MyWestworld

The Pacific Northwest: Golf’s New Minimalism

Posted on 18. Aug, 2009 by BCAA in Places

Golf course designers in the Pacific Northwest rough up their links to elicit the game’s true nature

by Jim Sutherland

The wind is howling and there’s a chill in the air. What a great day for golf. The course is splattered with what appear to be blown-out sand dunes and there are hardly any ponds. Fantastic!  A forest fire raged through the area a few years back so there aren’t a lot of trees. Beautiful! We are carrying our clubs and there’s not a golf cart to be seen. Bravo! The putting surfaces are a greyish green and so firm a perfectly struck six-iron bounces off the back into some sort of hay. God, could it get any better?

Just another day in golf nirvana – a.k.a. Tetherow, in Bend, Oregon, some 300 kilometres southeast of Portland. The course with the odd name opened just last July. But despite the aforementioned description of play here, devotees of the game nodded knowingly when Travel & Leisure Golf subsequently named it the fifth best course to open worldwide in 2008. Along with a trio of courses on the Oregon coast at Bandon, a track called Chambers Bay in Tacoma, Washington, and another called Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club, near Merritt, B.C., Tetherow is a premier example of minimalist golf design – the hottest thing to hit the game since Sansabelt slacks.

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The game’s hottest new courses are

making all the Play Before You Die

lists – and for all the right reasons.”

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Western Canada certainly doesn’t need to apologize for its golf courses. Still, we have never been at, or even near, the game’s epicentre – until now. This is our moment, a time when it is possible to drive, not fly, to the game’s hottest new courses: beautiful, challenging, inspiring tracks that are making all the Top 100, Best New and Play Before You Die lists, and for all the right reasons.

They’re more fun to play and easier on the environment. And from Bend, the intrepid golfer need merely head west a few hours to the Oregon coast, back through the Seattle area, then up the Coquihalla to plead his or her case (probably a futile effort, but still) at annual-members-only Sagebrush.

courtesy Kings Links by the Sea

The Scottish links-inspired minimalist trend is only a decade or so old, but for the most part its application has been conveniently concentrated in the western states of the U.S. Generally the courses share an unmanicured look and feel, with creased and crinkly surfaces that lead to unexpected bounces and rolls. Often the fairways – and even the greens – are seeded to fescues rather than the common blue and bent grasses, so they require less water and fertilization, feel more natural and play much more firmly. Women and high handicappers like the way their balls go farther and the fact that hazards are all but nonexistent (except for the dreaded bunkers); better players are challenged by strategic considerations and unexpected bounces. And everyone soon appreciates the illusion of walking through meadows instead of chugging about a suburban park (carts are usually banned or discouraged). Avid golfers will have noticed elements of the new minimalism showing up on many courses built in the past 10 years or so, but the 18s on this tour are the models, the ideals, the visions of perfection that designers of more mainstream efforts would create if only developers would let them.

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Among their many benefits,

minimalist golf courses help protect

wildlife habitats, improve water

quality of nearby waterways and

rehabilitate degraded landscapes.

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Here in Oregon, for instance, it’s not a coincidence that Tetherow and the Bandon courses are only a few hours apart. David McLay Kidd, the young Scottish designer responsible for turning Bandon Dunes into the most influential course of the late 20th century, recently relocated his design firm to Bend to work on Tetherow and other minimalist courses worldwide (including one, now years in development, near Fernie). Kidd is the son of legendary Scottish greens- keeper Jimmy Kidd and was tapped to design the new links that just opened at, of all places, St. Andrews, so there’s no disputing that the Old Country style has hugely influenced his approach.

Tetherow is one of about two dozen golf courses in the Bend area of central Oregon, a recreational Shangri-La already noted for fishing, hiking, caving and mountaineering – not to mention its five microbreweries. Today, though, the hot pursuit is definitely golf.

I’m out with club pro Martin Chuck, a Toronto native who once played professionally on the Canadian Tour and who can’t believe his luck at having landed in such a place.

Testing the back tees at 7,400 yards, though, he’s having a hard time keeping his drives from drawing too far left while, from the 6,600-yard middle tees (there are five sets), I’m hitting the driver nice and straight. But on approach shots, the pro takes over: striking low, piercing irons that tumble down in front of the green and roll on – even as the lazy moon shots that serve me well on the more receptive greens back home bounce wildly astray or catch gusts of wind, landing my ball in scary bunkers and gnarly rough. If there’s any consolation here, it’s that I get to closely study these annoyances, which at first glance seem to be naturally occurring but obviously cannot be given their diabolical placement. In fact, while minimalist designers pride themselves on moving very little dirt and disdaining such showy features as island greens and artificial waterfalls (and often eschewing water hazards completely), they compensate with rough-edged hazards so aesthetically appealing they seem to follow from the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, or finding beauty in imperfection. If only I’d journeyed here as a photo stylist rather than as a would-be golfer.

The eye tends to focus on such details at Tetherow because the course, though rolling, provides few outward vistas and the surrounding forest is mostly a sparse remnant. That’s certainly not the case at Bandon, where two of the three courses front directly onto the wild, blue Pacific and almost every hole is a postcard waiting to happen. Here, designers Kidd, Tom Doak (Pacific Dunes) and Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (Bandon Trails) seem to have had an easier time of it, simply letting the holes unfurl across a pastoral landscape that already featured open meadow, stands of picturesque trees and even clumps of gorse, a thorny Scottish staple imported to the area by an early farmer, much to the chagrin of his descendants.

The spot was chosen for a golf course after years of searching by Chicagoan Mike Keiser, who made a fortune back in the ’70s with a line of humorous greeting cards printed on recycled paper. Having played in the British Isles, Keiser had come to believe that great golf courses are largely a function of great sites, a complete reversal of the modern North American view that excellence can be achieved anywhere if one moves enough dirt, pools enough water and landscapes with sufficient vim. Keiser finally found his spot in Bandon, leaving critics to scoff that, sure, Bandon Dunes was a charming track, but no one would journey to an isolated, down-at-the-heels fishing village just to play it. Wrong. From year one it has been a huge hit, and now, joined by two other courses and with a fourth on the way, the Bandon Dunes complex is considered by most authorities the top golf destination in the U.S. – besting such established capitals as Palm Springs, Myrtle Beach and even the Monterey Peninsula and its astronomically priced Pebble Beach.

Playing Bandon with my wife, I can understand why. The firm turf adds a good 20 yards to her drives, and the big fescue greens (so firm golfers are allowed to pull their carts across them) favour the lower-trajectory game that many women and higher handicappers tend to play. Meanwhile, there is a surprise around every corner, whether it’s a stunning view of the ocean or a pot bunker that –  darn it all – we hadn’t figured on. Outside of Scotland, there isn’t a spot in the world with three courses that delivers comparable quantities of pure delight.

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“Chambers Bay has a similarly raw, Scottish feel,

and takes just as much advantage of its location.”

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Chambers Bay, courtesy Aidan Bradley

Up in Tacoma, a few minutes from Arthur Erickson’s Museum of Glass, Chambers Bay both does and very much does not follow the same playbook. It has a similarly raw, Scottish feel, and takes just as much advantage of its location, on the shores of Puget Sound. On the other hand, it’s a muni, owned and operated by Pierce County, which must be feeling pretty proud of its achievement – given that Chambers Bay was named America’s best new course in 2007 and has since been chosen to host both the U.S. Amateur (2010) and Open (2015). Designer Robert Trent Jones II didn’t exactly start with a made-for-golf site, either. In fact, the course is layered on top of an old gravel quarry, so the hyper-natural aura is, in fact, completely artificial. (There’s an additional irony to this in that Jones’s father, Robert Trent Jones, is often cited by the new minimalists as one of the chief villains behind North America’s post-World War II stock of crafted-from-nothing suburban-style courses.)

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“Crazy bounces and funhouse greens

make playing Sagebrush a hoot. . . . Please,

let this be a model for future courses.”

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courtesy Aidan Bradley

But even if Chambers Bay’s minimalism was created only by moving a lot of dirt at enormous expense (more than $20 million in construction costs), that fact doesn’t detract from the experience. Crazy bounces and funhouse greens make playing it a hoot. And while there is no water on the course and precisely one tree, the designers saw fit to leave behind concrete ruins from the old quarry site, which contribute to an ambience that is anything but country club. Please, let this be a model for future courses built by the prolific Jones family.

Finally this epic roadtrip returns to Canada –  though not to one of B.C.’s hot golf destinations but to Merritt, a place where only the summertime temperatures can be so described. Not that the site of ex-PGA Tour player Richard Zokol’s brand-new Sagebrush is anything less than exquisite: it occupies a bench adjacent to the tiny village of Quilchena, overlooking beautiful Nicola Lake. But before whetting appetites any further, a sad disclaimer: not only is Sagebrush private, with only a few dozen annual-fee members, but the road runs below the property so you can’t even ogle it. Indeed, you’re probably wise to skip the futile roadtrip and trust me when I say it will be every bit as influential on our side of the border as Bandon Dunes has been in the U.S.

Sagebrush came about when, back in the early 1990s, Zokol fell under the spell of fellow Tour player Ben Crenshaw, whose Sand Dunes in Nebraska is generally considered the first of the minimalist tracks. With his playing career winding down, the White Rock-based golfer decided he wanted to build a course along similar lines, and, fatefully, Crenshaw suggested he get in touch with Ponoka, Alberta-based Rod Whitman, who may be the best golf course designer no one has ever heard of.

Whitman is unusual in the golf design world: he doesn’t work from plans in a faraway office but rather moves right onto the construction site, personally driving the mini-dozer used to shape the fairways and greens. As a result, he isn’t exactly prolific – but the few courses with his name attached sure are good ones. His collaboration with Zokol is the first to religiously follow the minimalist creed, with big, firm greens, lots of rough-edged bunkers and fescue fairways that meld gracefully with the natural sagebrush-dominated vegetation. Trees are few in the near-desert environment, and a well-sheltered trout pond comes into play on only one hole.

As with Tetherow, Bandon and Chambers Bay, Sagebrush’s true strength is the fun quotient it delivers for golfers of all abilities. But the difference is that here, the fun is being had by – wait for it – maybe 20 or 30 golfers per day. Zokol likes to use the term “perfect moments” to describe the effect he has tried to create for those lucky bastards, and I’m sure they’re having a lot of them, whether the wind is howling or not.

6 More Rugged Good Links

It’s an annoying irony that the first wave of minimalist courses have been expensive to build (those ideal sites; that insane attention to detail) and are in high demand, a combination that renders them expensive to play or, worse, inaccessible to all but private members. Fortunately, there are others that, if not quite the full minimal, give a taste of what the style is like:

1. Shuksan, Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A.
Traditionalist designers are wary of overly hilly terrain because too much earth-moving is required and severe elevation changes make walking difficult. But perhaps because he had the links style in mind and a limited budget to work with, designer Rick Dvorak turned out a modest proto-minimalist marvel with this up-and-down Bellingham-area track from the early 1990s.

2. King’s Links, Ladner, B.C.
Although it lacks the fine detail of the full-blown minimalist courses, King’s Links (pictured), just outside Vancouver, is certainly a spiritual brethren. Original owner Bob Ahoy designed and built it on a shoestring with Scottish courses in mind. Though there’s a little too much artificial water about, the greens are crinkled, the turf is firm, trees are virtually absent and the sea winds blow hard, making it a more elemental experience than most North American-style courses.

3. Wolf Creek and Blackhawk, Edmonton area, Alberta
Rod Whitman, Richard Zokol’s design partner at Sagebrush, is developing a global cult following for his naturalistic approach and incredible skills as a green and fairway shaper — evident at two courses near his home base: Wolf Creek, near Ponoka, and Blackhawk, near Edmonton.

courtesy Dakota Dunes

4. Dakota Dunes, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Were the surfaces a little firmer and the edges a little rougher, Graham Cooke’s landmark Dakota Dunes near Saskatoon would almost qualify as minimalist. The dunes-land course is a delight to play, in any case.

5. Arthur Vernon Macan courses, Vancouver, Chilliwack, Nanaimo, the Okanagan, B.C.
The interwar period is known as golf’s Golden Age of course design, and eastern designers such as Donald Ross and Stanley Thompson are legendary. Victoria-based Arthur Vernon Macan, however, never achieved his contemporaries’ profile. But he should have. Fortunately, many of his best courses can still be played, including Kelowna Golf and Country Club, Chilliwack Golf and Country Club, Nanaimo Golf Club and Vancouver’s University (plus Stanley Park’s delightful pitch-and-putt).

6. Stanley Thompson & Donald Ross courses
Banff, Jasper, Waterton, Waskesiu, West Vancouver, Winnipeg
Speaking of the golden age, there are also a few Thompson and Ross courses sprinkled around. Thompson was responsible for national park courses at Alberta’s Banff, Jasper, Waterton and Saskatchewan’s Waskesiu, as well as Falcon Lake in Manitoba and B.C.’s private Capilano. The only western Canadian examples from Ross, the Scottish-American legend responsible for Pinehurst No. 2, Oakland Hills and 600 others, are in Winnipeg, but Pine Ridge Golf Club, Elmhurst Golf and Country Club and St. Charles Golf Club are all private. Incidentally, the latter sports nine holes by Alister MacKenzie of Cypress Point and Augusta National fame.

• ADDITIONAL INTEL The best way to promote more sustainable golf? Reassure operators that you don’t mind clover (or even, gasp, weeds) mixed in with the grass, and you prefer your fairways firm and fast — and thus not overwatered.

• CRITICAL READING The best introduction to golf’s new (and very old) wave is online. Golfclubatlas.com features some 1,500 contributors detailing the intricacies of their favourite courses.  —J.S.

Lead image courtesy Dakota Dunes

Tags: Golf, Minimalist Golf, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Western Canada