Tag: Mike Cocking

OCM design team to renovate The Hills as New Zealand heavyweights form new partnership

The founders of Te Arai Links, Tara Iti join forces with business magnate on The Hills.

The developers of highly ranked Te Arai Links and Tara Iti golf clubs in New Zealand announced this week that they will partner with the owners of The Hills course near Arrowtown to redevelop the property.

The design team of Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead – OCM – will rebuild the course. Plans also include the introduction of a golf training facility, fitness center, on-site accommodations, luxurious real estate and a remodel of the clubhouse.

The Hills was opened in 2007 by Sir Michael Hill, one of the most successful businessmen in New Zealand. The course was designed by Darby Partners and included a nine-hole par-3 course designed by Darius Oliver in 2019. The main course is notable for its inclusion of sculptures around the course, which will remain throughout the renovation.

Jim Rohrstaff and Ric Kayne, the developers of Tara Iti and Te Arai, will partner with Hill and his daughter, Emma Hill, on the work at The Hills.

The Hills New Zealand
Ric Kayne, Jim Rohrstaff, Emma Hill and Sir Michael Hill at The Hills (Courtesy of The Hills)

The private Tara Iti in Mangawhai was designed by Tom Doak and opened in 2015, and it ties for No. 9 on Golfweek’s Best list of top courses outside the U.S. The South Course at the resort-based Te Arai Links just down the beach from Tara Iti was designed by the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and opened in 2022, and it ties for No. 23 on the list of best international courses. Doak also designed a course at Te Arai, the North, which should appear on the list of top international courses as soon as it receives enough votes.

As with Tara Iti, The Hills will be redeveloped as a high-end equity club with limited membership. The renovations, including a new routing, will take place over to the winters of 2026 and 2027, and the project should be completed in 2028.

OCM has been busy of late with a rapidly expanding portfolio of international work, having recently completed a redesign of Medinah No. 3 in Illinois. Based near Melbourne, Australia, the firm has done renovation work to such Sandbelt stalwarts as Kingston Heath, Peninsula Kingswood and Victoria. The team also renovated Shady Oaks in Texas, longtime home of Ben Hogan, and it also has a new course named Tepetonka Club under construction in Minnesota in partnership with broadcaster Jim Nantz.

Check out a selection of photos of The Hills as it currently sits, including two architectural sketches that show what the OCM design team have in mind.

Could Geoff Ogilvy be his generation’s Ben Crenshaw as a course architect? That and more in this architecture-heavy Q&A with the former U.S. Open champ

“I think I’m one of the only guys on the range without a launch monitor.”

If you’re going to be stuck in a car for a two-plus-hour drive, you’d be hard-pressed to enjoy better company than Australian golfer Geoff Ogilvy.

In August, on the drive from Minneapolis to the western corner of the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where he and his design partners Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead are preparing to build Tepetonka, Minnesota’s first private golf destination on 228 acres of gorgeous rolling land with Shakopee Creek cutting through a quarter of the property, Ogilvy and I (and PR man/wheelman Matthew Gibb) talked at length about his shift into the golf-course design business among other things.

I’m probably not the first to say this, and admittedly it’s early days for his venture into the architecture space, but Ogilvy could be his generation’s Ben Crenshaw, who made a smooth transition from Masters champion to one of the most coveted designers in golf. OCM as the next Coore-Crenshaw? We can only hope to be so lucky.

Ogilvy turned pro in 1998, just as Tiger Woods was beginning to rule the game, and Ogilvy did well to win eight times on the PGA Tour (plus another four times on the DP World Tour), including the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. He was a member of the International Team for the Presidents Cup three times and has been a vice captain on the last three teams. It seems inevitable that he will get his turn at the captaincy (and when he does the U.S. may finally have met its match in that event).

Ogilvy, 46, has reduced his play in recent years, including moving back to his native Australia for a time, and is starting to make a name for himself in the design world with work done at Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, back home in Melbourne at Peninsula-Kingswood and is in the process of completing a significant re-do of Medinah No. 3 near Chicago, which will host the 2026 Presidents Cup. (He also mentioned a course the firm is building in Georgia but wouldn’t disclose the name.)

A couple hours in the car flew by and the discussion continued over lunch and in between his site visit. Here are some of the highlights.