From the restaurant patio overlooking fairways divided by massive mounds topped with fescue, and with the Puget Sound glistening in the afternoon sun and the Gulf Islands outlined on the horizon, it’s almost impossible to imagine that this incredible site about to host the U.S. Open was a desolate wasteland a few years ago.
The 950 acres along the shoreline of Chambers Bay, 40 miles south of Seattle, was first used as a rock quarry by Indian bands and later by European settlers in the 1830s. It arrived at its spent state after a century and a half as a sand and gravel mine, railroad hub, industrial center, bus barn, paper mill and wastewater treatment plant. It earned its disfigurement.
But the land below the bucolic subdivision of well-spaced homes visitors must wind through to enjoy the view of the course and Sound is publically owned. And down there, where the wastewater treatment plant produces fertilizer and reclaimed water ideal for growing fescue, an idea germinated.
When the politicians of Pierce County decided to build a municipal golf course on the useless land (well, there is one tree), they had no idea it would host the first U.S. Open staged in the Pacific Northwest. Robert Trent Jones Jr. was chosen to design it, and when he first walked the property – in a thick fog common for the area – he thought the terrain ideal for a links-style course of championship potential. Mission accomplished for the course, which opened to rave reviews in 2007.
Almost from the beginning the USGA was supportive of Chambers Bay. Then, as fate would have it, Congressional Country Club, slated to host the 2010 U.S. Amateur and the 2011 U.S. Open, had problems with its greens and begged off the Amateur. Chambers Bay got it, and reeled in an even bigger prize when members of New York’s iconic Winged Foot decided against hosting the 2015 U.S. Open. Hello again America. Suddenly, the barely tested reclamation project of municipal land was the first new course in the U.S. Open rotation since Jones’s father’s Hazeltine National hosted the tournament in 1970.
The 2010 Amateur proved to be a great test run, with lessons learned on display in a framed schematic in the modest Chambers Bay pro shop. Some changes are minor, some major, but over the past five years they’ve been executed in precise detail. Examples include new green complexes on holes 4, 7, 13 and 16, and new championship tees on 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17. Bunkers have also been added and numerous rough lines shifted and moved. The amateurs of 2010 would recognize the place, but only barely because of how the course is playing.
If rain holds off and fog doesn’t roll in, the Chambers Bay fairways will likely be hard, fast and a test of golf that’s quite un-American for a U.S. Open.
“While we’ve played golf courses before on fescue grasses, we have never played a National Open Championship on fine fescue greens,” said USGA executive director Mike Davis. “This is a first.”
And it will be interesting.
About an hour’s drive south of Chambers Bay, the phone started ringing in the Salish Cliffs Golf Resort pro shop about a year ago. The calls were coming from all over the country requesting tee times and stay-and-play packages in the weeks before and after the U.S. Open.
“If I was coming in for the championship and didn’t know better, I’d be looking at Seattle as a place to hang out,” said Salish Cliffs director of golf David Kass. “But after you get to know this area, you realize that the traffic from here to Chambers versus Seattle to Chambers is dramatically different.”
Besides being a tranquil place to stay during the U.S. Open, or any time really, the Salish resort offers one of the finest courses in the country. Like his masterful Circling Raven in Idaho, Gene Bates designed Salish on seemingly boundary-less and spectacular Native American land. Bates’ canvas sprawls over 320 acres of forested terrain with 600 feet of elevation change. Unlike the stark links land of Chambers Bay, players at Salish Cliffs are constantly reminded that they’re deep in the lush rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.
“We’ve all been enough places that we’ve played what I call ‘condo golf,’” Kass said. “Here there are no homes, no buildings. We typify the region with towering firs and cedars lining fairways, wetlands and streams. We have days when we have over 100 golfers out there and people come in and ask: ‘Did anyone else play today?’ The 10-minute tee time intervals help too.”
Salish Cliffs plays as good as it looks. The T1 bentgrass creates a wonderful playing surface on the wide fairways. The ball sits up beautifully so high handicappers can hits woods and long irons with confidence. The greens have wonderful nuances, and, as usual, Bates created complexes that excite better players and encourage lesser ones. There are five sets of tees and at least four tee boxes on each hole – six on the ninth – stretching the layout from 5,313 yards to 7,269.
The par-4s, especially on the back nine, are strong, with No. 14 standing out. After carrying wetlands and landing in the wide fairway, the fun begins. The green sits on a peninsula, so the wetlands hazard is on three sides. There is no bailout.
“What we try to emphasize here is that we want guests to have fun,” Kass said. “We want everyone to have a good time. Golf is a game, after all, and sometimes we lose sight of that.”
Fun is the prime factor at the newest addition to good courses in the Pacific Northwest – Gamble Sands in Brewster, three hours east of Seattle. On 300 acres of sandy hills above the Columbia and Okanagan rivers, David McLay Kidd – who as a 26-year-old unknown from Scotland crafted Bandon Dunes, the first course at the now iconic Oregon resort – turned a page in his golf architecture career.
“I was embroiled in the golf world of making everything difficult, every real estate based golf project was touting that their course was the ultimate challenge,” Kidd said. “My fervent hope is that this [Gamble Sands] is golf returned to exuberant fun. I wanted to create a course that was beyond playable and positively begging confident, aggressive play.”
With the Cascade Mountains as a backdrop and views of the Columbia from 12 holes, in Kidd’s hands Gamble Sands is as close to a Scottish links as an inland layout can be. The entire course is fescue grass (with 10 percent Colonial bent to help the ball stand up), there are no trees or cart paths, and there are acres of sand but only 20 percent of that is bunkers. Named America’s Best New Course in 2014 by Golf Digest,Gamble’s massive fairways – most are 60 to 80 yards wide – are cleverly contoured to guide errant shots back on line and away from hazards.
The greens are reminiscent of classic links courses, too. As general manager David Christenson explained: “They are huge. The smallest is 6,000 square feet and the biggest is 16,000 square feet. And his bunkers are set back from the greens and the contours don’t slope away from the putting surface or toward the bunkers.”
And like traditional courses in Great Britain, the tees, fairways and greens are cut to the same height. It’s easily walked because tees are just off the back of most greens, and it really is fun to play because all golfers can attack it, with holes 2, 8, and 12 being drivable par-4s. The par-3s are also strong, with No. 6 an exceptional beauty played over a big sand blowout. Players aim about 30 yards short and right of the hole, losing sight of the ball. When it lands, it makes a hard left and comes back into view rolling on to the green.
“David kept telling me that this site was the ideal convergence of natural elements – the sand, the rivers, sagebrush, the mountains – and it would be his fault if he screwed it up,” Christenson recalled. “It really is such a beautiful, pristine site, it’s unbelievable. He definitely didn’t screw it up.”
