The renassaince in golf architecture literature hit full stride in 2002. Paul Daley and David Scaletti's The Sandbelt: Melbourne's Golfing Heaven is a must for any fan of native golf courses. Scaletti's photographs are the most stunning landscapes taken in modern times. Remarkably crisp and always capturing designs in their most flattering light, we finally get to see the wondrous bunkering of Australia in their full glory.

For the superintendent trying to convince his golfers that rugged beauty can give a golf course life, The Sandbelt sums it up with Scaletti's photos and Daley's insightful text.
Neil Crafter

Dear David and Paul,

Just wanted to drop you a note to complement you both on your outstanding publication. Your book is essential reading for any golfing enthusiast and purist, particularly anyone who plays or aspires to play the Melbourne sandbelt.

The photography is simply wonderful and the content insightful - educational, but most importantly, enjoyable. Well done on capturing some fo the world's great golf holes in all their speldour, and on promoting Melbourne's finest natural resources.
John Lombard

Once in a while a golf book comes along that is so good that the hefty price-tag seems inconsequential and it finds its way onto your book-shelf or coffee table while pressing bills remain unpaid. The Sandbelt: Melbourne's Golfing Heaven, by David Scaletti and Paul Daley will set you back $125.00 but any golfer with an appreciation of fine photography, good writing and the history of the game will get great pleasure from it as long as he or she can swing a club, and probably longer.
Brendan Moloney

Golf architecture books are usually pretty nice to look at. But this one is in a class of its own. The first and so far only book dedicated to that glorious gift of nature, the group of golf courses adjacent Australia’s elegant second city, Melbourne, is something every golf fan is going to want to see.

Architecture writer Paul Daley teamed up with a sometime golfing companion, photographer David Scaletti, to capture some of the beauty of this paradisaical landscape. They are appreciative chroniclers.      

It is a physically imposing book. For the most part, text is on the left page, a rectangular panoramic shot of one of the region’s courses on the right. A few double-page photographs are studded through the book (one, from the seventh hole at Woodlands, made me feel extremely there, as if I were in the greenside bunker with very little green to work with, but the other pictures take you there as well. This one was just particularly... daunting).

The Sandbelt is often considered to consist of seven main courses: Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, Metropolitan, Commonwealth, Yarra Yarra, Victoria and Huntingdale. But with the region richly endowed with the characteristic that almost all of the greatest course share – a sandy subsoil – other area courses, including Woodland, Southern and Peninsula, are included in many people’s understanding of the term, and Daley and Scaletti take the generous view, including photos and commentary on some of them. Daley also notes that the sandy ground under foot has contributed to the useful rise of more courses on the Mornington Peninsula.

While beautiful golf architecture picture books need no defending, they would seem to me to have some limited value without thought-provoking texts. Here, as in some of his other work, Daley writes himself and also solicits the views of others to illuminate the quality – and qualities – of the courses he is introducing. Here, as a native Australian, he might be forgiven for being vainglorious, but he resists the tendency to oversell. His colleague’s pictures are each worth a thousand words, and Daley has elected to include a selection of focussed essays and some short texts across from the photographs.
Golf365.com
The Venetian