8 minute read
High & Dry
Try these great winter courses in King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties
BY TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR
Yes, we love golf 24 hours a day for 365 days of the year. It’s what we do, and a lot of who we are. We’ll play golf in cold, heavy rain, if the course is worthy and the company is good.
As a Pacific Northwesterner, you probably often have friends or family from other parts of the country tell you that — because it rains so often up here — you must love donning the old waterproofs, raising an umbrella, and running a towel (often drenched) up and down your grips in an ultimately fruitless attempt to keep them dry. Surely you relish the sight of another grim cloud moving into position overhead and depositing its liquid contents all over you and the golf course.
Er, no. We’re used to it and have come to terms with it. We can probably tolerate it better than someone who was raised — or lives — in Arizona, Nevada, or New Mexico (the three driest states in the U.S.). But, no, we don’t love it.
While our hope is that you’ll be able to get away to somewhere warm — where the sun shines and the golf course remains firm — at some point over the winter, we know you’ll brave some inhospitable conditions at home to play the game you love. And, though you’ll no
doubt play anywhere that’s open, we wanted to recommend several courses in Pierce, King, and Snohomish counties where you stand a better chance of keeping the mud from the bottom of your trousers. You’ve probably heard that The Cedars at Dungeness on the Olympic Peninsula and Capitol City in Olympia rank among the best winter courses in western Washington, but they’re in Clallam and Thurston Counties, respectively, so don’t count here. Nor does Three Rivers, which has a great reputation for winter golf and sits on a base of silt and sand in Cowlitz County.
___________________
Pierce County
No prizes for guessing which course wins here. Located on an old sand and gravel quarry, Chambers Bay cost over $20 million to build on a site that had already cost the County $33 million to buy. When you spend that sort of money, have lots of quick-draining sand at your disposal (100,000 truckloads were taken away for cleaning before being bought back and used to shape the course’s amazing features), and an annual maintenance budget of $2.5 million, the chances are good you’re going to have a course that plays well in all conditions and at all times of the year. You won’t see many puddles or muddy areas like you probably will at courses with much lower maintenance spend and have a heavy clay base.
“Because the course was built where it was, it allows for superior drainage through the sandy soil and keeps Chambers Bay firm and playable even in the wettest conditions,” says General Manager Matt Cohen. “We performed our aeration processes on the greens, tees, fairways, and green surrounds, at the beginning of October, so the golf course is in prime condition heading into the offseason.”
Pierce County residents can play the course for $95 in December and $100 in January, while it’s $110 and $115 for anyone living in Washington.
The 2015 U.S. Open venue isn’t the only course in Pierce County that holds up well in winter, though. Twelve miles southeast of Chambers Bay is The Home Course, which might not boast anywhere near as much natural sand as its neighbor, but does have a pretty deep sand cap, nevertheless.
General Manager Justin Gravatt explains why: “In 1906, the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company (today’s DuPont) bought the property and began making explosives,” he says. Before it was developed by the Weyerhaeuser Company (which sold it to the Washington State Golf Association and Pacific Northwest Golf Association in May of 2007), a large-scale clean-up operation had to be completed. Part of that project involved capping the course with sand. Golf course sand-caps tend to be between four and eight inches deep, depending on soils, climate, quality, access to water, budgets, and other factors.
“Because of the former land use, The Home Course was capped with a much larger amount of sand than is usual,” Gravatt continues. “Three feet covered the contaminated soil, then there was a layer of gravel and then another 12 inches of sand on top of that. This sand cap is largely responsible for how dry the course remains throughout the winter.”
Indeed, if The Home Course goes more than a day without significant rainfall, Gravatt and his maintenance team typically feel confident about allowing visitors to take carts on to the fairways, which is something of a luxury in the PNW during winter.
Other Pierce County courses with a good reputation for winter golf include Oakbrook, Lake Spanaway, and North Shore, which General Manager David Wetli says is lucky to have good drainage because of its “fairly rocky and sandy” soil.
“Also key,” says Wetli, “is that we like to do an aggressive aerification and sanding of the greens in the fall. In the years when we've been unable to do that for whatever reason, we’ve noticed quite a bit more standing water.”
___________________
King County
The closest you’ll get in King County to playing golf on a 233-acre former sand and gravel pit like Chambers Bay is probably at Washington National in Covington. Around the time the course opened in 2000, its designer John Fought wrote this for the owners: “The site was once covered with tall, Douglas Firs but clear cut 20 years ago (1980s) then left to revegetate naturally. With its natural, sandy basins, and because the existing soils are composed mostly of gravel, the course will be one of the driest in the Pacific Northwest for year-round play.”
Elsewhere in King County, Maplewood in Renton often crops up in conversations about good Winter courses. Course Manager, Steve Meyers, says the main factors are the amount of aerification and topdressing he and his team have done over the years, along with pockets of sandy/rocky soil. “We do have occasional wet spots,” he adds, “but, overall, the course plays very well during winter.”
Newcastle and Redmond Ridge also have the means to stay dry. And Druids Glen is worth a look. The site there has quite a bit of movement which is always good for drainage and the soil in the Covington Creek watershed does have some sandy qualities.
___________________
Snohomish County
Again, there aren’t many sand-laden courses in Snohomish County with sizeable maintenance crews, but two courses, in particular, do deserve a mention. The first is Legion Memorial in Everett which — as a $29 municipal — you never really expect to be dry in the wet … but invariably is. There are numerous group chats, forums and message boards on the internet where you’ll see it mentioned as a great winter course. And yes, sand is involved.
“We’re lucky Legion was built on an eight-inch sand cap,” says General Manager and Head PGA professional, Shayne Day. “Not many courses have that around here. And we’re definitely one of the two or three driest public courses in western Washington because of it.”
Day adds there are other factors in play such as regular top dressing, sanding, aerification (“two or three times a year”), and an effective drainage system.
Being on the far southeastern edge of the elliptical Olympic Rain Shadow might also help.
“We have a lot of players who feel our location can often give us less precipitation,” Day continues.
There might be something in that. According to Weather.com, Marysville — which is three miles to the north of the course — gets roughly 29 inches of rain a year. Seattle, 30 miles to the south, gets nearly 38. That’s a 24 percent difference, which people who are used to rain will certainly notice.
The other course is Battle Creek in Tulalip, which also averages 29 inches of rain per year. And get this, if you check in within half an hour of your tee time, and it’s raining, you get 25 percent knocked off your green fee. Should it rain after you’ve checked in, you can ask for a 25 percent off coupon for your next round (see website for details).
“As far as we know, we’re the only golf course in the world that does this,” says the course’s PGA professional, Alex Stacy. The current 18-hole rate during the week is $45. That’s $11.25 off your next round if it rains … which it does, a lot. That’s a Wilbur breakfast sandwich, or hot dog, chips, and soda in the café.
___________________
