Tetherow Tethers A Scot Star’s Sensibilities to Oregon’s Rugged Western Terrain

by Ken Van Vechten
photo by Mike Houska

“Fair” is a design concept that means what?

Exactly. Questions of equity seem out of place in a game people choose to play, particularly one where a 320-yard drive has the same value as a six-inch putt, and a ball hit three inches past a white-staked line down the right side of a fairway is worth twice the effective penalty of a same-sided line that happens to be delineated by red stakes.

So I leave the course a bit battered, a few sleeves light, with a score that will be rejected by the computer and an overall feeling of lightness and happiness that is wholly the doing of the previous three-plus hours of my life.

Fair? Try excellent. Welcome to Tetherow.

Set on the western edge of town just off the highway, along which in the “off” season the multitudes rush to one of the West’s best ski hills, Tetherow is Bend’s newest tribute to all things Scottish, or at least that most important of Scottish things that doesn’t come in a bottle. It’s an Old World-style romp through a fractured high-desert landscape coincidentally denuded of Bend’s signature pines owing to a big burn some time back. In some quarters you might hear the words “links-style,” but that is of course a typically misplaced and hideously overused concept in this game we all so love since Central Oregon is nowhere near the handful of places on the globe where linksland exists. (Editorial chastisement concluded, but for more on what makes for real “links” golf, read my buddy Tony Dear’s soliloquy "The Big Finish.")

What players confront at this David McLay Kidd beaut is a style of golf with which many Americans might not be familiar. Every hole, or at least some part of every hole, heaves in one direction or another, and typically several at the same time. Mounds and knobs and hummocks and furrows abound like gopher domes at City of Municipal Golf Club. Green complexes sport more sides than Sybil. The only flat stances come on tee boxes. Lies are tight, crisp. Tee shots often head off toward what Magellan would’ve called terra incognita. And it’s all trimmed in ball-cloaking shaggy grass.

Play it low when that’s what the course requests and accept the rub of the green.

It is a links course, dammit.

What’s surprising is that Kidd (known for, among other things, Bandon Dunes and the new Castle Course at St. Andrews) achieved such mastery within a routing envelope that was pre-determined by the development’s master plan of homesites and roadways. As Kidd says of the routing, “I’d love to give you a sexy story, but there isn’t one.” What there’s one of is “a bold creation like nothing that had been done [in Bend] before.”

For all the early accolades, the story at Tetherow is refinement. Kidd, who owns “the biggest homesite in the project” and has relocated his American HQ — and family — to this vibrant town of 75,000 outdoor-lovers and a bounty of brewpubs, has spent this first postopening winter with eraser in hand, smoothing out some of the lumps, easing some of the visual intimidation, thinning out some of the tangled margins of fairways, bunkers and some of the greens.

“I’m in the creative business,” the young Scotsman says, “and while my own personal input is important, it doesn’t mean anything if no one else likes it. I don’t want my courses to be universally loved. I’d like to provoke opinion and reaction. But in general I want everyone to enjoy the experience. If there are things we can tweak or edit, then why not? If the originator is doing it, what’s the harm?”

The changes are meant to aid those on the higher side of the handicap scale, and if a wee bit of nastiness tangential to the play is toned down over a couple winters of tinkering, what stands at the end of the day is the same stout beast with the organic soul … and the stunning Cascade views

Tetherow allows players to get around without later pondering, over après-round libations, the regrettable, far-too-prevalent-in-this-industry dud hole or holes that often show up to allow the “architect” to reach the magic numbers of “9” and “18.” As importantly, there’s nothing cookie-cutter to the arrangement. Topography, designer imagination and some very broad internal shoulders, despite this being a (very high-end) residential project, lead to almost continuous movement — climb, plummet, left, right — and save the lack of a significant short par 3 a la No. 7 at Pebble or No. 17 at Sawgrass, there’s a full span of yardages (and consequent approaches) to the 4-pars and 5-pars. But there’s still an eye-candy quality to playing and discussing this game, so let’s give a shout out to the split-fairwayed and partially blind 420-yard No. 6 and the 6-iron-length 17th.

“It’s hard not to love 17,” Kidd admits, with both designer pride and player glee. Yet it almost did not come to pass. Apparently on the very day the hole was to be constructed there was a light bulb moment and the hole was turned 180 degrees with the green being nested against an amphitheater within an old pumice quarry.

Spontaneity is a Scottish virtue?

And in the modern world of eight-figure course budgets, Kidd is quick to note “it cost basically nothing.”

Now thrift we understand, aye.

Published in FG Magazine, March 2009