South Australia\u2019s most unlikely golf club is back in the spotlight \u2013\u00a0this time with a tournament tailor-made for beer lovers and golfers alike.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Coopers Mild Ale Coober Pedy Classic\u00a0is exactly what it sounds like: \u201cA golf tournament for beer drinkers, not golfers (*Unless you\u2019re a golfer who likes beer.),\u201d staged at the wonderfully wild\u00a0Coober Pedy Opal Fields Golf Club\u00a0in the heart of the SA outback. Backed by\u00a0national treasure Coopers Brewery, the event leans into the larrikin spirit of both the brand and the town, promising a weekend where cold tins and hot conditions go hand in hand.<\/p>\n
RELATED: Outback Aussie dirt golf course has one-of-a-kind arrangement with St Andrews<\/a><\/p>\n And the prize? It\u2019s as good as it gets.<\/p>\n The winner (along with a friend) will swap those barren scrapes for silky bentgrass with a dream Scottish golfing holiday \u2013 accommodation in Scotland, a tour of\u00a0St Andrews Links\u00a0and a round at\u00a0Gleneagles, one of the world\u2019s most celebrated golfing estates. Watch the promo video here:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Why St Andrews specifically? Well, as previously reported by Australian Golf Digest, <\/a>this dusty, grassless layout 16,000 kilometres away from the Home of Golf shares one of the quirkiest connections in world golf.<\/p>\n Founded in 1976 in a town of just 1,500 people \u2013 famous as the opal mining capital of the world \u2013\u00a0Opal Fields is the only golf club on the planet with reciprocal rights at St Andrews. The relationship began in 2003 when a visiting TV producer arranged a satellite chat between Opal Fields president Kim Kelly and then St Andrews Links Trust general manager Alan McGregor. A tongue-in-cheek request for reciprocal rights was met with a joke: send us an opal mine.<\/p>\n So they did. A tiny hole in the ground and a parcel of opals arrived in Scotland. The Scots saw the humour, and reciprocals, of sorts, were granted in 2004.<\/p>\n The arrangement applies to the nine-hole Balgove Course and only in January \u2013\u00a0mid-winter in Scotland, peak furnace in Coober Pedy, where summer temperatures top 45\u00b0C and much of the population lives underground.<\/p>\n Opal Fields itself is gloriously unconventional: artificial tees, oil-and-dust \u201cscrape\u201d greens, fairways of mining dirt and a local rule for \u201crock relief\u201d. There\u2019s even a sign urging players to \u201ckeep off grass\u201d.<\/p>\n Now, thanks to Coopers, two lucky beer lovers will trade rock relief for royal fairways \u2013 proof that sometimes the road from the outback really does lead to greener pastures. <\/p>\n The 2026 Coopers Mild Ale Coober Pedy Classic is an individual event. If you win the chance to play you get to bring a mate (your caddie) but only you will play the tournament round. For full T&Cs and more information on how to enter, check out: https:\/\/coopers.com.au\/pages\/coopers-coober-pedy-classic <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Australia\u2019s most unlikely golf club is back in the spotlight \u2013\u00a0this time with a tournament tailor-made for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,33773,259043,243230,259044,197858,755,259045,5994,85,259046,16494],"class_list":["post-518766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beer","tag-coober-pedy","tag-coopers","tag-coopers-mild-ale-coober-pedy-classic","tag-gleneagles","tag-golf","tag-opal-fields","tag-scotland","tag-sports","tag-st-andrews-links","tag-tournament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}