Kingston Links Golf Club operated as a public-access golf course in Melbourne’s outer south-east from 1985 until its closure on 30 June 2019. The 6,234-metre Michael Coate design carried the highest tee-time volume of any Victorian public-access course through most of the 2000s.
The Rowville site sits 32 kilometres south-east of the Melbourne CBD and was originally agricultural land before its 1980s conversion. Michael Coate, an Australian architect best known for the early Eynesbury and Sanctuary Cove designs, laid out a parkland routing on heavy clay soil — a contrast to the sandbelt courses 20 kilometres to the west that defined the regional reputation. The clay soil meant slower drainage, more closures during Melbourne’s wet winters, and a maintenance overhead higher than peer courses; this would ultimately drive the financial pressure that closed the course in 2019.
The par-5 10th was the most-played signature hole in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs through the 1990s and early 2000s — 532 metres dogleg right around a tea-tree-lined lake, the second shot demanding a heroic carry over the water for golfers willing to attempt the green in two. The hole was the cover photograph of the 1997 Victoria Golf Annual.
The site was sold to a residential developer, GH Land, in November 2017 for a reported AU$182 million. The final round of golf was played on the morning of 30 June 2019. Planning approval for a 1,200-home residential estate followed in 2021 and earthworks began in March 2023. The Kingston Links clubhouse, kept intact under a heritage-overlay agreement, has been converted into a community-use building as part of the new Kingston Links Village development scheduled for completion in 2027.
The Kingston Links closure was the largest single loss of public golf-course inventory in metropolitan Melbourne in the 2010s. Five public-access courses closed across greater Melbourne between 2014 and 2023 — Carbrook in Cranbourne, Kingston Heath Public in Heatherton, Sanctuary Lakes Public in Point Cook, Greenacres in Kew, and Kingston Links itself the largest by tee-time count. The cumulative effect was a ~17 percent reduction in public tee-time capacity within 40 km of the Melbourne CBD over a single decade, a contraction that has redirected pressure onto the remaining public venues — particularly Sandhurst and Settlers Run on the south-eastern fringe.