The Longest Course

Australia is building what purports to be the world’s longest course—it’s laid out along a highway, and the holes are spaced out over 853 miles.

The world’s longest golf course – a mean 853 miles – is among outback tourism projects given a funding boost by the Australian government to help drought-hit communities.

The Nullarbor Links project involves building one hole at 18 participating roadhouses and tiny townships along the remote Eyre Highway between Western and South Australia.

The course will cross the Nullarbor Plain, where golfers are unlikely to end up in the woods, because the name is Latin for “no trees”.

It will begin at the gold-mining town of Kalgoorlie and end in another time zone, at Ceduna in South Australia.

Travelling non-stop at the speed limit, it would take motorists 13 hours to get from one end to the other. But the idea is to persuade travellers to take a break at the highway’s roadhouses and tiny settlements, where they can tee-off to an “outback fairway”, and “green”.

This is brilliant! And its something that I think the State of Michigan should do. The Michigan highway department should pick eighteen of their roadside stops and build a single hole on each one. People then would be encouraged to drive all around the state to play the Michigan 18. It would be unusual, and would be great for tourism.

Another idea: Each hole would have a vending machine where you could buy a “stamp” that you could stick into a Michigan 18 scorecard “passport.”