A birdie on the cliff

With his head in the clouds, Martin Blake attempts to keep his eye on the ball at Cape Kidnappers.

For the serious Australian golfer, the bucket list has to include Royal Melbourne on the city's sand belt, the NSW Golf Club overlooking Botany Bay at La Perouse and Tasmania's Barnbougle Dunes, where the waves of Bass Strait lap almost at your feet as you tee off.

But an easy three-hour flight opens up another world to the golf junkie. Cape Kidnappers, at Hawke's Bay on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island, is as good a golf experience as anything in the antipodes.

Within a year or so of its opening in 2004, US Golf magazine placed it No. 27 on its list of the best golf courses in the world, an amazing achievement as even the best new golf courses usually take time to settle.

The course designed by Tom Doak, who is regarded as one of the world's best golf architects, is at No. 41 in the magazine's latest rankings. I'm a hard marker - I've played on the best courses in Australia - and I believe Kidnappers is good enough to sit in their company.

Cape Kidnappers was so named after an attempt by Maori to kidnap the Tahitian servant of one of Captain James Cook's crew when Cook sailed past in the Endeavour in 1769. At the southern tip of Hawke's Bay, it was a well-known tourist area even before Doak, under instruction from the Wall Street futures billionaire and golf aficionado Julian Robertson, built the course.

The nearby towns of Napier and Hastings, both flattened by an earthquake in 1931 and rebuilt in the still-popular art deco style, attract droves of people interested in their architectural character. Cape Kidnappers has the largest gannet colony in the world and, for good measure, Hawke's Bay is the source of the best shiraz in New Zealand.

The land at the cape was pushed up thousands of years ago by the Pacific Plate and has formed in near-perfect ridges, almost as though they are pinched between thumb and forefinger of some celestial being. Doak, a minimalist golf architect, shaped the holes on these fingers of land.

Cape Kidnappers is not a Scottish-Irish links course like Barnbougle in Tasmania. It's a cliff-top course built in a links style, over rolling hills and deep ravines.

After the staff meet and greet - there's never a crowd at Kidnappers - golfers begin by playing away from the ocean: a superb short par-four first over a ravine, and a wonderful par-three third before the views over milky-blue Hawke's Bay start to distract.

After a coffee at the clubhouse, golfers proceed to the back nine, where the holes snake onto the tops of the cliffs. At the 13th, a short par-three, tug your tee shot 10 metres left and you're over a 200-metre cliff. (Locals point out that in high winds, you might need to hit your shot out over the cliff and let it blow back to the green.)

At the 15th, pull your shot left and you go over another cliff. The local knowledge here is that it takes eight seconds for a golf ball to hit the bottom (as mine did, sadly).

It's a course for moderate to good players. There are a couple of places you have to carry ravines with your tee shot. Doak is generous with the width of fairway, but miss the short stuff and you find knee-deep fescue grass that gobbles up golf balls, even if it's good for the grazing sheep.

Walk up the steps to the 16th tee for the best view on the property. To the north is the glassy millpond of Hawke's Bay. Look slightly left and you can see half of the North Island. It's picture-perfect the day I play, and I see only two other people: he's playing, she's taking photos. ''He doesn't usually play much golf when we're on holiday,'' says the American woman, ''but here I don't mind.''

They are staying in the hotel, known as The Farm, at the highest point of the property. Like the golf course it's high-end but not ostentatious. There are 24 suites, and groups can book the four-bedroom owner's cottage, when the Robertsons aren't at home.

Martin Blake played courtesy of Cape Kidnappers.

A winter package, valid for Australian residents until October 31, includes unlimited golf each day or a 50-minute massage, dinner, breakfast and twin-share suite accommodation costing $NZ725 ($568) a person a night (Sunday-Thursday) and $NZ775 a person on Friday and Saturday. See www.capekidnappers.com.