A Golfing Feast To The East
For those that head east from Seattle regularly, the scenario is a familiar one; leave the city under overcast skies, sense the chill on the climb to Snoqualmie Pass, feel a pang of excitement as the rain clears and the sky turns blue approaching Ellensburg then enjoy long, cloudless horizons all the way to Spokane.
The Lilac City, incorporated in 1881, receives half of Seattle’s annual precipitation and basks under exactly three times as much sun each year - 174 sunny days, on average, compared with 58. July and August can get uncomfortably hot at times with temperatures often climbing into the 90s and occasionally beyond, but more often than not, the conditions here scream at golfers to stop whatever else they’re doing and head for the links.
But it’s not just the weather that makes Eastern Washington such a wonderful place to play the game. The landscape - a mix of heaving, treeless Palouse, evergreen-covered mountains and lush river valleys - plays its part too.
Before August last year, it was tree-lined, often claustrophobic courses with small, flattish greens and fairly discreet bunkering that defined golf in the region. Spokane County-owned Hangman Valley, 27-hole Chewelah G&CC, and the 74-year-old, H Chandler Egan-designed classic Indian Canyon were typical, offering layouts on which the northwest golfer felt right at home.
In the last nine months, however, the Eastern Washington golf scene has been dominated by the opening of two highly acclaimed courses with an altogether different look. Located on the rolling silt dunes of the Palouse, Walla Walla’s Wine Valley and Pullman’s Palouse Ridge are built in areas more commonly used for wheat-farming and on land that golfers once thought of as perhaps a little too bland and predictable for a truly entertaining golf course. Without much vegetation and with so few natural water features, limited construction equipment couldn’t really create anything special.
How times change. Today, with the help of incredibly powerful and versatile machines, responding to the instructions of passionate and learned architects like Dan Hixson (Wine Valley) and John Harbottle (Palouse Ridge), not to mention master shapers such as Dan Proctor and Kye Goalby, compelling and eye-catching golf holes can be found and built into the existing landscape without the need for moving too much dirt.
‘It’s different these days,’ says Hixson who disturbed roughly 100,000 cubic yards of earth - a relatively small amount compared with some modern courses - at Wine Valley. ‘With so many good shapers around, it’s much easier to build a great course in a place like the Palouse. Bear in mind a lot of the tree-lined courses probably didn’t have quite so many trees when they were built, and they were usually a lot closer to the cities which made it easier to build them. Now, people and machinery can get around so much easier so you see good courses appearing in places they probably couldn’t have 40 or 50 years ago.’
The opening hole at Wine Valley sets the tone beautifully. A dogleg to the right that curves around a huge bunker set into the elbow, the hole is not dissimilar to the 1st at Kingsbarns in Scotland and is one of the designer’s favorites. There’s plenty of room out to the left but, of course, the safer you are off the tee, the longer and tougher your approach shot will be. The green, like so many of its near neighbors, rolls and dips and moves and sways like a mini version of the Palouse and plays wonderfully firm and fast. Thinned long irons will not make much impression on Wine Valley’s greens. In fact, lofted short irons have a hard time making much of a dent. Part of the fun here is assuming you know where your ball is going to finish, taking your eye off it and discovering, when you reach the green, that it is actually 40ft left of where you expected it to be.
Wine Valley is Hixson’s second original design and like his first, Bandon Crossings in Oregon, asks dozens of questions of those that play it; do you take on the narrower left side of the fairway at the Par 5 3rd to give yourself a chance of getting home in two, or play three safe shots down the right? At the Par 5 7th where do you leave your second shot for the simplest approach to the hole? At the 15th, what’s your safest line to the fairway over the diagonal waste area?
That’s just good, thought-provoking, design that enables the modest golfer to swing away happily without fear of losing a stack of balls, but which provides ample challenge for the serious player. At Wine Valley, the ideal line is never obvious, the challenge constantly strategic, the fun non-stop.
Palouse Ridge, 115 miles north-east of Walla Walla and situated on the east side of Washington State University’s main campus, replaced a non-descript nine-hole course and opened on Labor Day 2008. Within just a few months it was appearing in national magazine’s ‘Best of’ rankings; No.15 among Golfweek’s Best New Courses, No. 7 in Golf Magazine’s Best New Courses You Can Play, No.9 on T&L Golf’s Best New Courses in 2008…in the world!
General Manager, Bruce Perisho, says he has received nothing but positive feedback since the course opened. ‘We held a women’s event last fall (the Inland Northwest Dodge Dealers Invitational which the Cougars won by 22 shots) and got rave reviews from the coaches and players,’ he adds. ‘David Sutherland, a former tour player and now the coach at Sacramento State, said it was the finest university course he had ever played.’
After a six-month winter lay-off, Palouse Ridge re-opened on April 5th in remarkably good shape considering the amount of snow that had covered it between early December and the middle of March. John Harbottle visited the course shortly after it resurfaced to see how it had responded to its first freeze. ‘The winter was a tough one, but the course came through it remarkably well,’ he says. ‘There was no real erosion and little loss of turf to disease or desiccation. It is maturing wonderfully under the guidance of Todd Lupkes (superintendent) and his staff. The greens were especially nice.’
At the end of June, the state’s top amateur players head to Palouse Ridge for the 83rd Washington State Amateur Championship where Husky Richard Lee will be defending the title he won at Moses Pointe last year. There, Lee fired a third round 62 en route to a five-shot victory. Perisho doubts anyone will be going that low this year. ‘If it’s calm, there will be some low scores,’ he says. ‘But I don’t see anyone shooting 62 round here. And if the wind gets up, who knows what will happen to the scores?’
I do. They will get much, much higher. Palouse Ridge is as exposed to the elements in places as some of the great British links, and when a south-westerly whistles through, it is nothing less than a beast. Competitors looking to get their round off to a strong start will begin the day with a 463-yard Par 4 that plays directly towards this prevailing wind. For many, a bogey here may be the best they can hope for.
Spokane, and a quartet of easily accessible, refreshingly inexpensive, grossly under-rated municipals, is 75 miles north. Though the nature of the layouts is very different to those on the Palouse, I for one still have a blast every time I tee it up here, especially at Indian Canyon which, at $27 a round during the week, is absolutely as good a value as exists in the United States, if not on Planet Golf. Esmeralda is even more popular among local golfers and Downriver is always a pleasant day out. Qualchan, the newest of the city’s fab four, enjoys a wonderful setting a few miles south of Downtown.
Sadly, you’ll probably have to go home at some point, but before you reach Snoqualmie Pass again, stop in for a game at the excellent Mike Moore-designed Links at Moses Pointe or Arnold palmer’s Prospector at Suncadia. If you’re returning on Highway 2, try Highlander in Wenatchee, Desert Canyon 15 miles north, or the lovely nine-holes at Leavenworth Golf Club. Should you pass through the Tri-Cities area, call in at Sun Willows, Columbia Point, Canyon Lakes, Horn Rapids or West Richland.
The right side of the state has been a great place to play golf for decades. With Palouse Ridge and Wine Valley now included in the itinerary, the trip has been upgraded to world class. And for Puget Sounders forced indoors during months of winter gloom, Eastern Washington’s arid slopes must seem awfully enticing. What on Earth are you waiting for?
Useful Info
Wine Valley stay and play packages are now available mid-week at the Marcus Whitman Hotel in downtown Walla Walla. Discounted rooms start at $129, with a complimentary
beverage in the Vineyard Lounge. Two rounds of golf, with cart, cost $120.
marcuswhitmanhotel.com, tel: 866-826-9422.
Palouse Ridge stay and play packages are available at the Holiday Inn Express and University Inn. Combination packages including golf at Palouse Ridge, Circling Raven and the Idaho Club are also available.
palouseridge.com (scroll down home page to ‘Stay and Play’), tel: 509-335-4342.
Other useful web sites
