PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Gamble Sands & Salish Cliffs are ‘quintessentially Northwestern’ and show Washington’s diversity

BY TONY DEAR

Golf in the Pacific Northwest can be a double-edged sword. On one side are the record high temperatures, significant flooding and above average snowfall/bizarrely low temperatures the region encountered during the last four or five months of 2021. And, on the other you find a handful of truly world-class courses open to the public.

Two of our favorites are Gamble Sands and Salish Cliffs which, though situated in very different landscapes, are both quintessentially Pacific Northwestern.

Gamble Sands, found in Central Washington’s high desert on a rugged plateau, 500 feet above the mighty Columbia River with distant views of the Cascade Mountains, opened with David McLayKidd’s exceptional Sands Course. A 200-mile drive east of Seattle, its remoteness meant word of how good a course it was emerged about as slowly as something can emerge in today’s hyper-connected world, but it wasn’t too long before it had earned a spot in national rankings and golfers from further afield than Seattle and Spokane were showing up.

Gamble Sands • Brewster, Wash.

Gamble Sands • Brewster, Wash.

With its reputation growing, the Gebbers Family, which owns the property (along with a successful, generations-old fruit and ranching business), decided in 2016 the time was right to add a lodging component. Each of the 37 rooms of the Inn at Gamble Sands affords great views over the Columbia and easy access to McLay-Kidd’s Cascades Putting Course, where end-of-day putting contests keep guests going late into the night.

Consistent exposure, a growing resort and the continued climb up the rankings gave family patriarch, Cass Gebbers, the confidence to add the sort of play-in-an-hour short course that has become an essential part of modern resort golf. Like the Gil Hanse-designed Cradle at Pinehurst, Tiger Woods’ re-imagined Hay at Pebble Beach, Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns’ Bootlegger at Forest Dunes or Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s brilliant 13-hole Preserve at Bandon Dunes, McLay-Kidd’s 14-hole Quicksands Course is a blast, a non-stop fun-fest where golfers can play holes named Plinko, Crater, Donut and Boomerang in flip-flops with seven of their pals.

WASHINGTON

Salish Cliffs Golf Club • Shelton, Wash.

A short but wild ride round 25 acres of sandy ground a hundred yards or so east of the clubhouse, Quicksands is a course where success is not measured by how low you can score necessarily, but how many laughs you share. It’s so intimate, the loud celebrations of holed putts and merciless heckling following a shank, can be heard by everyone on the course. It isn’t a place for cap-doffing, polite applause or the strictest adherence to golf’s time-honored etiquette you understand, but a raucous playground where virtually anything goes.

Those fortunate to have played the Sands Course, Quicksands and an up-and-down loop round the Cascades Putting Course, stayed at the Inn or eaten at the Danny Boy clubhouse restaurant, know just how special a place Gamble Sands is and, naturally, want more.

Given the deliberation over additional development, it’s obvious the Gebbers are in no hurry to keep building and aren’t going to de-flower their land for the sake of a quick profit. McLay-Kidd routed a second regulation-length course three years ago but when it actually will get built depends on several factors.

“The land is very similar to that of the original course,” says McLay-Kidd. “But there might be even more dramatic 'edge' holes.

“The challenge will be how to create a course that meets expectations but is also a sufficiently different experience. Slight changes in terrain and views will do much of that work for us, but I also think we will look at making the course just a little more intricate than the first.”

Though built on starkly different terrain, four and a half hours to the west at the southwest corner of the Kitsap Peninsula, Salish Cliffs is an equally enjoyable round. Gene Bates took a largely-wooded parcel with a 600 foot elevation change and designed an incredibly beautiful and constantly engaging course with so much fun shots and interesting dilemmas — most suitable line at the 2nd; how close should I get to the 8th green with my second; how much of the fairway bunker on the 16th can I clear; should I take on the green at the 18th?

Salish definitely is one of those courses you want to take on again immediately after completing your first round, but maybe wait overnight in the adjacent Little Creek Casino Resort where you’ll find some great food, can take in a show at the Skookum Creek Event Center, visit the Seven Inlets Spa to rejuvenate or find a comfy bed.

The golf course celebrated its 10th anniversary earlier this year. A good indicator of how much you enjoy doing something is how quickly the time goes when you’re doing it. That we can barely believe Salish Cliffs is 10 years old tells you just how much we’ve enjoyed playing it since it opened.

Gamble Sands turns eight this year. And no, we can’t believe that either.

Salish Cliffs Golf Club • Shelton, Wash.

Salish Cliffs Golf Club • Shelton, Wash.