As we plan our annual summer vacations, it’s good to know about new golf courses so we can schedule trips accordingly.
In Washington, Oregon, Idaho and southern British Columbia, new public courses continue to arrive every year and this year is no exception. In the Puget Sound area alone, three new courses have opened or will open in 2007 – Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Park, White Horse Golf Club in Kingston, and The Home Course in DuPont – with others debuting elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
Several more are slated to arrive in 2008.
For those who enjoy variety and the chance to experience something new – and who among us does not? – the birth of a golf course is an exciting and anticipated event. And the Northwest, it seems, is far from tapped out when it comes to new facilities.
True, many of the newest courses are designed for a specific market, such as resort courses that cater largely to out-of-town golfers. Still, there is also a benefit for hometown golfers, who can continue regular play at local courses while enjoying occasional getaways to new venues.
Noted golf course designer John Harbottle of Tacoma – he designed the award-winning Olympic Course at Bremerton’s Gold Mountain Golf Complex – said he often hears the question, “How many new golf courses can they build?” And the answer, he said, is that no one knows. Golf courses, like other businesses, are driven by supply-and-demand forces, which means they will keep showing up as long as there is a growing market.
“There always seems to be room for a better golf course,” said Harbottle, who also designed the terrific Juniper Golf Club in Redmond, Ore., which opened in 2005. “If you build a quality facility and if you don’t charge a whole lot, then something like that can still be market driven and can still be successful.”
This year’s additions offer a dandy smorgasbord of golfing options. Chambers Bay, the product of internationally renowned designer Robert Trent Jones Jr., is a pricey ($150 top rate) but memorable links experience on view property overlooking south Puget Sound. White Horse is a more traditional Northwest course amid the trees, and just a ferry ride away from south Snohomish County. And The Home Course, which is owned by the Pacific Northwest Golf Association and the Washington Golf Association, will mix public play with various Northwest championships.
Down in Bandon, Ore., a new layout called Bandon Crossing also has opened this year. Though unaffiliated with the nearby Bandon Dunes resort, which now features three courses (a fourth, to be called Old McDonald, is scheduled for a 2010 opening), Bandon Crossing will nonetheless enhance that area’s reputation as a golf destination.
And there is more to come. Three more top Washington courses are scheduled to open in 2008. Suncadia Resort outside Cle Elum will debut its second public course, to be called Rope Rider and designed by longtime PGA Tour player and Oregon native Peter Jacobsen. Also, a new Harbottle layout, Palouse Ridge Golf Course, will open in Pullman and be home to Washington State University’s golf teams. Also, the Salish Cliffs Golf Club is under construction near Shelton on land belonging to the Squaxin Island Tribe.
If that’s not enough, a Greg Norman-designed course dubbed The Cliffs Over Maple Bay, opens next summer in Duncan, B.C., on southern Vancouver Island.
OK, so all this begs the question. What does the future hold for new golf courses in the Northwest?
“I can’t predict what’s going to happen,” Harbottle acknowledged, “but everything will be cyclical. There are times when they’re building all kinds of new courses and there are times when they’re not building as many. When you have a demand, projects get built and they can be successful. When it dries out, there’s a little period of equalization.
“But how long it can go on at the current pace we’re at right now, that’s hard to say,” he said.
John Bodenhamer, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association, said the influx of new courses might make the region’s golf industry appear more robust than it really is.
“The game is flat in our region, as it is nationally,” Bodenhamer said. “There is not a lot of growth there and, frankly, there are plenty of golf courses. What we need are more golfers.”
Back in the early to mid-1990s, he went on, many developers had the mindset “to get it built as soon as we can because as soon as we do it’s going to be full. But today it’s not like that, where if you build it they will come. … Don’t get me wrong. There are positives that we’re hearing from (golf course) operators, but it’s not a groundswell (of growth) where people can’t get tee times and we need more courses.”
Is there a danger, then, of over saturation in the foreseeable future?
On that question, Bodenhamer said, “the jury is still out.” But the goal of the PNGA and other like organizations, he went on, is to attract and develop new golfers so that new courses as well as the region’s longtime venues all have the opportunity to thrive.
“I don’t think,” Bodenhamer said, “you can ever have enough $25, $35 and $40 golf courses.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
