“It might…have more good holes than even Bandon and Pacific Dunes.”
Sometimes the media gets a little too overboard in praise of a golf course yet to see it’s first tee shot hit. The Seattle Time’s Blaine Newman will have to be excused for his over-exuberance because he is actually a very good golf journalist. His preview of the forthcoming Robert Trent Jones, Jr. course on Puget Sound, named Chambers Bay, begins the anointment to greatness a wie bit early.
The best comparable course for Chambers Bay may prove to be Whistling Straits, which, like Chambers Bay, was built by moving large amounts of sand.
Whistling Straits, in Wisconsin on Lake Michigan, has already hosted a PGA Championship. It also costs $125 more a round than Chambers Bay will, even though Chambers Bay will top out at $150 for 18 holes.
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The Jones approach was to build Scotland in the Northwest, to remove all but one tree, and to start moving sand. The train of dump trucks was endless, more than 100,000 loads moving 1.4 million cubic yards to be filtered, and then replaced.
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The course doesn’t have a signature hole, and didn’t try to have one. It might, with no real topical restraints, have more good holes than even Bandon and Pacific Dunes.You can do that when you shape the land and can spend as much as you want doing it.
A comparison to Bandon Dunes or Pacific Dunes is a stretch for any course, let alone claiming that it could “have more good holes”. Letting us in on the secret of the amount of earth moved should erase any comparison. He is correct that the best comparison would be to Whistling Straits. (For comparison’s sake – Pacific Dunes moved 45,000 cubic yards of dirt according to Jim Urbina of Renaissance Golf, while Whistling Straits moved approximately 800,000 cubic yards.)
Jim Moore, of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, takes a far less serious look at the course – he’s rightly concerned about the lack of a beverage cart girl.
After reading all the reviews, I felt like I’d better take off my shoes before entering the clubhouse so as not to soil the joint.
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The course will be open to everyone but won’t necessarily be everyone’s favorite. The links-style course resonates with those who are into the history of the game, which traces its roots to golf’s birthplace at St. Andrew’s in Scotland.
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It will probably host a U.S. Open or a PGA championship, ensuring its place in golf lore after Tiger Woods walks on this hallowed ground and deems it worthy.But I didn’t have a mystical experience. This no doubt has more to do with being a burned-out, cynical, jaded human being than any perceived imperfections of this groomed expanse at Chambers Bay.
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Final point — Can you truly call yourself a world-class golf course and destination resort if you don’t have a beverage-cart girl?I’ve been told I need to get over this libation fixation, but that’s not possible. They say you’ll get special
treatment at Chambers Bay, from the time you pull into the parking lot to the time you leave. If you want a massage or a caddie, both will be available.
Alcohol will be found in the clubhouse and at the snack shack between the ninth and 10th holes. But will it be served by a beverage-cart girl? Nope.
“We will never have a beverage cart on the course,” Wells said. “It just doesn’t fit.”
Looking at the pictures of the course on its website does draw a good bit on intrigue. I especially like the hand sketches and architect’s notes on the course tour – that’s an excellent touch.
(Image Credit: Chambers Bay Golf Club)
I’m surprised at Newman’s take that to create a great golf course, you must move a lot of earth. Seems to me not to have been the case at most of the so-called “great” courses on the planet. I guess he needs to talk to Bill Coore about Sand Hills….
Of course hyperbole always occurs when a course of this sort opens. The photos look interesting — it’ll be intriguing to see if it plays as well as it looks.
Chambers Bay looks sweet, but it also seems like a want to be Bandon Dunes. Not that it is not as good, but Bandon is Bandon and less is more. In true Robert Trent Jones fashion the moved a ton of stuff and created a course that was not there. WIth that much land being moved, they could have built that course any where.