Top 100 Clubhouse - Golf Podcast · Top 100 Golf Courses

Episode 97: Is Royal Melbourne The World's Best?!

December 2, 2025·1 hr 2 min·1 clip

Break every design rule except one—and if you honor McKenzie's principle, you build a masterpiece.

James Henderson opens by arguing that amateur golf matters because the game is played as much by people walking and looking as by people striking shots. He and Jasper Miners use that idea to set the tone for a wide-ranging catch-up that moves easily between golf philosophy, travel, and course judgment. Mauritius is the first stop. Jasper says he is there for the first time, at a geo-certified resort trying hard to put itself on the map, and the conversation uses that setting to show how much atmosphere and ambition matter in golf destinations. The show then circles back to the Old Course at St Andrews and the work being done there. James asks for an update, and Jasper describes it as a small evolution rather than a revolution, with wider fairways, less rough, and more short grass. He says that is hard not to applaud. The pair then talk through the approved-deck changes, including CGI images that do not make the construction plan especially easy to read, but they note that St Andrews is well documented enough to be put back if needed. James brings in a line from MacKenzie’s writing about the course. That leads into a broader point about St Andrews being left largely untouched for centuries because changing its natural character has always felt close to sacrilege. The discussion stays in that lane, with the course’s undulations and bunkers treated as something shaped by weather, play, and long habits as much as by design. The episode does not rush to a neat conclusion. Instead, it lets the tension between preservation and practical tournament preparation hang in the air. The hosts are comfortable with that. Their back and forth sounds like two people who trust the listener to follow a thought as it opens into another thought, then another. There is also a stretch of travel banter and joking about the miles both of them have been putting in. That detail matters because it keeps the conversation grounded in lived golf rather than abstract rankings talk. As the episode closes, the mood turns forward-looking. James and Jasper talk about starting fresh in 2026, more collaboration, and the sense that the year ahead could be their strongest yet. The result is a conversation that blends travelogue, architecture debate, and clubhouse chatter into one long, easy listen.

As heard by us

A loose but sharply observed golf conversation about travel, architecture, and the careful handling of St Andrews.

The conversation starts with travel and place, then settles into golf architecture and the changes being proposed at St Andrews. James Henderson and Jasper Miners keep circling back to golf as a walking game, and that gives the discussion its shape.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want golf-architecture talk that ranges from Mauritius to St Andrews.

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