

Within a couple of years it was recognised as Australia's best public course and a magazine recently said it was the third-best course in Australia, public or private.

Similarly, respected US Golf Magazine ranked Barnbougle the 35th best course in the world in 2007.

People fly in from all over the world to play there. An airstrip alongside the par-five first hole takes a steady stream of light aircraft through the year.

Partridge has seen it all develop. His great sporting loves as a youngster growing up in Scottsdale were golf and fishing.

Now he has both passions at his fingertips. He runs Parto's Barnbougle Fishing Tours as an add-on to the golf and accommodation operations at the course.

Depending on the weather, he can take fishing guests to lagoons, rivers or the sea.

The afternoon we have agreed to play is one of those fire-ban days in early January.

As I drive from Launceston to Bridport I wonder about the whole idea.

I'll soon be on the first tee, standing over the ball, hitting off with one of the best golfers Tasmania has ever seen.

Better not stuff it up.

We take a motorised golf cart because Partridge has a knee niggle, and front up at the first.

Good Golfer makes his drive disappear somewhere up the middle, way into the distance; Bad Golfer clips the top of the ball and it scurries along about 40 metres.

Partridge must be wondering what he's got himself in for.

I follow this shot up with a duff, a shank and eventually an adequate three-iron and soon we are up to Partridge's drive.

The first is a par five, a hole that should take three sound shots to reach the green.

I'm over budget early but Good Golfer can reach it with his second.

I decide that I won't write down all the details, after all.

On the green there's more learning to do. Allow not just for the slope but the wind as well.

The reason Barnbougle is so challenging for Bad Golfers is that we're always trying to get our game going. But your normal game isn't enough at Barnbougle.

Partridge talks about hitting low into the wind so you maintain control, and it starts to dawn on me. It's all about changing your game to suit the conditions.

"I laugh when people complain about the weather," says Partridge.

"The weather is what links golf is all about. It's a test of your game."

We carry on. I watch Partridge hit a drive so far on a par five that his second shot to the green is with a sand wedge.

It takes 11 holes until I can scratch down that we both scored pars on the same hole.

And it's on the back nine that we bump into the Forester River, one of Partridge's fishing haunts. Across the river, sprinklers are working on Barnbougle's next project, an 18-hole extension due to open in October.

Those matching pars were my highlight. I learn a lot listening to Partridge. If he suggests a club or a direction I follow his advice and my game improves.

"It's about course management," he says of Barnbougle. "You have to teach yourself to hit different golf shots."

The rest is a bit of a blur; an increasingly windy but wonderful blur as the green, gently rolling hills of Barnbougle pass under foot.

Partridge shoots a sub-par round and I seem to spend a huge amount of time in a cavernous bunker, eventually leaving the rotten sand trap via a left-hand lob.

There's probably something in that. Bad Golfer has finally thought of some useful advice.

Try to avoid the sand. It will still whip across the course from the dunes; still embed itself in your scalp; but try to keep your golf ball out of the bunker.