Cascade of Riches

by Victor Williams

No. 3 at Pronghorn's Nicklaus Course. Photo by Vic Williams

The West’s hottest region in terms of golf growth — courses under construction, others in the pipeline, some public, some private, some wrapped around high-end housing developments, some not — isn’t hot at all. As in thermometer hot. Well, maybe a few weeks each summer, depending where you are in its vastness, from high-desert hills to rainforest coast.
But it is hot. Golf hot.

It’s the Pacific Northwest, where movers and shakers are taking the coming Baby Boomer influx very seriously, just as they are down in the Southwest. Even more so, maybe, because they haven’t yet experienced a construction lull or oversupply of courses as has, say, the Valley of the Sun. Developers are shelling out mega-millions for the choicest slices of Mother Earth they can find, the best golf course architects and homebuilders to pretty up said slices, the water rights, the media buzz — and underpinning their optimism with a refreshing dearth of uppity attitude. Their respect for the game is palpable, but their inclusive nature, combined with a tireless can-do spirit, is even stronger.

Of course, it helps to live, work and invest in a part of the planet that’s flat-out gorgeous no matter where you are or how often the sky weeps with wonder. Golfers in Bend, with its 300 days of sunshine a year, may approach the game differently than those along the rainy-but-not-deluged Interstate 5 corridor from Eugene to Seattle, though their passion for play is equally extreme. And over the Next 10 Years, the thousands of second-home buyers and root-growing retirees will, the developers hope, catch on quick. Just grab whatever garb is necessary and get to it.

So that’s what we’ll do, with dispatches from various well-placed FG sources.

A Better Bandon? — Contrary to the popular dictum, it seems entirely likely that lightning will strike for the fourth time at Bandon Dunes Resort, the much celebrated golf mecca on the Southern Oregon coast. Owner Mike Keiser recently announced that the resort’s fourth golf course, to be called Old Macdonald, will debut in 2010.

The course will celebrate the work of Charles Blair Macdonald, Keiser’s favorite golf course architect. Macdonald produced a handful of America’s greatest golf courses around the turn of the 20th century, only seven of which still exist. None are west of the Mississippi River. All are private. Keiser is proud to be able to offer public golfers worldwide the chance to play on a course that will re-create Macdonald’s artistry.

Keiser hired architects Tom Doak and Jim Urbina — designers of the resort’s über-popular Pacific Dunes — to create Old Macdonald on a low, rolling site just to the north and east of Pacific Dunes. But in the kind of visionary twist for which Keiser is famous, Doak and Urbina will work with a team of architecture aficionados who will offer their input and ask themselves, as Keiser did when he first looked at the site, WWMD — “What would Macdonald do?”

Macdonald himself worked with architecture aficionados when creating great courses such as National Golf Links of America and The Lido. He often recreated aspects of his favorite European golf holes in the natural settings presented to him. So he might use a piece of the Road Hole here, a Redan-style hole or a Principal’s Nose there. Keiser explains that the new course at Bandon will blend strategic, artistic and aesthetic elements together into a course that has no equal in North America.

Although Doak has garnered a reputation as a rugged individualist, Keiser believes the unique design-by-committee approach won’t present a problem. “Tom’s comfortable with this because he’s the autocrat. He’s the decider, as [President] Bush would say. He’s not bound to take advice, only to listen well. And he’ll have a very good group advising him.”

And as for the course name? “I was feeling frisky,” Keiser admits, “And I said let’s call it Old Macdonald.”

Meanwhile, just down Highway 101, a non-Keiser creation, Bandon Crossings, is slated to open this summer about a mile and a half inland from the ocean. For more, check out the Spring issue of FG Magazine at www.fgmagazine.com. —Jeff Wallach

Make That Jack’s Pass — Three and a half hours from Bandon, just off Interstate 5 north of Grants Pass, a new Jack Nicklaus-Jack Nicklaus II course is taking shape at Paradise Ranch. The master-planned community’s 211 lots, 150-unit resort and private club overlook a comely, gently sloped 320 acres of land, complete with creeks, ponds, wetlands and forested ridges. As the routing emerges, folks familiar with the Nicklaus portfolio will catch whiffs of one of the Bear’s most famous designs.

“The setting is very similar to Muirfield Village,” says Bill Leep, a partner in the Paradise Ranch project and a fourth-generation Oregonian. “The geography is different, but not the contours. Jack has created a beautiful golf course here. He’s troughed through the basins and left the higher geography for the homesites. His son came out and said, ‘Dad has been talking about Paradise Ranch, and every time I come out I remember what he’s been telling me.’ Nicklaus has been with us from the start, and the whole family has been great to work with.”

Expected to open to members in 2008, the course starts with a bang — a 4-par that tumbles downhill to an island green recalling No. 17 at Sawgrass, the iconic hole of a Nicklaus mentor, Pete Dye. It then sweeps, reels and rolls through meadows shaded in pine, fir and old oak, skirts and fords natural water features and gradually climbs back up to the final green, situated on a knoll below what will become a grand Spanish-themed clubhouse. The design crew — Nicklaus father and son, lead designer John Gardner and Paradise Ranch’s own Bob Foster — saw fit to let the routing “emerge” from the landscape. “We only have to move about 40,000 cubic yards of dirt,” Leep said during a brush-busting FG tour of the site. “Jack said, ‘All we’re doing is uncovering the course.’ He is amazing. He came out here for one day, drove this whole thing and had a tentative layout. He sees things in such detail. He is at the top of his industry, and you can see why.”

Leep and partner Daniel Charbonneau acquired the property in 2000 and completed the plan in 2003. Now they’re just waiting for a few more permits before construction gets underway in earnest. “The previous owner was from Germany, and he had a plan to build a 6,300-yard course with a very European presentation. We took a look at it and decided it needed a local touch. This project is 25 years in the making, and we think that it will be built out within five years. It’s a special place.”

Every lot owner will get a membership; there’s a cap of 350 total with 50 offered to non-residents. Initiation fee is expected to be in the $35,000-$40,000 range, with $495 monthly fees at build-out. A private airport just south of the property will allow second-home owners and guests to fly in and be on the course in minutes. “We’re in the golden triangle, with Pronghorn [in Bend] one way and Bandon, which is virtually unparalleled, the other way. We’re three and a half hours to both. We want to be the third leg in that chair. We’re making a strong effort to be a big part of the excitement. It’s pretty tough to beat Southern Oregon.” — VW

Bend Booms On — The terrain is more sere and spread out on the lee side of the snow-draped Cascades, but the golf product in the Bend-Redmond-Sisters triangle is world-class. Sunriver and Black Butte started Central Oregon on its journey to golf destination greatness back in the 1960s and ’70s. Well more than a dozen resort and daily-fee courses followed over the years, including Eagle Crest, a Jeld-Wen property with 27 holes (more on them in a bit), Aspen Lakes, Lost Tracks and Broken Top. Now as Boomers zero in on Bend as a retirement and second-home haven, the building frenzy has cranked back up.

Leading the way is Pronghorn, a private golf community that’s in full bloom on former federal Bureau of Land Management property 15 miles northeast of Bend. When its 250 premium lots are filled with multi-million dollar homes a decade from now — about a dozen have been completed to date, with 20 more underway — most will overlook two 18-hole courses of very different character. First came the Nicklaus Signature course three years ago, which picked up immediate raves among Pronghorn’s full members and fractional lodge owners for its Augusta-like conditioning and tough-but-engaging routing through the native juniper and “ghost trees” that define the property and differ greatly from the pine forest and meadows of, say, Sunriver. Then, last summer, came the fully private Tom Fazio course, any hole on which could be picked up and dropped at Bandon and fit right in. Some holes, however, couldn’t be duplicated anywhere else, including No. 8, perhaps the West’s most unique one-shotter. Blasting work during construction revealed two lava tubes, each several hundred yards deep, so Fazio decided to incorporate them into the hole, with tees on one side of the chasm and a big green teetering between the caves below and 10-foot volcanic cliffs behind. It’s a staggering design achievement, and a hole you don’t want to leave whether you make a 2 or a triple. But as players keep going, the links-meets-desert course just gets better and better — No. 17 has two greens in a nod to No. 9 at Pacific Dunes. Finally comes the serpentine, water-ringed par-5 home hole and the new 55,000-square-foot clubhouse, itself a Mediterranean-themed marvel, with opulently outfitted locker rooms (two sets of them), gourmet restaurant, wine cellar, patios with killer Cascade views (echoing those on the courses themselves), workout facilities and a spacious pro shop.

“It’s a special place,” says Scott Denney, Pronghorn’ co-developer. “The Fazio course is amazing, and I think Jack did a great job also. They complement each other. I told a number of our members, ‘Jack’s course will make you better. Jack’s a strategist. I love that about him. But I’ve turned into loving what Tom Fazio did. He cares how you feel. When you’re down there in the long shadows, it’s ‘Oh my God.’ But I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘I went back to my own club and won the club championship. I owe that to Jack.’ If you buy a lot or a villa, you’re a member at both clubs, so you can come here and work on your game, go over there and feel good.”

A few miles north from Pronghorn is Brasada Ranch, the latest planned community and resort from Jeld-Wen, one of Oregon’s largest and most visible companies, who jumped into the golf course business with Running Y Ranch in Klamath Falls and Eagle Crest in Redmond, and just keeps growing. The window and door manufacturer and major Champions Tour sponsor (they’ll host the Jeld-Wen Tradition in Sunriver this year) hired Northwest native and PGA Tour favorite Peter Jacobsen and his Texas-based design partner, Jim Hardy, to lay out a new private track at Brasada — nine holes are open now, with the other nine slated to debut later this year. The terrain and vegetation is very similar to Pronghorn, though the overall feel of the development owes more to Oregon’s Old West roots blended with the requisite modern niceties. A recreation center will open in 2008 alongside an equestrian center, miles of trails, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts, restaurant and luxury suites.

Completing the Bend boom trifecta is another high-desert project at Remington Ranch, a 2,079-acre residential golf community and resort from Winchester Development of The Quarry at La Quinta, The Estancia at Scottsdale and Stone Eagle fame. Located north of Pronghorn and west of Brasada, just minutes from the Bend-Redmond airport, this mega-development will eventually feature three courses starting with Tom Doak’s Wicked Pony, an invitation-only, single-membership private club surrounded by 67 homesites of two-plus acres in size. Ranch cabins will provide overnight lodging for members and guests, while a 12,000-square-foot clubhouse will offer locker facilities and member-only dining. Wicked Pony is expected to open in July 2008, with the Resort Course to follow in 2009 and Crooked Trail in 2010.

Doak took his time choosing the right site for his first Central Oregon effort, and knew right away Remington Ranch was it.

“While your thoughts are always dominated by the views of the Cascades, most of the golf courses are built on relatively gentle terrain, and the juniper trees on the perimeter of the courses tend to make them look even flatter,” Doak says. “However, parts of Remington Ranch had some abrupt elevation changes. There are three “shelves” of the property with 25-foot drops separating them, and we were able to use those abrupt changes to give the course dramatic features without having to blast them out of the lava. We had our pick of 2,000 acres, and there was a lot of good land to choose from.”

The focal point of overnight accommodations at Remington Ranch is The Lodge — 400 overnight rooms collectively in a boutique hotel and additional condominium and fractional share units. — VW

Meanwhile, Back Down South … Running Y Ranch, Jeld-Wen’s de facto flagship development, is down to a few lots available around the stellar Arnold Palmer-Ed Seay golf course, whose opening holes along the Lower Klamath Lake were submerged under water last August after a levee broke, only to emerge better than ever. “They came through it amazingly,” says longtime pro Jim Skaugstad. “We had to build our own levees to keep the water out, and re-do two greens, but it was in shape in time to host a PGA event last October.”

With several years of growth under its belt, Running Y is starting to see a second round of existing home sales and a higher percentage of buyers moving in full-time. Demand and the region’s overall attractiveness to Northern California retirees spurred Jeld-Wen to start cranking on RidgeWater, a gated community immediately south of Running Y. Anchored by a cliffside clubhouse overlooking the lake, the development will offer smart home technologies, a full recreation center, walking and biking trails, quick access to winter and water sports and, of course, access to Running Y’s amenities, including the course. “It’s got a different feel from Running Y,” says Kendal Daiger, who handles both properties’ marketing efforts. “It’s private, but residents can come play the course anytime. And the views up there are amazing.”

By the way, Jeld-Wen is also hard at work on two other developments — Silver Mountain in Kellogg, Idaho, a multi-season resort with skiing in winter and a golf course coming in 2008; and Chileno Bay near Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, where Tom Fazio will design a seaside course in the next few years. — VW

Trent Dazzles Tacoma — Finally we head well north to Tacoma, Wash., where one of the region’s most-anticipated new courses opened in June after months of positive preview notices. Built on the site of an old gravel pit adjacent to the Pierce County Wastewater Treatment Plant, and initially funded by a loan from the county’s Sewer Utility Fund, Chambers Bay Golf Course doesn’t boast quite as romantic a background as, say, Scotland’s Machrihanish or Royal Dornoch. But give it a few years’ grow-in and it won’t look all that different from the great courses that inspired it.

Touted as a Robert Trent Jones II design, the credit really goes to his Chief Design Officer, Bruce Charlton, and the company’s young prodigy, Jason Blasi, who took a predominantly flat site and 1.4 million cubic yards of sand and dirt and sculpted an imposing network of hills and ridges which, covered in fescue, will soon have the look and feel of dunes that have weathered Puget Sound’s powerful winds for eons.

Though not quite in the same league as the northwest’s original links dreamland, Bandon Dunes (How could it be? Bandon’s courses were laid softly onto an existing dunescape without much need for an army of heavy machines) Chambers Bay will trump its Oregon predecessor in two areas — value and views. Green fees will top out at $150 (compared with $250) and though Bandon’s vistas up and down the Pacific coastline are undoubtedly good for the soul, even they don’t compete with Chambers’ wonderful 180-degree panorama to the north, south and west, taking in Fox, Anderson and McNeil islands in the Sound and the magnificent Olympic National Park beyond.— Tony Dear