A very special guest made the trip to Kalgoorlie for the weekend of the TX Civil & Logistics WA PGA Championship.

Kalgoorlie’s favourite son and renowned golf course designer Graham Marsh has returned to Kalgoorlie Golf Course to inspect his acclaimed design.

Watching the Professionals tackle his layout is a gratifying experience for Marsh who toured the course on Saturday and will be on hand to see who claims the 2015 title.

"I think this is a very good golf course, it has proven itself now over the past four years with the players," said Marsh.

"The feedback seems to be positive from the players; they see it as being a challenging golf course but still pretty fair."

"If you look at the scores this year some guys have been shooting 7-under which is an indication that if you play well it is a fair golf course and you can make a score."

"That’s what golf is all about, it’s not meant to be a game where you should be penalised every time you go out, it’s meant to be a fun game."

Marsh’s journey to the outback serves a dual purpose, as a course inspection but also research for future developments.

"As a designer you have to stay in front of the game, you have to see what these players are doing and how they are managing themselves on the golf course," added Marsh who has also redeveloped RACV Royal Pines Resort which will host the PGA Tour of Australasia and European Tour in December for the
Australian PGA Championship.

"That will be the future for the next series of golf course that I do, particularly if I’m asked to design a course where you can stage a championship."

"It’s gratifying to see the talent that is out there today in particular, my only disappointment is the ball travelling so far is making it extremely difficult to design golf courses that really do offer huge amounts of challenges when it comes down to just the length. We have kind of lost it with
that."

Providing an insight into how he approached designing Kalgoorlie Golf Course, Marsh said the idea was to create a layout which would rank inside the top-10 best desert courses in the World.

"In the case of Kalgoorlie, they wanted a course which was going to be considered one of the top-10 desert golf courses in the world."

"To do that you have to build a golf course which was going to be challenging for the Professionals and also playable for amateurs, it’s becomes so much harder to do that with the Pros hitting the ball so far now. But I believe we have met that brief here."

"I think with this golf course more so than many, being a resort golf course, the average golfer needs to be on the right tees. If they can get on the right tees they can enjoy themselves. There is no point in going back and punishing themselves off the pro tees."

As hard as it is for parents to pick a favourite child, it’s equally as hard for Marsh to pick just one standout hole on his layout, however naturally over time golfers have done this for him.

"I have never prescribed to the theory that you design a signature hole, logically what you would like is have all 18 holes looking and being enjoyable for everyone to play," added Marsh.

"I think that if there is one hole that people talk about as much as anything it would probably be the 17^th here, or in the case of the tournament the 8^th hole."

"Aptly named The Pit, the par-3 is across a slight ravine, it seems to be a hole that gets everyone’s attention. It’s very visual," added Marsh of the hole which has been the second hardest hole at the TX Civil & Logistics WA PGA Championship.

"Certainly for the good players it’s a testing hole. Just looking at the stats this week and in past years, it rates very highly in terms of difficulty."

"It has the element of everything in there that a so called signature hole wants."

 The final round of the TX Civil & Logistics WA PGA Championship is now underway. Follow live scores to see how the Pros are travelling around Marsh’s Kalgoorlie Golf Course layout.