Pacific Northwest: Run for the Roses

by Ken Van Vechten

Pumpkin Ridge in Portland has a glow all its own.

It wasn’t as hokey as one of those 1970s they-tried-real-hard-to-be-painfully-touching shows like a Waltons’ reunion or any such rot. When I went back to where I’d spent a good hunk of my youth — a youth long delayed because of my reticence to finish college, so let’s say my teens went most of the way through my 20s — there was no great lesson learned to be shared with the other kids, no tough-love-lecture-and-a-comforting-hug from Pa Ingalls.

It was me, my golf bag, the two guys I’ve spent more time on a golf course with than anyone else ... and Portland, where I’d effectively resided from 1973 to the end of 1988.

Yet like those TV sap-o-dramas of old, there was a homily — the moral to the story that a more innocent Hollywood wanted us to take away when all we were really intent on was figuring out how far Mary Ellen would go on a first date.

And that lesson?

Rose City golf isn’t just about Peter Jacobsen taking home hardware and coin.

What some might assume would be the scruffy dog among the pack we played during our annual summer golf getaway was Heron Lakes’ Green Back course, a parkland track that tops out at something like $32, so of course those of us living in high-priced golfdom in the southwestern corner of the continent would be thrilled to have Green Back at our everyday beck and call. I coughed up an ugly three-putt bogey on 18 and opened the round double-double bogey on the easy par-5 No. 1 and commendable four-shot No. 2, but captured lightning in a bottle in between, marking down a money-making, 17-handicapper’s index-plummeting 82 from the back tees.

I like Green Back, and not because of what should’ve been a 70-something round. Some tweaking over the years to go along with the ample water and woodlands Robert Trent Jones Jr. drafted into service with the original design keep the course relevant. And while solid drivers can exact vengeance, doglegging, a quartet of long 3-pars and greens that in some form resemble those that gave Jones’ dad some of his deserved acclaim restrict any pushover quality. No. 15 is an all-risk 300-yard par 4 with an over-water carry of 260 yards, even with the bend in the hole, yet it’s very easy to burn a hot layup through the fairway right into the trees. It’s a textbook short 4-par.

And make sure to hunt out the back tee set in the trees and draw it off the right-side bunker on the 400-yard par-4 No. 6.

I played a little golf back in my Oregon days. Running (and skiing) was my sport then — my waistline at that time didn’t even measure up to my inseam — and I spent more time on Portland’s golf courses during interscholastic cross country matches during fall than rounds during golf season. And getting back to Heron Lakes reminded me that whether truly municipally owned or simply publicly accessible, the area is replete with low-buck, high-value plays — RedTail, Meriwether National, Eastmoreland.

Another Jones II design, Green Back’s sister course, Great Blue, is city-owned golf along the lines of Piñon Hills in Farmington, N.M. — outstanding play, perfect complement to the terrain and environment and available for a pittance. The public-relations folks would have you believe it’s links play. Of course, public-relations folks are paid to say those sorts of things. Other than that, Great Blue is the real deal. And tough.

Native grasses define Great Blue’s fairway margins, so going in means there’s no coming out, though there are a few spots to survive, as when I played my drive on No. 7 in front of the No. 8 forward tee, hitting a beautiful blind wedge second shot over trees to kick-in range for birdie and an apt reminder that golf isn’t fair or nasty or kind or vindictive; it’s just golf. Painted across a portion of the property even more given over to marsh, lake and slough than Green Back, water not woodland directs the line of play, and the wet stuff is part of the action on a handful to well over half the holes, depending on ability.

Heron Lakes sits at the fat end of the wedge of land between the converging Willamette and Columbia rivers. That means it’s close to the airport for the fly-in crowd and near Portland International Raceway for motorsports aficionados. The most notable thing about the setting, however, is all the water. The area is natural wetland, and avian wildlife abounds — hence the courses being named after two types of heron.

The ranks of my annual summertime golf-with-the-buddies trip were thinned this year, with several of the troops felled by recent nuptials, coaching duties or, in the case of one poor planner, not checking his wife’s master family travel calendar. Oops. And while we missed those guys, golf life as a threesome had advantages, the most obvious being that the three in attendance are the three of our group most given to daily doubles, of which we enjoyed several, starting at Heron Lakes.

The snafus also allowed a couple Portland friends to join us for a round here and there. A close bud from the Dark Ages of college played along (for the first 18) at Langdon Farms. Thin as ever, still fit; when my ex-roomy met us on the range at Langdon Farms I sensed I was in trouble since he’d always had my number on the course. Then I saw the bag ... and the irons ... and a driver about the size of one of my hybrids. I knew that at least that portion of his game was trapped circa 1985.

It didn’t matter. Playing same-old, same-old bunt ball on a 6,500-yard routing — we played the blue or “Champion” tees — he was never out of play and almost always looking at some type of putt, albeit lengthy at times, for par.

I, of course, wasn’t.

Langdon is pastoral in every good sense of the image, save the interstate that skirts a length of the course. The site is rolling former farmland dappled here and there with massive stands of conifers, real forest primeval stuff that the grounds crew sees fit to carpet with wood shavings giving a false sense of security that recovery is possible. The administrative building is a white, gabled, two-level affair straight from the pages of Willa Cather. The covered portion of the range looks like a row of stables and the big bed barn, a massive, multi-storied behemoth open to the rafters, serves the roll as clubhouse. What’s markedly not farm-frontier is the food and microbrews served, the Golfsmith-grade selections in the pro shop, and the golf. And it’s only 20 minutes south of downtown.

As for favorites, I am partial to the three-hole run starting at No. 2, which is a pipeline par 4 measuring under 400 yards with a kink leftward about 75 percent of the way out and a narrow green set in a slot framed by mounding and backed by trees. No. 3 is a longer-iron fall-away par 3 played into an amphitheater of firs and rhododendrons. (Correct, horticulturalists ... azaleas at Augusta and rhododendrons in the Northwest.) No. 4 is how to frame a short par 4. A heavily roughed sideboard runs up the right with tall grass waving golden fingers farther to the right. A deep, grassed, flat-bottomed depression shoulders its way in along the left, with a stream and woodland in subsequent stages more to the left. Sequential bunkers protect the right side of the green for those approaching from the safe-drive side. A huge sand cavity collects drives from those who try to carry the ravine without benefit of a morning dose of creatine. Stylistically, it’s as beautiful as No. 3 is simply gorgeous. It’s also eminently fair, for as the teeing grounds move forward, they move ever rightward.

Thankfully, I righted my game when we played the John Fought-designed South Course at the Reserve, where I delivered a spirit-crushing beatdown on a friend who is a golf writer based in Portland. But he had it coming for utterly humiliating me in Canada last fall.

The host of the Jeld-Wen Tradition, one of the “majors” on the Champions Tour, the South Course is at its very core solid, and pending the outcome of the rumored rework to be done at Pumpkin Ridge’s Ghost Creek course (see story, opposite page), the South just might be my pick-of-the-Portland-litter routing.

The course scampers through a mix of glade and woodland, though neither wholly open nor encased in wood, so several styles of play are on the card. The opening holes and in fact the entire front offers the greatest chance of survival for, umm, erratic players.

Several months ago I wrote an article featuring the best holes across the Pacific Northwest. One that consistently came up for nomination by practiced amateurs and club professionals was No. 17. The fame is warranted — in 2005, the seniors played the par 4 to an average score in excess of 4.75, and it was the 18th hardest on Tour that year. At 470 yards from the back, it is representative of the closing nine, which has the length of the front — back tees nearing 3,600 yards and 3,400 from the blues — coupled with more strategic par-4 options, tighter drive lines, more embracing trees and a greater abundance of in-play water.

I have very fond memories of No. 16, a par 4 that can be reached depending on tee placement, with a stream cutting in under the chin of the green and no water long. Of course, I pulled out driver. I splashed. Dropping short of the hazard, I hit a stake-to-the-heart flop that edged the hole, stopping close enough that even my guys knew I’d not miss the miracle par save.

Walking off the green, my now victimized writer-friend looked at me, then skyward, chuckled darkly and hissed something that I can only assume was unseemly about my game or me. Perhaps he was looking for the homily: “You drive for show …” FG

Portland Golf

207.772.5800 | www.visitportland.com

THE ‘OTHER’ PART OF THE STATE

Oregon could be the richest per-capita golf state in the Union. And while Bandon and the center-of-the-state courses get most of the press, Portland and environs tee it up well into the ranks of what the golf cognoscenti consider some of the nation’s best. And it’s hard to swing a niblick without knocking up against a great play of which you’ve likely never heard.

The ‘City of Roses’

Heron Lakes Golf Course

Great Blue/Green Back

Par: 72/72

Yardage: 6,902/6,615

Rates: $23-$40/$15-$32 (fall including twilight, if applicable, walking)

www.heronlakesgolf.com | 503.289.1818

Langdon Farms Golf Club

Par: 71

Yardage: 6,931

Rates: $35-$45
www.langdonfarms.com | 503.678.GOLF

The Reserve Vineyards and Golf Club North/South