Sahalee Players Championship carries on legacy of premier championship golf in the region by Craig Smith WHEN YOU LOOK at how much Pacific Northwest golf history has been made at Sahalee Country Club, you might think the course opened in 1869, when Washington was a territory, instead of … [Read more...]
Road Holes
There's no golf course like your home course … but the world is big, and the best places in it have the coolest golf courses. Check here for courses out of town, up the road, off the path and down the highway … and the road trips that get you there.
U.S. women’s four-ball comes to Pacific Dunes
BANDON, Ore. – I've gotten stupidly lucky the two previous times I played Pacific Dunes – sunny and mostly calm, the best way to appreciate its ingenious routing and seaside splendor. Who can say what the southern Oregon coastal weather will be May 9-13? That’s when the United States Golf … [Read more...]
Working March-mad theories before a trip to Bandon
It’s never a bad idea to get out of my head, because it’s weird and scary in there, and tortured, never more than when I’m playing golf. It’s easy: I need to think less, swing free, let my natural athleticism come out to play. I wrote that with a straight face. So, my theory goes, if I do … [Read more...]
Five most epic courses in Maui: From the mountains to the sea
This article appeared first in Vacatia.com. If it's Maui we're talking about, there’s plenty to do, see, taste, and experience that has nothing to do with golf. But, to be able to throw in a round of golf, or three or four, on a small island dense with some of the best courses in the Pacific, … [Read more...]
The Firestorm Tour, Day Three: The lightning round
WINTHROP, Wash. – They take pride around here that the back side has such a different character from the front. That’s saying something at a nine-hole golf course. At Bear Creek, here in the Methow Valley in the North Cascades, they didn’t just move the blue tees 10 or 15 yards back or forward of … [Read more...]
The Firestorm Tour, Day Two: Gamble Sands unveiled
BREWSTER, Wash. -- It was a question David McLay Kidd was ready, maybe even eager, to answer. Yes, Gamble Sands is a true links golf course. "As a Scotsman, I have the right to defend it," said Kidd, architect of Gamble Sands Golf Course in Brewster, Wash. , the newest course in the … [Read more...]
The Firestorm Tour, Day One: Red sun through the smoke
PATEROS, Wash.-- It was calm and normal on the road -- if thorny traffic on I-90 is as bad as it gets in a day, a guy doesn't have much to complain about on the way to the hardest-hit town from the worst wildfire in Washington state history. If we hadn't known we were getting close, … [Read more...]
The Firestorm Tour: A new view
THE ONLY RIGHT NAME is The Firestorm Tour, and in choosing what to call this annual road trip we are not making light of the brutal wildfires that changed landscapes and changed lives in north-central Washington state in July. As usual, golf is at the center of the tour, first at the … [Read more...]
Howling in a new era: We could get used to it
We are, for the most part, what we are – a demographic. As such, you would think we’d act our age. Oh, hell no. We weren’t partying on a deck hanging over the Hood Canal tidelands, and we had to pay actual money to rent the house, but there were tradeoffs: location, location, and location. You … [Read more...]
The Bandon experience, Day 2: Bandon Trails
It can’t be said our waterproof gear failed, really. It just didn’t work, against the insistent rain, the weighty rain, the damned and damnable rain that blew in our faces and seeped down our necks, that sloshed over our shoes and rendered meaningless their two-year waterproof warranties. By the … [Read more...]
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