Puetz Golf - In The Bag

Biennial Awards for Washington’s Top 10 Public Courses

Presented By Fresca Mixed

Who will claim the top spot? Your voice counts! August issue will unveil the results

BY TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR

There are no certainties, guarantees or foregone conclusions in the Top 10 Public Course rankings we publish every two years. Well, at least during two-year cycles when the world isn’t suffering through a global pandemic, anyway. Question marks hang over every position. We can be fairly sure, however, there will be an epic tussle between Gamble Sands and Chambers Bay for the top spot in 2024. But who knows which way the voting will go?

In 2015, two months after it had staged the U.S. Open, Chambers Bay was a fairly predictable winner. Then, two years later, David McLay Kidd’s three-year-old inland links in central Washington overwhelmed the University Place coastal links, establishing a sizeable 110-point gap that none of us had seen coming. The voting suggested our readers had a soft spot for the Brewster course that Chambers might find difficult to overcome.

In 2019, however, following a successful greensturf conversion from fescue to poa annua, Robert Trent Jones/Jay Blasi/Bruce Charlton’s magnificent creation was back at No. 1, winning by an 80-point margin. It maintained that position in 2022 with a 114-point victory in the same month it hosted a hugely successful U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, which was won by Japan’s Saki Baba over Canada’s Monet Chung 11 & 9 in a rather one-sided final.

It would be no surprise, then, if Chambers Bay were to hang on to its elevated status this time around, but like we say, it’s certainly not inevitable. Adding to the interest, in future years at least, will be how the second course at Gamble Sands fares. As we mentioned in the April issue, it will be fascinating to see what happens when the Sands Course’s next-door neighbor arrives on the scene.

Something we were very pleased to see, back in 2022, was the massive number of votes submitted by our readers. With roughly 11,000 votes, it was a significant increase in reader participation compared to that of previous years, and it gave us a validation that the results reflected what Washington golfers liked. The courses’ positions didn’t change a great deal but tallying so many votes gave the lists a little extra credibility.

There were four courses that each scored over 1,000 votes — the two frontrunners already mentioned, plus third-placed Gold Mountain (Olympic) and Wine Valley in fourth position. The latter two seem to be having a ping-pong battle of their own with the Dan Hixson-de signed Wine Valley earning the bronze medal in 2019 but being overtaken by its Olympic Peninsula rival last time out.

The beautiful, tree-lined, John Harbottle III-designed Olympic Course at Gold Mountain has hosted the USGA several times (and will again this year) with qualifying rounds for the U.S. Junior Amateur and U.S. Girls’ Junior Championships coming in late May. Likewise, Wine Val ley has genuine championship credentials having hosted the Northwest Open between 2010 and 2021. The broad fairways Hixson created as well as its vast, contoured greens give this amazing Walla Walla course its charac ter, while the incredible Blue Mountain backdrops to the southeast add to its remote and rugged appeal.

Perhaps we should really include Salish Cliffs in the battle for third, too, despite the fact that it hasn’t actually finished above fifth since it opened. Technically, it came in fourth in 2013, but that was the year before Gamble Sands opened. In 2015, Salish was 22 votes behind fourth. In 2017, it was 52 votes back. In 2019, the gap was 86, and two years ago, 131 votes separated fourth and fifth. Yes, the number of votes counted has risen dramatically over the last 11 years, but the gap between Salish and the fourth-place finisher has widened consistently.

That said, Salish will be in a strong position this time, having rebuilt some tees and renovated all 63 of its bunkers last summer. Bunker edges were recut and new sand was added. People playing the new-look course early in the season are likely to come away impressed. The question is: will they be sufficiently impressed to rank it higher than Wine Valley and even Gold Mountain? Catching Wine Valley is conceivable, certainly, but eliminating the 269-point gap between it and Gold Mountain is probably too much to ask.

We’re going to assume the top five is set (a dangerous assertion admittedly), and to be honest, we don’t foresee a lot of movement in the next five either. Palouse Ridge, White Horse, The Home Course, Trophy Lake and Prospector at Suncadia are all worthy of their top 10 status. White Horse was the biggest riser in 2022, climbing three places from its 10th-place finish in 2019.

If any courses in 2022’s second 10 are to make sizeable jumps in the foreseeable future, we think they will be Washington National or Druids Glen, as both stand to gain from repair work that would do so much to increase their curb appeal, not to mention improve their playing characteristics. Druids Glen owner Parks Legacy Project (and its chosen architect Forrest Richardson) have intimated a renovation project is imminent but that’s been the case for a couple of years. We will continue watching with great interest.

Port Ludlow is a favorite to win the women’s vote as it did two years ago — though again, we could be wrong. We also don’t envision a change at the top of the “Industry Colleagues” rankings, with Gamble Sands increasing its slim seven-point advantage in 2019 to 53 votes the last time out. We’re not entirely sure why Gamble Sands consistently wins the “experts” category. Maybe people who work in the industry just play it more often?

Though it didn’t stop many of you from registering your votes last time, the somewhat haphazard method of logging votes has been changed and updated for 2024. Instead of emailing your votes to the editor, we have created a simple digital form. Shoot the QR Code here or on CascadeGolfer.com and cast your ballot.

We will pull some lucky winners for prizes and publish the results in the August issue.