Cascade Golfer July 2021

VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 3 • JULY 2021 • COMPLIMENTARY

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@cascadegolfer

SUMMER SHORT GAME SPECIALS UW/Seattle U 2021 roundup Youth Golf Boom never bigger CG’s Summer Cocktails

N ORTHWE ORTHWE ST ST GO GO LL FF N N EW EW SS & & VI V I EE W WS N S

C R E A T I N G

HEA VEN ON

EARTH Our exclusive Q & A with

David McLay Kidd showcases his design brilliance and vision around the globe

2021 NORTHWEST

GOLFERS PLAYBOOK OVER

$5,000 IN SAVINGS Get Your Book Now!

Salish Cliffs

GREAT DEALS! In Washington The Home Course

Special Rates Discounts 2-for-1s Wine Valley

ONLY 95

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$39

SAVE $10 INSIDE on our Northwest Golfers Playbook

A LOOK

INSIDE

Departments 6 PUBLISHER’S PITCH • Dick Stephens on summer news

8 SHORT GAME

• Catching up with Radmor Golf • College recap of UW and SU 2021 • Corona Premier Property — Willows Run • Shootout at Gamble Sands • Save $10 on NW Golfers Playbook • Shorecrest Wins Duke’s Scholarship • CG Cup in full swing • EXTRA - Summer Cocktail Guide

32 RISK VS REWARD

34 TEEING OFF

• Mariner Legend Erik Hanson

36 IN THE BAG

• Puetz Golf’s Short Game Specials

78 SAVE SOME GREEN

• White Horse GC • Kahler Glen Golf & Ski Resort • West Seattle GC

86 POSTGAME

• Phil the Thrill makes 50-plus history

• Eagles Pride GC | Hole No. 6

PUETZ GOLF SAVINGS 44 - 47

Features 48 54 64 66 84

Paradise along the Pacific A-Z on Bandon Dunes for 2021 STORY BY TONY DEAR

Creating Heaven on Earth

Parts 1 and 2 — Q & A with David McLay Kidd

Travel Planning

Local company Travel There and Back makes dreams reality STORY BY BOB SHERWIN

Lustrous Patch of Green Youth golf surges

STORY BY BOB SHERWIN

Northwest Golf Media Association Closes Doors Journalist-led group leaves great legacy STORY BY JEFF SHELLEY

ON THE COVER Great Scot! David McLay Kidd, here in full traditional attire, makes his mark globally in the Northwest. See our Q & A on page 54. PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID MCLAY KIDD. THIS PAGE Mountlake Terrace High School and WJGA participant Jaxon Dubiel hits his tee shot on the 18th hole at Wine Valley.

Win Free Golf and More!

Gamble Sands

The sun is shining, but at Cascade Golfer it’s still raining…prizes, that is. We are sending readers all over the state with spectacular twosomes to Gamble Sands and Apple Tree, plus a killer 36 holes in southwest Idaho. Check out these offers: • Gamble Sands twosome, our Muckleshoot Jackpot • Page 19 • Apple Tree twosome • Page 70 • 36 holes in Southwest Idaho • Page 82

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JULY 2021

cascadegolfer.com

cascadegolfer.com

JULY 2021

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Volume 15 • Issue 3 • JULY 2021

CASCADE

GOLFER

PUBLISHER’S PITCH

DICK STEPHENS

Our Midsummer edition casting light on a bounty of golf here at home

cascadegolfer.com

Cascade Golfer is published and owned by Varsity Communications, Inc. It’s mailed via USPS to 50,000 homes and e-mailed to 100,000 golfers in Puget Sound.

P.F. Hulla enjoys a long summer afternoon at Bandon Dunes on the Oregon Coast.

VARSITY COMMUNICATIONS, INC. varsitycommunications.com

EDITORIAL STAFF P U B LI S H E R S Dick Stephens & Kirk Tourtillotte E D I TO R Tony Dear ART D I R E C T I O N & G R A P H I C D E S I G N Robert Becker W R IT E R S Bob Sherwin, Jeff Shelley P H OTO G R A P H Y Rob Perry FOR EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS AND INQUIRIES: Dick Stephens • Publisher stephens@varsitycommunications.com FOR ACCOOUNTING INQUIRIES: Kirk Tourtillotte • Publisher kirk@varsitycommunications.com

ADVERTISING & MARKETING STAFF SALES/MARKETING MANAGER & TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR Simon Dubiel simon@cascadegolfer.com COPYRIGHT 2021 Cascade Golfer. PRINTED IN THE USA. All rights reserved. Articles, photos, advertising and/ or graphics may not be reprinted without the written permission of the publisher. Advertising and editorial contained herein does not constitute endorsement of Cascade Golfer or Varsity Communications, Inc. Publisher reserves the right to edit letters, photos and copy submitted and publish only excerpts. The publisher has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all material contained in this issue. However, as unpredictable changes and errors do occur, the publisher can assume no liability for errors, omissions or changes.

All photos are courtesy of the course or individual unless otherwise noted.

PRODUCER AND OWNER OF THE PROUD CHARTER MEMBER

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elcome to our Midsummer edition of Cascade Golfer — our special digital issue highlighting the season that we all anxiously await.

This issue is one that sheds light on many aspects, people and programs that propel golf here during the long days of summer.

I want to thank those of you that reached out to me about the June issue saying how much you appreciated the return to print, the news we covered and a few kudos on CG making it to our 15th year.

July is my favorite month of the year for many reasons, but most of all the weather. The Evergreen State is in full bloom, and so is the sport. I’d like to draw attention to a few things in this issue that are of particular interest to me and, I hope, will be for you too. Enjoy the jottings.

Cheers to Jeff and Anni Shelley of the Northwest Golf Media Association Jeff Shelley, a longtime friend and colleague whom I have frankly looked up to since I met him in 1990, has submitted an article about the history and closing of the NWGMA. Jeff and his talented wife Anni truly were the driving force behind the NWGMA during its 26-year run. When the association began, traditional media ruled and fueled the sport, and the NWGMA was a place where golf media members could come together, share ideas, talk about trends and support worthy causes and news sources.

I was a charter member of this group and watched it grow into one of the largest regional golf writer groups in the U.S. and Canada. I tip my hat to both of them, and hope you will read Jeff’s epilogue in this issue.

North South Tourney Sept. 17 at Echo Falls sure to be a hit for golfers and Parkinson’s awareness I’m a North Puget Sound resident, and am on the lookout for quality tournament opportunities in Snohomish County as most events are in King and Pierce.

I want to make you aware of an amazing tournament and even better cause. The Parkinson’s Wellness Place (PWP) will proudly produce its annual golf tournament at a new venue Fri., Sept. 17, at Echo Falls Golf Club in Snohomish.

This event just gets bigger and better, and raises

funds for those battling and coping with Parkinson’s.

It’s been hosted successfully at Everett G & CC for a number of years, and this year the tournament directors and PWP leaders, Larae McCurry and Lacey Ramon, have taken it to a new level with an 18-hole scramble, cocktails, prizes, a dozen different hole challenges and a hosted steak and seafood dinner auction to cap it off.

PWP uses boxing to stimulate and rehabilitate Parkinson’s patients, and the results are astounding. The event comes at the tail-end of summer, starts on a Friday afternoon and is the perfect way to kick off the weekend. Rumor has it the field may include past Super Bowl champions and boxing legends. Go to pwp. ejoinme.org/2021GolfTournament to register today.

Cascade Golfer fall swing — join us Speaking of tournaments, our Cup will wind down with the Puetz Golf Shootout at White Horse Aug. 21, and CG Invite at The Classic Sept. 18. We culminate with our highlight The Fall Classic at Chambers Bay Oct. 9 Go to CascadeGolfer.com to jump into one or any of them. See the recap and schedule in our Short Game section.

Phil the thrill I must say that, of the three majors played so far this season, the PGA Championship was the most enjoyable for me. Phil Mickelson’s performance in staving off players half his age was just incredible, and watching a 50-year-old win one of the game’s Grand Slam events is something we’re unlikely to ever see again (well, until Tiger does it perhaps).

There was a time I wondered if he’d ever win a major, and I am now ashamed of my young self when I look at what he’s done. But this major is something to bring a highlighter to. He’s done what no man has done in any major sport anywhere in the world. Read our Post Game story, and let what we dug up seep into your 19th hole conversations — there’s a few jewels in there you may not have known before, and we love stoking good golf chatter.

We will see you again in less than a month when our printed August issue hits mailboxes. Until then, enjoy the long summer days on the range and links and, as always, TAKE IT EASY. cascadegolfer.com

Tournament fee of $175 includes: green fee, golf cart, driving range, light lunch, and post tournament steak dinner and awards ceremony with awesome prizes.

WELCOMES YOU TO THE ANNUAL

PARKINSON'S WELLNESS PLACE GOLF TOURNAMENT PR E S E N T E D B Y

E A G LE L E V E L SP ON SO R S

B IR DI E L E VE L SPO N S ORS: E V ER ET T ST EE L R LD C O M P AN Y SI L V A RI S C O RP O RA T ION

H O LE S P O NSOR S: SEATT L E HILL PHYS ICA L TH ERA PY & T OD O ME XI CO

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 SHOTGUN START AT 1PM FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER TO PLAY, VISIT PWP.EJOINME.ORG/2021GOLFTOURNAMENT

SHORT GAME

Scott (left) and Bob are seeing excitement and traffic at their Pioneer Square store.

Catching up with Radmor Golf

New Seattle golf apparel company is growing fast and connecting sustainably

T

hose clothes you are wearing as you tee off, that golf shirt, hat, jacket, are chosen because they’re comfortable and probably make you look pretty jaunty.

They fit well and, what you may not realize, they are made to stay in that condition for at least a couple more centuries.

That is the problem now with most of our popular sports clothing, those made of synthetic fabrics such as polyester. At the end of their lifecycle, they pile up in landfills and will sit there undisturbed and undisposed until the year 2300, give or take a decade. It means they still will be around when your great-great grandchild enters super-senior competitions.

That’s not the way Bob Conrad and Scott Morrison see the future. They are betting on sustainability, on organic (degradable) fabrics, and on shifting buyer sentiments.

Last February, the pair, roommates and teammates on the University of Washington golf team in the early 1990s, launched Radmor, a different kind of golf apparel store, in Seattle’s Pioneer Square (1st and Yesler).

Their fabrics could be described as ‘good-citizen’ cotton. They participate in the Better Cotton Initiative — a sustainability program that makes clean cotton and provides better conditions for workers. They also use Extra Long Staple Pima cotton that will degrade and harmlessly absorb back into the soil decades, maybe centuries, before the ‘unnatural’ kind.

It’s always a risk to introduce a new concept into the mainstream, but Morrison studied market trends and buying habits for years before the Radmor commitment. “We knew for a fact that buying sentiments were changing, especially among the younger generation,” he says. “We’re seeing a shift where sustainability is a lot more important to them.”

Morrison adds that companies such as Nike and Adidas have started limited sustainability lines, more of

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JULY 2021

a toe in the water. Those mega companies remain deep in the synthetic world and won’t move away from that billion-dollar bounty until they see a wholesale shift in buying habits. That’s why, Morrison says, a small startup such as Radmor can seize a market niche and be more aggressive in its sustainability approach. “I can’t speak for the market as a whole,” he adds, “but over the next couple years I think we’ll see a much broader percentage of the market start to really embrace the sustainability world.”

When Radmor opened Feb. 1, Conrad and Morrison knew the pandemic likely would have a lingering impact, making it difficult to measure how the buying public would accept their concept. Just about every business has been dramatically affected by the COVID 19 protocols. But Conrad said business and business partners have picked up. “We’ve launched our spring-summer line in our shop and across our web site,” says Conrad. “and we’re set to deliver to (golf) courses. Our big box partner we’re working with is Nordstrom. So, we’re progressing. It feels good.”

With more fans allowed at Mariners and Sounders games, the store is seeing more foot traffic, especially on the weekends, which used to be sparse . All varieties of customers are filing through, not just golfers. Conrad and Morrison’s marketing objective always was intended to make clothes that would appeal to non-golfers as well — clothes that can be worn on a date, dining or dancing.

What they hope all their customers appreciate is the company’s commitment to a greener and more sustainable world. “I think everyone in golf will, at some point, start heading in that direction,” says Morrison. “They’d be foolish not to. But it’s not an easy path, doing something different from everyone else.”

Follow them on social media and visit RadmorGolf. com to buy their 2021 line. cascadegolfer.com

SHORT GAME

At Pepperdine, Manke finished with a 72.66 stroke average over 34 career events, ranking 10th all-time in school history.

Huskies to be a 2021-22 force with addition of Pepperdine transfer Manke who brings NCAA champion chops

BY BOB SHERWIN • CG STAFF WRITER

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he Washington Huskies did not venture far down the path toward the NCAA Championship this past season. But next season, they will feature someone who did.

UW Coach Alan Murray has added graduate transfer R.J. Manke, who is coming home after playing four seasons at Pepperdine, the 2021 national champion. Manke went to Bellarmine Prep, where he had a 71.03 scoring average his senior year and was the class valedictorian.

At Pepperdine, Manke finished with a 72.66 stroke average over 34 career events, ranking 10th all-time in school history. He had two victories and eight top-ten finishes. Four of the top-tens came this season. He won the West Coast Conference individual championship as a sophomore.

Manke comes to a Husky program in need of veteran leadership. The Huskies will lose three seniors this year, their three top-scoring players — Noah Woolsey, Henry Lee and Jan Schneider. There were no juniors on the ros10

JULY 2021

ter last year, just four freshmen and three sophomores.

The Huskies started the year slowly, but improved as the season progressed, posting a second-place finish March 29-30 at the Seattle U. Redhawk Invitational at Chambers Bay. UW also had three thirds and four fourths. They were fourth at the Pac-12 Championships April 26-28.

UW closed out the season with a seventh-place finish at the Cle Elum Regionals at Tumble Creek Golf Club May 17-19. The top five teams advanced, including eventual champion Pepperdine — and Manke.

The Regional was the only event all season in which a player, other than the three seniors, led the team in scoring. Freshman Teddy Lin, from New Taipei City, Taiwan, tied for 22nd with Schneider, from Erlangen, Germany in his final Husky outing. Lin posted back-to-back scores of 1-under 70 in the first two rounds then closed with a 5-over 77.

Next season, the international trending Huskies will have added three more players from the U.S. — freshman Drew Warford from Snoqualmie’s Mt. Si, sophomore Nate Anderson from Phoenix and incoming freshman Justin Hopkins from Danville, Calif. The rest of the team is from everywhere else — sophomore Robert Galligan is from Ireland; sophomore Bo Peng is from China; sophomore Petr Hruby is from the Czech Republic; and freshman Taehoon Song is from South Korea.

Coach Murray, the Huskies’ third-year coach originally from Ireland, will also bring in another international standout next season — Aidan O’Hagan from Scotland whom Murray regards as ‘one of the most talented junior players in the world’. O’Hagan, who spent his senior season at Albany Golf Academy in the Bahamas, was a member of Scotland’s U-16 team that won the 2019 Quandrangular, defeating Ireland, The Netherlands and Wales. cascadegolfer.com

SHORT GAME

Tottori, Seattle U’s top player for virtually all four seasons, served as the team captain this year and held together a group of players that faced a season severely restricted by pandemic restrictions.

Tottori leaves Seattle U as a legend on and off the course

BY BOB SHERWIN • CG STAFF WRITER

K

imberlee Tottori, perhaps the most celebrated women golfer at Seattle University in more than a decade, leaves the program with two voids to fill — one on the field and one off.

“She’s one of the most fantastic players we’ve had,” says Redhawks coach Marc Chandonnet. “But off the field as well, she’s just a really great human being. When Kimmy walks into a room she has the ability to light it up and command the room. She’s friendly and outgoing, but not a fake friendly. It’s genuine.”

Tottori, the team’s top player for virtually all four seasons, served as the team captain this year and held together a team that faced a season severely restricted by pandemic restrictions. The fall season was canceled, and the team managed to schedule just five matches this spring. It ended in late April with the Western Athletic Conference Championships, where Tottori finished third overall. “It’s been an odd year for everyone,’’ she says.

“We’re thankful for the opportunity to play at all. The whole season could easily have been canceled.”

Chandonnet will be forever thankful Tottori committed to Seattle U. in 2017, following an impressive run at Faith Lutheran High School in her hometown of Las Vegas. During her junior, club, and high school careers, she won more than 80 tournaments, all while carrying a 4.0 12

JULY 2021

grade-point average.

Tottori credits her older brother David, now an assistant women’s golf coach at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y., with initially encouraging her to pick up the game.

“And he’s the reason I have a competitive edge,” she says.

“As a little sister, you want to beat your older brother.”

As she grew in the game, many of the West Coast’s top programs were interested in Tottori, but she chose Seattle “based on its academic reputation, and the opportunity to play (right away).”

She averaged 75.56 through 11 tournaments her freshman year, was named second team All-WAC and finished sixth at the WAC Championships. A year later, she was named the team’s MVP with a pair of fourth place finishes among the nine tournaments she played.

It was her junior season when Tottori excelled, though. She had five rounds at par or better — tied for second most in school history, averaged 4.2 on par 4s — third lowest in school history, and a little over five on par 5s — fifth lowest in school history. Her 74.84 scoring average was the eighth best in the WAC and the best ever recorded at Seattle U. But that 2019-20 season ended in disappointment for the Redbirds. At the WAC Championships, New Mexico State, which had two fairway hole-outs in the final round,

tied the Redbirds for first place at the end of regulation. The Aggies won the match in a playoff, denying the Redbirds the opportunity to advance to the NCAA Tournament.

“It was heart-breaking for us,” says Tottori, “and I don’t know if we fully recovered. Not everything goes according to plan.” She adds that the team came into this past season with motivation to win the WAC title and get to the NCAAs, but that the cancelations “took all the momentum away.” Her third-place finish at the WAC “was a nice closing chapter,” however.

Tottori’s plan now is to return to Las Vegas and enter UNLV’s pre-med program. By joining the medical field there, she aims to “give back to that community”. She is one of six seniors Chandonnet needs to replace for next season in a program that fights for its place in the SU athletic program. Chandonnet is coach for both the women’s and men’s teams. The Redhawks don’t have a home course, as they play at Broadmoor and Sand Point each one day a week. “The other five days I have to make a lot of phone calls,” says Chandonnet.

The golf training center is a transformed racquetball court with a net. They could use some additional space and funding, but Chandonnet can hold up Tottori’s legacy and near NCAA qualifying as examples that the program is making progress. cascadegolfer.com

THIS ISSUE’S

Eastside favorite has something for everyone Willows Run Golf Complex features 45 holes and family fun year-round

PROPERTY

T

here are few facilities in the Northwest as complete as Willows Run Golf Complex. Two 18-hole courses (Eagles Talon and Coyote Creek), a nine-hole par 3 course (Heron Lakes), a putting course (Rainbow Run), a full driving range, putting green and chipping green make it one of the busiest golf locations in the state. Situated conveniently for all eastsiders, Willows Run can be found just down the hill from Evergreen Hospital in the Totem Lake area of Redmond.

Eagles Talon, the longer of the 18-holers, can stretch to over 6,800 yards from the back tees, and recently had its bunker sand replaced with bright, white sand. Coyote Creek measures a little over 6,300 yards. The two tracks weave in and around wetlands and, while a great challenge for low-handicappers, they are still very enjoyable for less able golfers. However you hit ‘em, make sure to give yourself some extra time at the end of the round to enjoy the Fire Creek Grill & Bar, one of the better 19th hole options around.

Willows Run Golf Complex 10402 Willows Road NE Redmond, WA 98052 (425) 883-1200 willowsrun.com 18 Holes in 1994 Course Designer Lisa Maki 27 Holes in 1997 Course Designer Ted Locke

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A Bucket with the GM • Yuki Sasada Toughest Tee Shot — 8th hole With water coming into play on both sides of the fairway, it makes for a very tough tee shot. Also, if you hit it too far, you’ll roll out into the water that comes into play about 180 yards off the tee box.

Best Birdie Opportunity on Coyote Creek? — 14th hole

It’s a short par 4 that’s fairly open off the tee. Hit your favorite wood/hybrid and leave yourself a very nice shot into an easy green that should set you up with a birdie putt.

Best Par 3 on Eagles Talon — 17th hole

It’s a very intimidating tee shot over water. It measures only 153 yards from the while tees, but it’s still a tough shot.

Favorite Hole on Coyote Creek — 18th hole

It’s a 499-yard par 5 with an elevated tee shot that looks back at the clubhouse. Hit a good tee shot and you have the chance to hit the green in two, but you must clear a body of water, which makes this second shot a very tough decision.

Emergency Nine — front or back and which course?

Front nine on Eagles Talon. We don’t have a nine-hole rate, but a twilight round on the front at Eagle’s Talon would be a great way to spend an evening. It’s both fun and a good test with some challenging holes.

Go to lunch item on the menu — Alaskan King Salmon It would have to be our fresh, wild-caught Alaskan King salmon. We serve a six-ounce steak that sits in our Yoder smoker. Customers love it!

HOLE PAR

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

4

5

4

4

4

4

3

4

3

5

5

4

4

3

4

4

17

72

RATING

SLOPE

174 566

6843

72.5

128

Blue

White 350 520 355 397 411 357 143 319 138 521 444 325 356 171 394 283 155 555 Green 278 449 288 341 343 311 111 283 98 449 400 264 299 143 336 307 117 449

6194

69.7

118

White

5266

64.6

108

Green

Combo 350 449 288 341 343 357 143 319 138 449 400 325 356 143 336 307 155 449

5648

66.6

113

Combo

-

-

-

-

Blue

HDCP

386 557 368 423 449 401 178 350 169 551 482 359 376 198 441 415

13

7

1

9

3

5

17

11

15

12

10

18

6

14

2

8

3

COURSE RATING

18 TOTAL

16

5

4

cascadegolfer.com

TEES

Drink responsibly.

Corona Premier ® Beer. Imported by Crown Imports, Chicago, IL Per 12 fl. oz. serving average analysis: Cals 90, Carbs 2.6 g, Protein 0.7 g, Fat 0.0 g.

SHOOTOUT AT

GAMBLE SANDS

Two Amazing Days of Golf at Gamble Sands Including an evening on the new Quicksands short course

JOIN US JULY 17-18 BEST GOLF WEEKEND OF THE YEAR! CONTACT: Simon Dubiel simon@cascadegolfer.com • (206) 778-7686

REGISTER AT • cascadegolfer.com

Two-Person Best Ball Net and Gross Divisions SPONSORED BY

SHORT GAME New two-day Corona Premier Shootout at Gamble Sands sure to be epic

ALL-NEW CORONA PREMIER SHOOTOUT AT GAMBLE SANDS July 17-18, Gamble Sands Two-person best ball Saturday and Sunday Net and gross divisions, prize pool daily and total

Washington’s best golf weekend of the year is July 17-18

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4 KP’s, Long Drive, Straight Drive daily Saturday Corona Premier Happy Hour at Quicksands/Cascade Putting Course YOUR $775 TEAM FEE INCLUDES Greens fees, cart, range and lunch Saturday and Sunday plus

his winter, when we at Cascade Golfer first started discussing the idea with Corona Premier of a multiday event at Gamble Sands, it was easy to get excited. Two days of playing what many describe as the most enjoyable 18 holes our state has to offer, sandwiched around an afternoon and evening on the brand new Quicksands short course. Throw in a team format (two-person Best Ball) and some evening shenanigans on the Cascade Putting course, and you have something worthy of being called the best golf weekend of the year. And, we can’t wait.

Initially, we thought maybe 60-plus players (30 teams) might make the trek, but it didn’t take long to realize we had set the bar way too low. We quickly doubled the number of spots reserved at the course, and took every room they had available those Friday and Saturday nights. With only a few weeks until our opening tee shot at 8:30 a.m., we do still have a few spots open for the golfers wanting to plug something spectacular into their golfing schedule, but they’re going fast.

Team prizes will be available on Saturday and Sunday in both gross and net divisions, but the weekend’s champion team will have recorded the best two-day score. If all that isn’t enough, there will be six hole contests on both days, plus you’ll have the chance to win all sorts of swag on Saturday afternoon and evening. It’s straight up fun every step of the way. Whether you want to read about it, or live it, is up to you. To book your spot go to CascadeGolfer.com.

Saturday afternoon/evening round at Quicksands.

Go to CascadeGolfer.com to register

YOUR

A

Win a Gamble Sands twosome

Gamble Sands

lthough the Gamble Sands greens fee can reach $175-plus, we have yet to hear a single golfer tell us it was not worth every penny spent. How about a twosome at a rate of $0? We hear golfers like that also, so jump on CascadeGolfer.com and hit the CG SWAG button. Maybe that twosome has your name on it.

cascadegolfer.com

JULY 2021

19

OVER

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he sun’s out and the fairways are firming up. Tee boxes are lush and the greens are smooth, fast and true. The days start early and end late with golfers racing to finish 18 and beat the fading sun well past the nine o’clock hour. Welcome to the best three months of the year for the Northwest golfer. No more plugged lies in the fairway. So long rain jackets and hand warmers. We waited nine months for this. Hello summer! Now, if we could just save a few bucks along the way, we would really be on to something. Did we say SAVE MONEY? Yes, we did.

Enter the Northwest Golfers Playbook. Once again we have put together our fan favorite packed to the gills with special offers from golf facilities all over the Pacific Northwest. Over 120 pages of offers adding up to a potential $5,000-plus in golf savings. At $39.95, you just need find an offer or two you like and you’ll already be saving some green. You will have access to all sorts 2-for1’s, 4-for-3’s, free golf carts, lessons, offers at Puetz Golf, and a lot more.

Want to save even more, today? Use code ‘SAVETEN’ when you purchase online and knock an additional $10 off the price to $29.95 to save you hundreds, maybe even thousands. Make the Northwest Golfers Playbook a staple in your bag. Go to NWGolfersPlaybook.com today, and start saving big on your golf this summer.

Cascade Golfer Players Card is SOLD OUT

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Salish Cliffs

JULY 2021

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2021 Players Card

White Horse

20

Save $10 and buy the Northwest Golfers Playbook now!

Salish Cliffs GC

$39

Wine Valley

SHORT GAME

Highlander GC

Apple Tree Resort

Sudden Valley GC

2021 Players

Salish Cliffs

Kahler Glen GC

Highlande

Snoqualmie Falls GC

Whidbey GC

High Cedars GC

GC

r GC

Cedars at Dungeness Kahler Glen

GC

Card

Apple Tree

Eagles Pride GC

Eagles Pride

Sun Country Golf & RV Snoqualm

ie Falls GC

SOLD OUT!

Resort

Sudden Valle

y GC

GC

Cedars at Dung eness

Port Ludlow GC

Whidbey GC

High Ceda

rs GC

Sun Country

Port Ludlo

e wish to the thank the lucky 200-plus Cascade Golfer readers that snapped up the 2021 Players Card so fast. It was the fastest sell out we have ever had for what is surely the best card we’ve ever produced.

“The value of this year’s card and 12 great courses for only $250 — basically a buck a hole — is such a no brainer,” says Cascade Golfer Publisher Dick Stephens. “Golf is booming and the fan base for our card, Northwest Golfers Playbook and Cascade Golfer is at an all-time high. I couldn’t be more thankful for the 12 participating courses and the hard work and vision of our Golf Marketing Manager Simon Dubiel — he really builds the energy for the card and book and it’s fun for our team to interact with our readers this way.”

With the card sold out, now is the time to save $10 and buy the playbook — the see the offer on this page. cascadegolfer.com

Golf & RV

w GC

SHORT GAME Shorecrest HS first ever team to be awarded Duke’s Scholarship

F

or the first time in the five years that Duke’s Seafood has been awarding a scholarship to deserving young golfers in our region, a team has earned the judges’ vote.

Actually, that’s not accurate — two teams. The Boys and Girls squads at Shorecrest High School in Shoreline are this quarter’s worthy winners, having endured the same miserable 2020 as everyone else but emerged sturdier and more committed than before the pandemic hit.

Girls’ team captain, Annabelle Broweleit, explains how Shorecrest dealt with a bad situation as best it could. “Our team stayed very strong throughout last year,” she says. “One clear way we did this was through our weekly Zoom meetings. We supported each other and got very close as a team. Even when we couldn’t play golf together, we were out practicing a lot on our own. And one week before golf started up again, we got approval and all met up to practice at the driving range before tryouts.”

Broweleit adds that, unlike many other Wesco (Western Conference) teams, Shorecrest girls actually grew. “Our team now has 12 players which makes us

one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the league,” she notes. “While only six athletes could play in each match, the girls who didn’t compete worked incredibly hard to get better over the course of the season. Our program’s ability to not sink under the pressure of a weird year, but to expand our program and keep getting better sets us apart from other teams in the league, I believe.”

Boys’ captain Aly Patwa has been similarly proud of his team’s attitude. “My teammates and I were so disappointed about the cancellation of golf,” he says. “But as soon as our county allowed it, those that could would meet for games as often possible during the summer.”

When league golf did at last return in March, Shorecrest Boys stepped up. “We only played six matches but were still able to remain competitive,” says Patwa who singles out sophomore Keaine Silimon for special praise. “He’s definitely the first player that comes to mind when thinking about someone who deserves a special mention,” he adds. “He worked really hard last summer, even though there was no formal practice, and has improved faster than anyone I’ve ever met.”

The 2021 Shorecrest High School Boys and Girls Golf Teams are this month’s winners of the Duke’s Seafood Youth Scholarship award.

Girls coach Bob Quiles has been impressed with how his team tackled a problematic period, especially the juniors. “I owe it all to them, really,” he says. “They turned out as freshman having never played golf before.

They’re fun and dedicated and have recruited nine more players. All of them are eager to play as much as possible. Golf can be expensive, so the scholarship will really help this group of girls get out and play more.”

Indeed, Suzanne Monson, Shorecrest’s college and career coordinator is pretty confident where the money will go. “Both teams plan to use this generous grant to cover the costs of green fees with Youth on Course (a youth golf initiative that enables members to play courses for as little as $5),” she says. “I can’t say enough about Duke’s generous gift. What better way to give back to a sport you love than investing in the next generation of golfers? The money will help our student athletes stay sharp and connected over the summer and into next fall.”

ACCEPTING NOMINATIONS

Junior Golfer Scholarship

Win $500 For Your Young Golfer The Duke’s Junior Golf Scholarship is a $500 scholarship awarded three times this year in Cascade Golfer to a deserving young golfer from the Puget Sound region. If you know of an area youth that loves golf and has a desire to take their career to the next level, submit your letter of inquiry for scholarship consideration to stephens@varsitycommunications.com — attention Duke’s Scholarship.

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cascadegolfer.com

JULY 2021

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2021

Cascade Golfer Cup

White Horse Golf Club

CG Cup summer swing has stops at The Home Course and White Horse

W

ith three events under our belt (four by the time this issue is published) the Cascade Golfer Cup is sticking to form with new faces having their moment of glory, while seasoned CG Cup vets litter the standings. Over 220 different golfers have teed it up with us so far this year, some only able to make one event while several regulars have played in them all. We’ve seen three new tournament champs (net), the most recent being Joe and Paul Frederick who won a four-way scorecard playoff to win the Cascade Golfer Challenge at Salish Cliffs, beating out 49 other teams with a net shamble score of 63.

In the 75-plus events played over the last decade, we’ve rarely seen a team win more than one in the Net Division, although many try. Truly, anyone can win.

The team that sits atop the overall net standings is none other than Keith Stevens Sr. and Floyd Bangerter, a couple of ‘dudes’ who, incredibly, haven’t missed a CG Cup event in ten years. With five events remaining (including two majors — at the Home Course and Chambers Bay), there’s still plenty of opportunity for other teams to make some noise.

The Gross division is just as congested. Oakley Murphy and Brian Boyle claimed the CG Challenge at Salish Cliffs, jumping into second place behind CG Cup vets Aaron Cherney and Shawn Heidel, whose consistent play has them atop the leaderboard. The division is littered with low single-digit sticks from all over the Northwest, with one good finish invariably vaulting teams towards the top ten in the standings.

The summer swing awaits with events coming up on July 31 (Michelob ULTRA Open at The Home Course), Aug. 21 (Puetz Golf Shootout at White Horse) and Sept.

18th (CG Invitational at The Classic) before the season finishes up with the final major of the season — the Fall Classic at Chambers Bay on Oct. 9th. The two-person formats vary (Best Ball, Scramble, Stoke Play-Aggregate and Shamble), as do the prizes. However, you can always count on two things at the Cascade Golfer Cup. First, you will have a blast. And second, If your team plays well expect to take home a great prize. Top performers may be one of the lucky few heading to Hawaii or winning one of our other great destination prizes.

To experience the excitement, get a partner and a handicap. All the events are open to anyone whether a plus handicap or someone just hoping to break a hundred. Sign up at CascadeGolfer.com/cup and maybe we’ll be talking about you in the next issue.

Great prizes at every tournament

Michelob ULTRA Open at The Home Course July 31 • 7:30 am

Two-Person Stroke Play Aggregate Stableford

Net and Gross Divisions

2-Player Formats

Open to all golfers with a handicap Get a partner and get inside the ropes!

Aug. 21 • 10 am • Puetz Golf Shootout at White Horse Sept. 18 • 9 am • Cascade Golfer Invitational at The Classic Oct. 9 • 8 am • The Fall Classic at Chambers Bay To register or for more information visit

Contact: Simon Dubiel simon@cascadegolfer.com (206) 778-7686

cascadegolfer.com Click on the Cup!

WELCOMING

PRESENTING

SUPPORTING

SHORT GAME

EXTRA

Niles Peacock

is one of the finest mixologists in the U.S. and his new establishment is now open in Edmonds.

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cascadegolfer.com

You need a drink!

Summer Cocktail Stars are Local Legends

Cascade Golfer’s

I

BY TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR

t’s a hot summer day, and you’ve spent an enjoyable, but exhausting, afternoon in the yard. You’ve mowed the lawn, trimmed edges (and

hedges), pruned bushes, and dug up weeds. The yard is looking so much better, but it’s been backbreaking work. Or, more likely perhaps, you’ve come off the 18th green having walked four miles in the heat. It was fun — it always is — and you’re not unhappy with your score. But you’re done, mentally and physically. What you need is to recline with a refreshing summer cocktail. Fortunately, we know a couple of Seattle-based (well, Edmonds specifically) experts who have just the thing to revive your mind, body and spirit. And our two guest bartenders have a quartet of drinks they believe will be perfect for those hot summer days.

cascadegolfer.com

JULY 2021

27

Scratch Distillery’s

Kim & Bryan Karrick Bryan Karrick and Kim Lenhardt met at Michigan State University in the late 1980s.

Kim says gin was involved on their first date, but Bryan doesn’t remember. What they do both recall though is that as their relationship blossomed so did their love for gin.

The couple married in 1992 and, two years later, arrived in Washington keen to indulge their other passion — outdoor activities. “We lived near Snoqualmie Pass,” says Kim, “and owned and operated a small eye clinic (Bryan was an optometrist by profession) in North Bend. Another optometrist that Bryan knew well courted him and eventually persuaded him to join his big practice in Edmonds.”

That was 2002, and the Karricks have been living on the Sound ever since.

After moving to the north Seattle suburb, Kim worked in wineries, brewed beer and, having loved gin for a good long while, committed to making the stuff her own way.

That meant creating it from scratch using only organic, non-GMO, locally-sourced ingredients. After years of research and experimenting, Kim opened Scratch Distillery, and began producing gin for real, in 2015.

The tasting room opened just 15 months later. “We created all our products from local grain, mashed, fermented, and distilled onsite,” she says. “And we shared our passion for gin-making from the start with our GINiology class in which attendees get to create their own recipe.”

Bryan still owns Edmonds Eyecare Associates, and will probably stay on for another six years before retiring, Kim says, to a life of “labelling bottles and washing glassware”.

Now firmly established, Scratch Distillery has begun producing other spirits and vapor-infusing different flavors into gins and vodkas. It distilled its first whiskey four and a half years ago, and released it in 2018. “I was interested in creating a whiskey from less common old-world grains, and not trying for the biggest yield,” says Kim. “This gives it a cleaner, softer, more layered flavor, without having to age as long as some people think necessary.”

Be sure to visit Scratch Distillery at 190 Sunset Ave. in Edmonds, to sample its growing list of superb spirits, and even create your own gin.

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JULY 2021

Joey’s Bright and Bitter

Smoked Sage Southie

INGREDIENTS

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5 oz. Scratch

Amo Pocio Amaro • 1 oz. Fresh squeezed grapefruit juice • .5 oz. Sage simple syrup • 1 splash Club soda • 1 Sage leaf

• 2 oz. Scratch

INSTRUCTIONS

INSTRUCTIONS

• Shake

• Shake

By Scratch Distillery

and strain over ice.

• Top with club soda.

• Garnish with sage leaf.

By Scratch Distillery

Barrel Finished Pepper Vodka squeezed lemon juice • .75 oz. Sage simple syrup • 1 Sage leaf garnish • 1 oz. Fresh

vodka, juice, syrup with ice then strain into coupe glass.

• Garnish with sage leaf.

Crafter’s Cocktail Comment

“Both these cocktails are great in the summer, while being very different, and take advantage of making a fresh Sage simple syrup,” says Karrick. “I love using fresh botanicals from the garden. The Joey’s Bright and Bitter is super-refreshing, while also a bit complex. And the Smoked Sage Southie is quite tart and smokey — almost like a daytime cocktail, and perhaps one for the fire pit in the evening. Though I love them both anytime.”

cascadegolfer.com

time.

it’s Make it a 2BAR Weekend!

Memorial Day is just around the corner & we’ve got you covered with 2BAR cocktails all weekend long.

Morning Before you hit the green, start your morning off with a Bourbon Cold Brew Coffee! Hey, it’s got coffee in it… plus a little 2BAR Straight Bourbon, chocolate bitters, Kahlua, topped with whip cream, & garnished with a mint. Or, if you’re in a hurry, tumbler it, & serve it on rocks.

Bourbon Cold Brew Coffee 1 1/2 2BAR Bourbon 80 proof 1/2 oz Kahlua 2 dashes Chocolate Bitters 3 oz Cold Brew Coffee Shake with ice and strain into iced high ball glass, Top with whipped cream and mint sprig

Blood Orange Stone Sour

Afternoon or Brunch

1 1/2 oz 2BAR Amaretto Barrel Finished Bourbon 3/4 oz Blood Orange Juice 1/4 oz Lemon Juice 1 oz simple syrup Egg white Dry shake for 1 minute, then add ice and shake again Strain into a Coupe Glass and garnish with orange

Kick up the afternoon with a Blood Orange Stone Sour. 2BAR Amaretto Barrel Finished Bourbon, blood orange juice, lemon juice, simple syrup… this cocktail can be enjoyed at the clubhouse, on the deck, or at brunch.

Evening Cap off the night with a 2BAR New York Sour. Open a bottle of your favorite Red & grab some 2BAR Wine Barrel Finished Bourbon. Make a traditional NY Sour (bourbon, lemon juice, simple syrup) & serve it on the rocks. Float a little red on top. If you’re feeling fancy, garnish with orange & a cherry.

All our bourbons can be purchased online at 2barspirits.com & shipped to your doorstep. We hope you give these cocktails at try & get creative this Memorial Day Weekend. Cheers & enjoy!

2BAR Spirits N W

2Bar New York Sour 2oz 2BAR Wine Barrel Finish Bourbon 1 oz Lemon Juice 1oz Simple Syrup Shake with ice and Strain over iced rock glass Top with 1oz Red Wine, Cab or Syrah

Seattle, WA

H a n d c r a f t e d

B o u r b o n

Master of mixology

Niles Peacock Joining the Karricks in Edmonds later this year will be noted restaurateur and award-winning mixologist Niles Peacock who is all set to open his new restaurant in the Salish Crossing Complex on Sunset Ave. (just a few doors down from Scratch Distillery) in July.

“I love Edmonds — it’s a great community to live in and be a part of.” says the man whose jazz bassist father named him after Miles Davis. “Many of my father’s friends were naming their sons Miles after Miles Davis so, to be different, my parents went with Niles. Leave it to the artists to name you after someone and change the spelling.”

Born on a tobacco farm in Kyoto, Japan, Peacock grew up in Wallingford but went to boarding school in Stockbridge, Mass. From there, he moved to New York City to study fashion design at Parsons School of Design.

While in Manhattan, he began working in restaurants, fell in love with the business and has never really left it.

Peacock, who admits to not playing golf, has opened bars and restaurants in New York City, Miami Beach, Aspen, Las Vegas, and Seattle, and is currently preparing his new Edmonds location by completing the interior, training staff, working on new recipes and working on releasing more cocktail videos (check out his previous vlogs on YouTube).

He’s also doing a lot of volunteer work, training at the gym, and spending time with his family — “basically what I’d be normally doing just a lot more of it,” he says.

Voted KING 5’s Best Bartender in Western Washington in 2018 while directing the bar program at the now closed 190 Sunset here in Edmonds, Peacock says he has developed a good track record for craft cocktails, adding that his bar team are also skilled craft mixologists. “But we take our pizza seriously too,” he says. “We make our dough from scratch, in house daily, and have a loyal following of pizza lovers as well as craft cocktail aficionados.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cascade Golfer says it’s advisable to get your ingredients together before heading out. You don’t want to be making a simple syrup or going to the store for pamplemousse liqueur when you’re tired. You can even mix the drink early and leave it cooling in the fridge for later.

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The Rosemary Gimlet

Miss Pamplemousse

INGREDIENTS

INGREDIENTS

• 2

• 4

By Niles Peacock

oz. Scratch Distillery G & T Style Gin

By Niles Peacock

oz. Francois Montand Blanc De Blanc Brut

(infused by resting 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary in (or other dry sparkling wine or champagne) the bottle for 24hrs or longer for more intensity) • 1 oz. Giffard Pamplemousse • 1.25 • .75

oz. Fresh Lime Juice oz. Simple Syrup

• .5

oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice

INSTRUCTIONS

INSTRUCTIONS

• Shake

• Pour

all ingredients over ice, and double strain into chilled cocktail glass.

• Garnish with rosemary skewered blueber-

all ingredients over ice and stir. with an orange peel.

• Garnish

Crafter’s Cocktail Comment

“This is a spin on a bright, crisp classic”, Peacock says of the Rosemary Gimlet. And the Miss Pampelmousse is one of his original warm-weather drinks recipes. “It’s a well-balanced, sparkling, brut cocktail and perfect for refreshing on a hot summer’s day, or after a round of golf.”

cascadegolfer.com

RISK vs. REWARD

Eagles Pride Golf Course — Red Course Hole No. 6

Par 5

460 yards (Blue Tees)

BY SIMON DUBIEL • SALES/MARKETING MANAGER & TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR

The Setup

The Risk

The Reward

The signature hole here is a sweeping dogleg left that starts with an uphill tee shot. Anything that finds the fairway will leave the golfer with a decision to make as the approach must carry a water feature that guards the front of the green, with wetlands on the left. A bunker guards the right side of the 150 foot-long green.

If you sit in the go-zone after your tee shot, you need to have some gamble in you to take on the shot. Trouble is staring you in the face and even if you do get home in two, the green is so deep you could still be looking at a 100-plus foot putt, bringing three and four-jacks into play. If your approach is not struck true, you’ll likely need another golf ball.

‘Two-putt birdie’ might be the best three words in golf. As the shortest par 5 on the 27-hole Eagles Pride property, this is the opportunity you are waiting for. Plus, if you do choose to lay up you’ll most likely have a downhill lie for your wedge in, over the drink. Oh boy!.

Final Call If you put yourself in position “A”, it’s time to find out what you’re made of. Are you a double down on 11 kind of person, or are you more willing to take the sure thing? As the saying goes when trying to carry water, you can ‘either hit one more club or two more balls’. We prefer the former. The only thing between you and the green is a good swing. Take a little extra and hit it pure. Let’s go dancing.

PRESENTED BY

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JULY 2021

cascadegolfer.com

Public Facility With Country Club Amenities

“It’s worth the drive — best value in the NW” The Seattle Times

18-hole championship course 9-hole executive course Driving Range & Practice Center High Cedars Golf Academy Footgolf Advanced Tee Times Recommended

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14604 149th St. Ct. E. • Orting, WA 98360

TEEING OFF

PRESENTED BY

Mariner pitching legend ERIK HANSON is just as skilled at hitting a ball as he is hurling one

A CONVERSATION WITH TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR

W

hen Erik Hanson attended Wake Forest University on a baseball scholarship in the mid-1980s, he was given a room in the Arnold Palmer Residence Hall and hung out with many of the school’s accomplished golfers. He was a baseball/basketball guy in high school and didn’t play much golf – or pay much attention to it. “I didn’t know they even gave scholarships to golfers,” he remembers.

Those Demon Deacons’ golfers, featuring future PGA Tour regulars Billy Andrade and Len Mattiace, went on to win the NCAA title in May of 1986. One month later, Hanson, a hard-throwing right-hander, went his way, drafted in the second round by the Seattle Mariners. He would play six seasons for the Mariners (1988-93 — highlighted by winning 18 games in 1990), and later played one season for Cincinnati and one for Boston, going 15-5, earning an All-Star selection and pitching in the American League playoffs. Hanson closed his career with three years in Toronto.

So, all these years later, Hanson, who turned 56 in May, may surprise everyone when he says his biggest athletic thrills have come in golf. He explains that baseball was a sport in which he was groomed to succeed. And he certainly did find a measure of it. “But I was never expected to play (well) in golf,” he says.

Yet, paradoxically, he has. After retiring in 1998 at age 35, Hanson discovered he had a gift for golf and that his athletic 6-foot-6 frame provided a lot of leverage and created impressive distance. He established an initial handicap of eight, but was down to five within a short time. He joined Sahalee Country Club and

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JULY 2021

reduced his handicap to two. Before long, he was off scratch and now he plays to plus two or three.

Hanson, who had been an ardent competitor all his athletic life, from high school through the big leagues, craved more. He needed competition and got his first taste in 2000 playing as an amateur in a two-day, low-level pro tour event. He shot 70 the first day to be among the leaders. Then, paired with a couple of professionals the second day, he slumped to a 78 while the pros climbed the leaderboard.

“It was like pitching a one-hit shutout the first day then struggling for two and a third innings and giving up six runs the next day,” Hanson says. “I thought it was fun even though I played horrible. I don’t think I scored higher than that 78 for the next 15 years.”

Hanson was now hooked on tournament golf.

His competitive spirit was satiated, but he vowed to always keep it on an amateur level. “That (turning professional) would take the fun out of it,” he says. “I loved playing baseball and basketball as a kid through high school and college. It was so much fun. Then (after being drafted) it becomes work and some of that love is lost.”

Hanson became a regular contender at all the prominent Northwest golf events — professional and amateur. He has won most of them — the Washington Mid-Am, the Pacific Northwest Golf Association Mid-Am, the Northwest Open, the Oregon Open, the PNGA Masters-40 four times among them, and he has finished runner-up at the Washington Open three times. “If I didn’t have tournament golf, I’d be a weekend warrior at most,” he says. “The biggest thing is it gave me a sense of purpose. And I’m a goal-ori-

ented person. On top of that, it’s like a fraternity out there, so many people I got to know. I feel fortunate I could rely on golf to fill my competitive void.”

Nagging injuries, however, have recently cut into his competitive schedule and subsequent enjoyment.

His right ankle, damaged playing high school basketball, has flared up to the point that it has dramatically affected his swing. He can’t push off it as well or fire his hips effectively. He has had to compensate with a hybrid swing to maintain both distance and accuracy.

It even forced him to petition the sport’s governing bodies through the American Disabilities Act (ADA) to use a golf cart during competition.

The ankle – plus another unrelated broken right heel bone – will require reconstructive surgery that could put Hanson out for a year. He will not commit to that, however, until his skills fail or the injuries finally limit his competitiveness. He wants to stay on the tournament circuit for as long as possible and perhaps have one more shot at ‘the most fun week in my life’ when he qualified for the 2015 U.S. Senior Open. “I was not supposed to be there,” Hanson says, “but there I was with Tom Watson, Hale Irwin, Fred Couples, and Vijay Singh. As an outsider, I experienced what it was like to play a Major on tour.”

Among the other pros he also ran into that week was his old Palmer Residence dorm mate Billy Andrade, who had spent a couple of decades on the PGA Tour and was in his second season on the Champions circuit.

“You play golf?’’ said Andrade, surprised to see Hanson at the event. “You caddying for somebody?”

Not exactly, said Hanson adding that he should check the tee sheet.

cascadegolfer.com

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IN THE

BAG PRODUCT REVIEWS and equipment news you can use

BY TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR

Master your short game with these putters and wedges this summer

A

s you reach the business end of a golf hole, your shot needs to get ever more precise. Standing on the tee, you have a 40-yard-wide fairway to aim at, before you need to reduce your scope to something maybe 15 yards wide and 40 yards long. If you miss the green and are forced to pitch, your bump-and-run or lob shot hopefully will end on a patch of grass no larger than 25 square feet surrounding the pin. And then you’re aiming at a hole fourand-one-quarter inches across. The quality of golf equipment throughout the bag is incredibly high these days, of course, but on and around the green, you really do require precision instruments.

Wedges have come a long way since the days of 19th century lofted niblicks whose heads were usually very small, whose faces often had a random, poorly-aligned, set of punch marks, holes or deep grooves, and which had no bounce and very narrow soles. Likewise, they’ve evolved a good deal since Edwin MacClain of Houston developed the first sand wedge -- an odd, concave-faced affair, in 1928. And they’re a good deal better suited to their task than the flanged design Gene Sarazen came up with in 1932.

Same with putters. The ancient, cumbersome-looking blocks of beechwood on the end of a very rudimentary shaft didn’t really have much to offer in the way of tech, and no doubt relied on perfect sweet-spot contact if the head wasn’t to twist abruptly and throw the putt way offline. Modern putters, mallets especially, are so stable, the ball behaves much the same regardless of where on the face you make contact. Plus, they feature all sorts of alignment aids, shaft innovations, and face materials to help you roll your rock (or rather, your perfectly-round, well-balanced, highly aerodynamic, hexagon-dimpled, threepiece, urethane-covered ball).

Here’s a selection of 21st century putters and wedges that will help you get the ball in the hole quicker.

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JULY 2021

Here’s a selection of 21st century putters and wedges

cascadegolfer.com

JULY 2021

37

IN THE BAG

1 ODYSSEY

TEN 2-Ball

1

2 COBRA

3

KING 3D Printed

2

COBRA

KING Vintage 3

PUETZ GOLF PRICE

PUETZ GOLF PRICE

PUETZ GOLF PRICE

$299.99

$349.99

$249.99

O

I

C

dyssey launched its Stroke Lab TEN putter in 2019. Featuring a potent mix of technologies, it quickly became a favorite on the PGA Tour. Its multi-material Stroke Lab shaft had a lightweight graphite section that enabled engineers to shift weight to each end of the putter, helping the golfer improve the tempo of his/her putting stroke. The Microhinge face insert was designed to get the ball rolling quickly, not skidding.

And the mallet heads guaranteed impressive stability on off-center strikes. Earlier this year, Odyssey released 10 new versions of the TEN. The new TENs are slightly smaller and sleeker, and six feature Odyssey’s famous 2-Ball alignment system that has been used in countless tournament and championship victories in the 20 years since it first appeared. New Callaway staffer Jon Rahm tested a prototype in Palm Springs in January and put it in his bag the following week at Torrey Pines (Farmers Insurance Open). The week after, the 2-Ball TEN was Odyssey’s most-played putter. The company says this is the best 2-Ball ever as its Moment of Inertia (MOI) is 32 percent higher than that of the original.

There are Triple-Track and single-line alignment options, as well as various hosel/neck types.

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n November 2020, Cobra Golf introduced its first putter in nine years. Built using 3D Printing, the Supersport-35 was developed alongside HP and Metal Injection Molding (MIM) parts manufacturer, Parmatech. Cobra recently extended its 3D Printed putter line with three models named after sports cars — the King GrandSport-35, King SuperNova, and King Agera. All three feature a stainless steel frame, forged aluminum crown, and a 3D-printed nylon lattice center that is very strong but saves a good deal of weight. Indeed, the high-strength, multi-jet-fusion-printed nylon used in the new line not only absorbs more vibration at impact than the metal used in the Supersport-35, but is 50 percent lighter too. That allows for another component common to all three putters – heel and toe tungsten weights that boost each club’s MOI significantly. Each putter also features a grooved, variable-loft face designed by SIK Golf, which makes putters for Bryson DeChambeau. Descending Loft Technology (DLT) gives each putter face four planes — 4 degrees at the top, down to 1 degree at the bottom that helps produce a consistent launch angle wherever you position the ball at address.

And Cobra Connect enables you to track your putting performance via an embedded sensor in the grip.

obra released its King Vintage line of putters at the same time as the KING 3D Printed series and, though the Vintage putters feature the same 6061 aluminum SIK face insert and Cobra Connect game-tracking technology, they are otherwise very different. While the 3D line is all about forward-thinking design, the Vintage putters have a far more traditional construction and are built from 304 stainless steel. Don’t think that, because of the name, the seven-strong family of putters is low on tech. The emphasis may be on familiar head shapes, but there’s some tech here. Besides the SIK face inserts and Cobra Connect, Vintage putters also feature adjustable sole weights enabling you to fine-tune the club to your stroke. The seven models are Sport-45, Sport-60, Torino, Nova, Nova-40, Stingray, and Stingray 40, and are named for classic sports cars. The number refers to the amount of toe-hang — the Stingray-40, for instance, has 40 degrees of toe-hang. Players with straight back and through strokes tend to do better with face-balanced putters, while those with more arcing strokes (opensquare-closed) should consider one with some toe-hang — the more your putter face opens and closes during the stroke, the more toe-hang you should try.

38 FREE SHIPPING on orders of $99 and more • exceptions apply

IN THE BAG

4 PING

2021 Models

TAYLORMADE 4

5

Hydro Blast Collection

TAYLORMADE

5

2021 Spider 6

PUETZ GOLF PRICE

PUETZ GOLF PRICE

PUETZ GOLF PRICE

See PuetzGolf.com for pricing

$199.99

$349.99

N

T

M

o, it’s not the most inspiring name, but the launch of any new Ping putter is a significant occasion.

The 2021 line features 11 models covering the range of strokes — straight back and through, to significantly arced.

There are blades, mid-mallets, mallets, and an arm-lock model. With black Pistol grips (three styles — PP58, PP58-S and PP60), black chrome shafts, and a black PVD finish (Ping calls it ‘dark, stealth’) the 2021 putters look all business. And, unlike Ping’s Heppler putters whose faces were smooth but relatively firm, the 2021 line features dual-durometer PEBAX inserts with shallow grooves that have a soft front layer designed to ‘enhance precision on short putts’, and a firmer back layer that ‘gives solid feedback and distance-control on long putts’. “The 2021 putters are designed for the golfer who prefers a putter on the softer side of the feel spectrum but with the response of a firm face,” says Ping President John K. Solheim. All 2021 models have a multi-material head — 17-4 stainless steel, cast aluminum, or 6061 aluminum with tungsten face-weights or, in the case of the cast aluminum putters, Stainless Steel sole plates that have much the same effect as the tungsten weights — boost MOI.

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aylorMade doesn’t make enough putters, so an entirely new collection is needed. I’m joking, of course. The company’s web site currently features the Spider line and TP Collection, but joining them soon (the official launch date actually comes before we go to press, so these new putters should be in the store next time you visit Puetz Golf) will be the seven new putters of the Hydro Blast Collection. Comprising three blades and four mallets, the line is milled from industry workhorse 303 stainless steel — a softer steel ideal for use in premium putters. Each model is machine-milled giving them a sophisticated look, and they all have the white PureRoll insert — a soft Surlyn insert first seen in the Spider X, which launched in 2019. PureRoll angles grooves downward at 45 degrees preventing skidding.

Sole weights weighing 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 15 and 20 grams will be sold separately and allow you to configure the weight of the putter to your stroke. The seven models are: Del Monte 7, Del Monte 1, Soto, Chaska, Bandon 1, Bandon 3, and DuPage. The Del Monte 7, Chaska, and DuPage are face-balanced, while the other four feature various levels of toe-hang.

uch like the impacts the Ping Anser, Odyssey 2-Ball, Scotty Cameron Newport, Titleist Bullseye, or Wilson 8802, the TaylorMade Spider is writing its own history. First launched in 2008, the Spider has become an iconic mallet, with millions sold and countless wins on professional tours around the world. There have been 11 generations so far, the latest coming in January when four new models were unveiled — Spider X Hydroblast, Spider S, Spider SR and Spider EX. The EX was perhaps the most highly anticipated. Constructed with a lightweight aluminum body and steel/tungsten weights in the heel and toe (face and rear), the EX has an extremely high MOI, meaning the face twists very little when the ball is struck away from the sweetspot. Putts hold their line much better than they would if struck off-center with an old-style Bullseye, for instance. TaylorMade’s Fluted Feel putter shaft with a soft section five inches from the tip is designed to improve feel, and the PureRoll insert provides a solid, yet soft, feel at impact.

The four models each boast a high MOI, Fluted Feel shaft, PureRoll insert, and alignment features that help you align the putter effectively.

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IN THE BAG

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CBX2 Black

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t the end of 2017, Cleveland launched a wedge it said would better suit the 84 percent of golfers who played cavity-back irons. The cavity in the CBX allowed engineers to position more weight in the toe, shifting the sweet spot a few crucial millimeters in that direction. Until then, the bulk in the hosel of blade wedges had put the CG nearer the heel, which caused the face to twist if you missed the center. The CBX was a hit, and the follow-up CBX2 duly arrived two years later. With a hollow chamber near the heel and heavy toe-weight, the club’s MOI increased, and Cleveland’s Feel-Balancing Technology (shorter, lighter hosel first introduced in the RTX-3 wedge) moved the CG closer to the center further reducing face twisting at impact. Three new sole grinds — V (46-52 degrees), S (54 and 56 degrees) and C (58 and 60 degrees) — provided greater versatility, and the fourth-generation Rotex face with sharper Tour Zip grooves, and aggressive face milling made it easier to create spin. The Gelback TPU insert reduced vibration at impact. The CBX2 originally came with a Tour Satin finish, but in December last year, Cleveland added the stylish, glare-reducing Black Satin finish.

MG2 TW

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he story of TaylorMade’s MG2 TW wedge is similar to that of the Cleveland CBX2 Black Satin. It starts with a new club — the Milled Grind Wedge — introduced in 2017. In 2019, an improved version — the MG2 — comes out, and towards the end of 2020 a new model arrives.

The difference, of course, is that this new model wasn’t just a new finish, but the same wedge altered slightly to fit the specifications of the greatest golfer of his generation. The central section of the MG2 was designed to rust — reducing glare and increasing spin. The ZTP RAW Groove Design was likewise engineered for more spin, with sharper, narrower, deeper grooves as well as laser etching. The ‘Thick-Thin’ head design added 1.4 millimeters to the thickness of the face, improving feel, and removed the equivalent weight from the back. It was replaced by a lighter TPU insert that improved the feel.

The TW-spec MG2 featured grinds Woods had identified himself and used for years. The 56-degree club has a dual-sole with heavy heel relief that allows Woods to open up the blade, while the 60-degree has extremely high bounce on the leading edge, and a shaved heel for better performance off tight lies.

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Hi-Toe RAW/RAW Big Foot 9

n 2015, Callaway released a bizarre-looking wedge conceived by Phil Mickelson. Mickelson, one of the game’s best short-game artists, loves opening up the club to hit flop shots and, when coming out of the rough, the ball can ride up the face. So Mickelson wanted the Mack Daddy PM Grind wedge to have a higher toe. And that higher toe needed grooves — in fact, why not just run them across the entire face? The resulting wedge looked very unique, and grabbed Lefty’s attention and he added it to his bag. And it caught on. TaylorMade (2018), Wilson (2019) and others came out with their own full-face/ high-toe wedge. Earlier this year, TaylorMade updated theirs, bringing out a RAW version whose face rusts over time increasing its spin capability. With three bounce options and seven lofts (50-62 degrees; full-face grooves in the four highest lofts), there’s a Hi-Toe RAW for everyone, and the tarnished copper look makes your bag’s oddest-looking club more attractive. The wide-soled (32 millimeters)/high-bounce (15 degrees) Hi-Toe Big Foot first appeared in 2019, but was upgraded in January. It now has a RAW face, and an extra loft — 56, 58, and 60 degrees are now available.

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• The cell phone holder provides a slot so a charging plug can be used while phone is in place • Integrated bracket holds a seat or industrial-sized bottle of sand/seed mix • Mesh basket and velour-lined valuables pouch • E-Z Latch System allows cart to fold/unfold in two easy steps • Adjustable, universal upper bag bracket works with both cart and stand bags • Bags held in place by adjustable-length bungee cords • Tracking system allows for easy adjustment, if needed. Allen wrench provided

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It enables him/her to continue walking but provides hands-free operation so you don’t have to carry, push or pull your clubs. The two-wheel power source, that turns your push-cart into a motorized cart, connects easily with virtually any push-cart and is operated with a remote control unit you can attach to the handle of the cart or carry in your pocket. To attach the V2 to your push-cart, simply remove the back wheels from your push-cart, attach the brackets (provided), then clip those brackets on to the Club Booster V2, and you are away. The V2 is extremely strong and durable, able to climb hills, and even stop on an upslope. Alphard says the dual-hub motors have plenty of juice to conquer any course. And by attaching a tether to your belt loop and the cart, the V2 will follow you wherever you go, in whatever direction you take. The Club Booster V2 has a one-year warranty and comes with the remote control, handle strap, a micro USB cable, a set of brackets, a set of wheelie bars, and an AC/DC charger.

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Paradis along the

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Pacific cascadegolfer.com

Destination Oregon

Coast

Bandon Dunes

is all golf all the time and never stops astounding

T se

BY TONY DEAR • CG EDITOR

he Old Course Hotel in St. Andrews, Scotland, looks out over the most famous hole in the

c

game, but doesn’t own it. A charitable organization called the St. Andrews Links Trust does, as well as the town’s six other public courses. The Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina offers its

guests nine terrific courses including Donald Ross’s magnificent No. 2, but there are carts and browse the resort’s web site and you’ll see it offers lawn sports and carriage rides, too. The Lodge at Pebble Beach is a wonderfully refined place to rest your head for the night and the adjoining golf course is one of the world’s most spectacular, but the spa is huge and offers things like medifusion and body wraps. What’s more, the golf and everything else here is very, very expensive.

All the above, and others like them — the American Club in Kohler, Wis., The Broadmoor in Colorado

Springs, Sea Island in Georgia, the Four Seasons on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, etc. — are beyond special.

A trip to any of them is an exciting prospect.

But if you can survive without the silk peels, croquet, juice bars and, in the case of St. Andrews, a

potentially long wait for tee-times and some dubious weather, and you are really only interested in playing top-100 golf all day long then wolfing down a hearty meal and savoring a nightcap before repairing to your lodgings for the night and then executing the exact same plan the following day, then there really is only one place for you.

Bandon Dunes Golf Resort opened in the late 1990s after developer Michael Keiser, a man devoted to

natural golf played over and around coastal dunes, found 1,200 sand and gorse-covered acres on the Oregon coast and took a chance hiring a young, unknown Scotsman to build him an unconventional course in a faraway location. It was a ludicrous experiment, frankly, and Keiser’s friends and advisors understandably laughed at him.

But the course that unknown Scotsman, David McLay Kidd, built was so good it recorded double the

number of rounds management had budgeted for, and more or less swept the year-end awards. It put an obscure part of the country on the map, and turned Keiser from a curious eccentric into a genius visionary with an asset that would soon start adding considerably to the fortune he had already made as the coSheep Ranch cascadegolfer.com

founder of a successful greeting card company.

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Destination Oregon

Coast

Old Macdonald

Bandon Dunes

America had long been familiar with the term ‘linksstyle’ under whose banner virtually every course with few trees and a few bumps was grouped, but Kidd’s eponymous Bandon Dunes was the real deal. The turf was short and tight, the wind a serious factor in club/ shot-selection, and there were a handful of exceptional coast-hugging holes. Above all, it required imagination.

Hitting good shots wasn’t enough. You had to think good shots too.

Keiser always said one golf course is a curiosity but two is a destination. So, in 2001, after purchasing an important parcel of land just to the north of his first course, Keiser hired rising star Tom Doak to build a second. Doak and his Renaissance Golf team created an extraordinary follow-up that outdid even the first course in most rankings. Doak discovered or created as many good-to-great holes at Pacific Dunes as any golf course could realistically hope for, and it firmly established Bandon Dunes as one of the country’s finest golf resorts.

He now had his destination, but Keiser was far from done. He’d wanted to hire Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw since seeing the remarkable Sand Hills Golf Club they had designed in Nebraska and which had opened in 1995. He got his chance in 2003 when he signed them up to route 18 holes through part-dunes but mostly-forest terrain in the southeast corner of the property. Coore and Crenshaw did a typically superb job, and though it didn’t sit beside the ocean, Bandon Trails quickly became many people’s favorite after opening in 2005.

Keiser gave himself a well-earned rest now, but it wasn’t too long before he was at it again. He owned another magnificent stretch of dunes land to the north of Pacific Dunes and decided to honor one of his favorite course architects, C.B. Macdonald, in creating a course featuring many of his famed template holes and design characteristics. To build it, he called on Doak and his Renaissance associate Jim Urbina but also sought the expertise of architecture writer Bradley Klein and Macdonald biographer George Bahto.

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Destination Oregon

Coast

Pacific Dunes

Old Macdonald

Sheep Ranch

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Old Macdonald opened in 2010 and was quirky with a capital Q. Despite its peculiarities, however, the ground was just as firm and bouncy as elsewhere at the resort, the wind just as influential, and the holes every bit as much fun as the other courses. Visitors took a little longer to come to terms with its demands, perhaps, and it has never quite been cherished as much as its siblings, but Old Mac is still a great course that deservedly ranks inside the country’s top 20 public courses.

The exquisite Bandon Preserve, made up of 13 par 3s, was added in 2012 and a 100,000 square foot putting green modeled on the Himalayas Putting Course at St. Andrews, and called the Punchbowl, opened in 2014.

The most recent expansion to the incredible complement of golf courses at Bandon Dunes opened last year when the Sheep Ranch, once a collection of 13 isolated greens and a lot of open space north of Whiskey Run but molded into 18 coherent holes by Coore and Crenshaw, opened to the sort of fanfare typically associated with anything new at Bandon Dunes.

Everything else at Bandon Dunes is first-rate too.

The food, whether it be served up in the Gallery, Tufted Puffin, Pacific Grill, Trail’s End, the Sheep Ranch clubhouse or, my favorite, McKee’s Pub, named for

Keiser’s late friend Howard McKee whose legal expertise ensured Bandon Dunes overcame every environmental and political dispute it faced during its formative years, is just what the hungry golfer needs.

As for the accommodations, golf travel expert Darin Bunch, who has visited the resort a dozen times at least, says there really is something for everyone. “You have the Lodge, the Inn and higher-end options like the fourbedroom Grove Cottages,” he says. “Or you could go for the full buddy-trip treatment in the Golf Suite above the Tufted Puffin. And there are others choices that may be more suited to your budget and companions – Chrome Lake units and lofts or the Lily Pond rooms. Some are fancier than others, but they’re all comfortable, wellfurnished, and designed with golfers in mind.”

Bandon Dunes was designed with golfers in mind and it’s a policy that has worked beautifully for 22 years and counting. Keiser’s cockamamie notion of bringing proper links golf to the Oregon coast once seemed a little fanciful. But it’s hard now to imagine a world without Bandon Dunes.

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C R E A T I N G

HEAVEN ON

EARTH EDITOR’S NOTE: Last issue we ran the first part of this Q and A with David McLay Kidd and stated that Part 2 would run in this issue.

The feedback and excitement for this story was so high, to make this informative and helpful, we are running this piece in its entirety. Enjoy!

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cascadegolfer.com

Native Scotsman, now a U.S. citizen,

David McLay Kidd

brings global perspective and talent to his course architecture leaving a wake of golfing wonders here and abroad

D

avid Mclay Kidd is one of the world’s foremost golf course architects, but he has never let success change him. A native Scotsman who now lives in our part of the world, he is still the same loud, gregarious, opinionated (his words) guy he always was. He was good enough to share some of those opinions with us in this exclusive Q & A with editor Tony Dear.

When did you first come to the USA? I came to the Golf Industry Show in Orlando in 1990. I was working for Howard Swan, a British architect.

I was only a year out of college so didn’t really know anyone, but basically had an ‘in’ with anyone in the golf business because of my father (Jimmy Kidd was the longtime greenskeeper/course manager at Gleneagles in Scotland, one of the most famous hotel and golf resorts in the world and home to three courses one of which, the Jack Nicklaus-designed Centenary Course, hosted the 2014 Ryder Cup). He spent a lot of time over here and was in regular contact with the GCSAA, the PGA Tour etc., and knew everyone. So he was my secret weapon if you like.

It’s a story many readers will be familiar with, but remind us how the Bandon Dunes (Ore.) job happened. How did you feel about it? Did you think you were ready for it and capable of building a great course?

I was working for Gleaneagles. The idea was to develop Gleaneagles-type resorts around the world and I was the in-house course architect/project manager.

My first job was actually in Nepal — that’s a long, crazy story involving the Royal family and civil war but I basically finished the design and got out. I never saw it completed (I played it about 15 years ago and can confirm it is really good).

Mike Keiser wanted to build authentic links golf so he decided he wanted a Scottish architect. I was really the only one. It was really in the capacity of Gleneagles Developments that Mike found me, but he was really looking for my dad whom he was aware of. They became firm friends.

When we started I was 26. At that age you think you can do anything. You can conquer the world. That first week we were there in July 1994 we figured out we were part of a whole parade of people that Mike might have cascadegolfer.com

sort of thing he wanted. Pure golf. In the end, I think he picked me because he knew my dad wouldn’t let me fail and because he felt that an American architect might not have seen the vision through entirely and that at some point they would have fallen back to something they were more familiar with — something more manicured and tidy.

David McLay Kidd's catalog of courses is an all-star lineup of links around the world.

chosen. As it came time for us to leave, I thought there was no chance we’d get the job so I felt comfortable just coming right out and telling him what I thought. I gave him a list of the things he could do wrong — clubhouse on the clifftop, bent greens, carts, flowering cherry trees, all that. I said if he wanted it to be authentic, people would walk (in the crappy weather if need be), there be few flat lies, the bunkers would be rugged pot bunkers — real hazards, and it should be fescue. He looked at me very quizzically and the Kemper people (management company Keiser had hired) literally laughed at me. They thought I was suggesting an unworkable course in an unworkable place — a double whammy!

Mike was very curious about Sand Hills — Bill Coore’s and Ben Crenshaw’s new course in Nebraska which was very natural, a bit wild, and walking-only. He kept referring to that, Royal County Down in (Northern) Ireland, and Royal Dornoch in Scotland. The dunes were much softer than on those courses, but that was the

What did you learn about American golf during your time at Bandon? And what did you learn about the world and yourself?

It’s evolving, but back then American golf had a pretty strict set of expectations. It still does to a degree but not as much. Courses had to look a certain way, specifically like Augusta National. If they didn’t they were automatically inferior. I had guys who knew their golf and would have been considered discerning, sophisticated golfers ask me why the conditions in Britain were so bad. They didn’t realize those conditions were like that on purpose. They weren’t bad, of course, they were just largely what Mother Nature gave you.

The greenkeepers were no less able. They just had a different set of demands and a different philosophy with regard inputs and chemicals and all that. And I’d heard golf in America was played mostly through the air and discovered that was certainly true. In the UK, you think more about what the ball will do on the ground than what it’ll do in the air.

I learned a lot about how the world works, but the first thing was that a Scotsman and a guy from Oregon might speak the same language, but culturally they are very, very different. I would insult someone I liked to the very core of their being to show how much I cared about them. That’s fine in Britain but it didn’t go down very well here sometimes.

And I learned that if I was willing to attempt something, there might be some hiccups along the way, but I’d usually find a way to do it.

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there a short time. Three or four years later, we were building Bandon and getting soaked to the skin every day when somebody suggested I take a trip out to the desert.

I said ‘what desert? There’s no desert in Oregon.’ But they assured me there was. Even though I’d been to Sunriver, I really didn’t remember much so was a bit skeptical.

But I took the five-hour drive over the mountains, and remember the weather changing dramatically as I made it over the top. It was like driving into Narnia. I had tried living in Bandon for a couple of years, but it was tough. It wasn’t great for travel and, though a storm is great if you’re visiting and want the authentic British links experience, it’s not great if you live there. In 2006, I was hired to design Tetherow. I used that as an excuse to relocate to Bend and I’ve been here ever since.

Gamble Sands

Were you immediately in demand after Bandon Dunes, or did it take another couple of smaller jobs before developers had 100 percent confidence in their decision to hire you?

Somewhere in between. I think Golfweek had put Bandon Dunes in its top ten before it even opened, and Golf Digest was calling me the next superstar. So it was a pretty big deal, but after it had opened I think I waited nine months before I got another job. Queenwood, near London, Powerscourt in Ireland, and Nanea in Hawaii all happened about the same time.

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When did you move to Bend and why?

I had actually been to Sunriver in 1991. Gleneagles was looking to create something in the area and I met with the development team out there and stayed in a house on the Crosswater Club course. But I was only

There’s a great story behind every project you’ve done, but what are the three most memorable besides Bandon Dunes?

Bandon Dunes was certainly memorable and I’ll be forever grateful to Mike for giving me the opportunity.

But it wasn’t an ideal scenario at times. I was very much the new kid. Hell, I wasn’t even that. I had no track record at all, and was getting pushback from Mike’s retail golfer friends, colleagues, and advisors all the time. Gamble Sands was entirely different. I won the trust of the Gebbers Family entirely, almost to the point of feeling burdened by it. They put so much trust in me before I felt like I’d done enough to deserve it, and obviously didn’t want to let them down. I had my absolute A+ team working on it, and during the project I really felt re-energized with my love for golf course architecture. I wanted to push back at what had happened at Machrihanish Dunes, Tetherow, and the Castle Course. I think they’re great courses but, first and foremost, I wanted to build a course that was playable for the average golfer. I cast off all the expectations from the media, raters, and what golfers here expect golf to look like and went with what my gut told me to be right.

It felt like the Traveling Wilburys. I had a team of people that were very good at what they do, but I got to be the leader of the band and create the parameters we worked around.

Another would be Nanea. I was in Scotland at the time I got the call and was in Hawaii 24 hours later. I’d never been to Hawaii, had never seen lava, and had not the slightest clue who Chuck Schwab or George Roberts were.

It was another crazy, very unlikely set of circumstances like Bandon. I basically spent three days at the Four Seasons telling them I was in no way qualified for what they wanted me to do, but I think my telling them that made them all the more determined to hire me.

My third would be the Castle Course. That’s a helluva story — Home of Golf, municipal course, university town, the politics, all the cloak and dagger stuff that went on in the town, the Links Trust, the R & A, and within my own industry (Tom Doak rated it a ‘0’ in his Confidential Guide).

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HEAVEN It’s so cool that a kid from Renfrewshire in Scotland has worked for some very prominent people. How did it all happen, and what’s it like working for Mike Keiser, Charles Schwab, Jon Huntsman Sr (Huntsman Springs now Tributary in Idaho), Dietrich Mateschitz (co-founder of Red Bull for whom Kidd built a course on the Pacific island of Laucala), Carlos Pellas (Nicaraguan billionaire businessman who hired Kidd to design Guacalito de la Isla), Cass Gebbers (Washington State orchardier and rancher who developed Gamble Sands)...?

Gleneagles was a place where the very wealthy would visit. And they all knew my dad — Jackie Stewart, Sean Connery, Princess Anne. Jack Nicklaus phoned our house and asked to speak with my dad a couple of times. I’m not saying I, or my dad was one of them, of course, but I felt comfortable around these people from a young age. You soon realize they’re just people, like you and me.

Do you have any particular favorites among the owners you’ve worked for?

They’re all great and I really don’t have a bad thing to say about any of them…well, maybe a couple. But Chuck Schwab is an absolute gem of a man. He’s a multibillionaire obviously but genuinely cares about people and takes the time to find out about you. I remember sitting down and talking with him and him asking me about my family and how I became an architect and all that. And suddenly he asks what credit card I have and proceeds to tell me the benefits of changing to his card.

That was odd.

(Kidd then tells a story. I was in Hawaii and given the keys to his car. I was so naïve I thought it was his actual car, but of course it was for chefs, pilots and other staff members. I opened the glove box looking for some music and there was one CD. It was called ‘Buying a House with no Money Down”. I thought it was hilarious that Charles Schwab should have a CD about how to buy a house. It was years later that I realized it wasn’t his CD…or car.)

He’d be my No. 1 but I haven’t worked for anyone I didn’t like. I could enjoy a cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich in the kitchen with any of them. They’re all good people, and I think there was a mutual respect.

Tributary

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Oh sure. You do something they don’t and are one of the best at it so that’s understandable.

Well, I certainly hope so. It’s different when you’re working for existing clubs though (Kidd has done extensive work at Broken Top in Bend, Rolling Hills in Los Angeles, Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego, and has been renovating/redesigning Estrada at Snow Canyon in

ON

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Utah in recent months) because the committee or board of directors that hires you is often different to that in place when you complete the job.

Besides the billionaires though, you’ve worked for municipal authorities, private clubs, semi-private clubs, and even the PGA Tour (TPC Stonebrae in California). How have you juggled all that?

I really like the fact I’ve been able to build courses for a range of entities, but yes, it can get quite complicated at times. Essentially, though, you’re working for one person maybe two and regardless of who they are or what they represent they still want the best course you can design. The problem comes when the golf course isn’t the absolute number one priority. Yes, a developer may want the best course of which you’re capable but it may be with a view to selling homes or filling hotel rooms. Then our priorities probably don’t align and there may have to be some tricky compromises.

You been in America for 20 years. Are you a citizen? And how often do you go back to Scotland?

I am and feel very humbled and honored to travel with my blue passport. I still have my red one (burgundy actually), but don’t use it much and obviously haven’t been able to for a while now. Before Covid, I was going to Scotland once a year on average. I don’t go there that often because my immediate family has moved. I have some aunts, uncles and cousins there, but my parents are in Essex, England now. My best friend from school lives in Scotland still and I see him. I actually just spoke to him on the phone this morning from 21,000 feet.

Ah yes, your plane. What is it, and how long have you been flying? What are the benefits?

It’s a Cirrus SR22T. I’ve been piloting my own plane since 2012. My quality of life is so much better because I’m not a slave to the airlines. It allows me to spend so much more time at home with my family and on a work site. Flying commercial meant having a very strict schedule. I could spend three maybe four days on-site then leave. With my own plane, I can fly to the site whenever I like pretty much and spend a day or two.

So I can tweak and edit and control the development of the course much more closely. And it has allowed me to continue working in the Covid era.

I’ve only had my current plane for a year and haven’t taken it over the Rockies yet, but I flew my previous plane to the east coast several times. This week, I’ve flown over 3,000 miles going from Bend to St. George, Utah, down to San Diego, back to St. George, and finally back to Bend.

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anything that resonated. They weren’t bad courses necessarily, but I didn’t find anything that really spoke to me. They seemed a little formulaic and contrived. But that group of architects you mentioned quickly emerged and what they were doing absolutely resonated with me. I could see influences from the old country and I thought what they were doing was really, really good.

I’m thrilled to be considered a part of that group and definitely conscious of trying to one-up them, or build something just as good as what they’re doing, every chance I get.

Gamble Sands

Tetherow

Bandon Dunes

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You mentioned the courses you took some stick for — Machrihanish Dunes, Tetherow and Castle Course. What was your motivation for making them so tough? How/when did your shift in philosophy happen?

That was just what everyone was doing at the time.

And it seemed all the great courses, or those ranked as the elite, were brutally hard. There was a definite theme in the media that golf was becoming too easy and would be overwhelmed by Tiger Woods and others. So terms like ‘Resistance to scoring’ became a thing. I remember going to Oakmont a few years ago and speaking with a lot of the members. Most of them said they all played at other clubs and would visit Oakmont a few times a year. It was an amazing experience to play such a great, historic course, but they wouldn’t want to do it often.

I began to realize golfers that weren’t elite ballstrikers — the 99.9 percent of us — obviously didn’t enjoy playing really tough courses. You could still make the course challenging but not to the point where your shot had to hit a very specific spot, where the margin for error was tiny, like we see at Augusta National. That’s for the best players in the world who get badly punished for missing targets by a very small margin. There’s obviously a place for courses like Oakmont. It’s over 100 years old and still ranked in the top ten in the world. But I decided that’s not what I want my legacy to be. I get excited by the fact the Castle Course is the second most popular in St. Andrews and the feedback we get from Gamble Sands or Mammoth Dunes.

You’re part of an elite group of architects that also includes Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse. Give us a sense of the level of camaraderie/friendship/respect/ competition there is between you.

As far as I’m concerned there is definitely a genuine respect. When I first came to the US, I didn’t really see

How often do you get to play and what’s your handicap? What are some of your favorite courses to play in the Pacific Northwest that you didn’t design?

I’m a highish single-figure golfer and will play anywhere. I’m not a course snob. I don’t play as much as I like, but who does? I went several months without picking a club up over the fall and winter then in March hosted two groups at Bandon in quick succession, playing every day for a week. But I won’t play now until the opening of Quicksands in May. I play a lot of golf at the Tom Weiskopf/Jay Morrish-designed Broken Top in Bend, but I think the best course in Central Oregon might be Crosswater. Bob Cupp and John Fought did an outstanding job there. I play all the Bandon courses as much as I can. And I like to play newly renovated courses to see what other architects are doing. They’re not in the Pacific Northwest, but I want to see what Kyle Phillips did at Hillcrest in Los Angeles, and what Weiskopf did at Torrey Pines North a few years ago. You can learn something every single time you visit a new course whether it be something you want to emulate or something to avoid.

Tell us about Quicksands — why are we going to love it?

I took what I thought was a novel view to the genre.

The model in many cases seems to be taking regular-sized golf holes and shrinking them into miniature versions.

There are many things you can do on a short course you absolutely could not do on a regular course, and I focused on them — a crater green, a boomerang, a corkscrew, a huge backboard, an 80-yard hole you could putt.

What about the third course at Gamble Sands; what needs to happen before work starts?

As you know, Gamble Sands is a tiny part of the Gebbers’s business. They are in no rush to get it done and a lot of other things need to happen to make the course workable. I routed it awhile ago, so it’s ready to be built, but for it to work there would need to be more rooms, more F & B outlets, more car park space, etc. All that doesn’t just happen overnight. Without it all, you’ll just have the same number of unique visitors who are already there to play the Sands Course just playing an extra round.

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A lot of the old architects — Mackenzie, Braid, Fowler, etc. wrote down their guiding principles, their rules of design if you like.

Have you ever done that?

No, I have not. My concern is that it sparked a chain reaction that led to the conformity of golf design.

When Mackenzie wrote his principals it caused a lot of wannabe designers to follow his process to the letter with little regard for the site. They saw them as the Ten Commandments written by God. There have since been plenty of good architects and developers who regarded them as guidelines, not strict rules, and done great work and I think the person who has done most to break that is Mike Keiser.

How long has Nick Schaan been with you and what does he bring to the table?

He’s been with me for 15 years and can do a mountain of things I can’t. He’s very detailed-oriented.

He filters my big ideas, identifying the stuff that will work and discarding the stuff that won’t. If I were a writer he’d be my editor but that is doing him a disservice. He’s so much more than that. He’s a very good writer himself.

Favorite architect from the past? Have you modeled yourself on anyone in particular?

Whose style would you say your work most resembles?

My dad was obsessed with the Great Triumvirate, especially James Braid. He is an encyclopedia on Braid.

Harry Colt too. I grew up searching for and playing their courses, so I’m sure some of their characteristics rubbed off on me.

Gamble Sands

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Your newest new-build project is Comporta Dunes in Portugal, but you actually designed it years ago. What’s the story there?

There’s a very famous family in Portugal called Espirito Santo. It goes back hundreds of years and has owned the biggest bank there for a long time. We were

building the course for them, and it turned out the family’s patriarch Ricardo Espírito Santo Silva Salgado was embezzling billions of Euros. The course was a tiny part of the family’s extensive portfolio of businesses but construction just stopped. This was July 2014. We had begun grassing the front nine and were literally a couple of weeks from completing the job. I was also working on a course near London, called Beaverbrook, at the time and a house guest of the owner. One morning, he was reading the London Times, saw the story about Espirito Santo, and said “Isn’t that your client in Portugal?”

I flew to Portugal the following day and demanded we get paid for the work we’d already done. The head of the family’s development unit told me it was just a small problem and everything would be okay. But I said if he hadn’t paid me by the end of the day, I’d be stopping work and telling all my construction guys to go home.

Next day, they tried fobbing me off again, so I just left. A few years later, some Swiss money in the form of a very well-organized real estate development company bought it and work began again. My construction subcontractor Connor Walsh has been there for a few weeks rebuilding what was lost. I’m going over there next week (traveled their in April) to assess progress. If all goes according to plan, it should be ready for play sometime in the fall of 2022, and I have very high hopes for it.

Thankfully, during the time it spent fallow, a lot of cool flora was re-established. It’s in a beautiful pine forest and some heather began growing, so it looks a bit like Sunningdale.

You just became a father again. Your son has a Scottish father, an English mother, and lives in the U.S. How’s that going to work?

I’ll be fine, but my wife might have a problem. She says that when Drake, our son, says “Hey Mommy, can I have some candy” (Kidd affects an American accent) it’ll put her teeth on edge. She’ll be the one to say “It’s mummy, sweets, and it’s not bay-zil but bah-zil”. I think she’s joking, but can’t be sure.

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TRAVEL PLANNING Monroe travel agency Travel There and Back brings expertise and passion to golfers consumed by wanderlust

BY BOB SHERWIN • CG STAFF WRITER

F

or the past six years, Michelle Wicks Cypher and her husband Michael have been turning imagination into memories at their Monroe, Wash.-based agency Travel There and Back. Folks have come to them – mostly pre-COVID-19 — with thoughts, plans and bucketlist dreams involving faraway places and restorative adventures, which the Cyphers have then shaped into trips their clients will never forget.

“That’s the goal,” says Michelle. “It doesn’t matter what kind of trip it is. For the next 20 years they’ll be talking about that trip, that moment, or that memory.’’

We may not realize it, but most of us have a fanciful bucket-list of places we want to explore at some point in our lives, experiences we’d like to share, and rituals, customs and cultures we’d like to better understand.

The Cyphers have built their business around that motivation, tapping into different bucket-list trends or, more accurately perhaps, a ‘cup’ list as they are providing a growing number of travel opportunities for golfers who want to play the world’s great golf courses.

The golf travel part of the business was motivated by the couple’s personal experiences. Michael loves to play when traveling, so they have put an emphasis on setting up tee-times at the places they visit. Primarily by word of mouth, friends and regular customers borrowed that idea thus incorporating golf into a growing number of travel plans. Then it evolved on a more personal level.

Michelle’s father spent nearly a decade as his wife’s caregiver. When she passed away, the family celebrated their parents’ many years together by taking Dad to Pebble Beach. They realized many other people make similarly sentimental trips.

Golf trips are primarily made up of male, buddy foursomes seeking to walk the same fairways as golfing legends. They can stand on an ancient tee and imagine what it was like to play 250 or even 500 years earlier with gutta-percha balls and hickory-shafted clubs. Of course, when golfers talk nostalgically about golf history, the discussion invariably gets round to the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland where, in 1764 after centuries of play, the links was shortened from 22 holes to 18.

The Old Course is the ultimate destination, where

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Travel There and Back’s owners Michael and Michelle have spanned the globe and love helping their clients here and abroad.

everyone wants to play. So the Cyphers developed working relationships with two Scottish golf travel companies that can get their clients on the 1st tee in front of the famous Royal and Ancient clubhouse. Other classic Scottish links can be booked too.

Michelle says the couple’s success is the result of a “combination of our experience and connections with experts in the areas we travel to.” Scottish courses are the most requested, but Ireland, where golf has been played since the mid-18th Century, is also becoming popular. So too are courses in Continental Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

Michelle also likes to involve a cultural submersion in the trips she creates, giving her clients options tailored to the area. She would, for example, offer a post-golf tour of a whisky distillery in Edinburgh, Perth or the Highlands, or a beer-tasting session in Dublin or Killarney. “I believe when you travel internationally, it’s important to sample the local food and drink,” she says.

Wine-drinkers aren’t forgotten. The Cyphers plan domestic golf-based wine trips to eastern Washington wine country, Yakima and the Tri-Cities, the Pinot Noir

region of Oregon’s Willamette Valley or the Sonoma/ Napa wine region of northern California.

“It’s the perfect way to combine our clients’ favorite things,” says Michelle. “There are great courses in those areas. It allows for a perfect pairing for mixed groups.

There’s interest in golf and interest in other things.’’

Though Travel There and Back is not a golf travel agency, with only 25-30 percent of its business golfrelated, the demand for golf trips is definitely on the rise as the world emerges from COVID-19. Golf has been a rare success story during the pandemic as golfers found they could socially distance easily in an outdoor setting.

It’s low-impact exercise too, and it’s not necessary to spend much time indoors. “We’re anticipating getting really busy,’’ says Michelle.

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand. It’s starting already.

I need to find out where in the world golf is open and where people can play.”

Their memories await. For information go to travel thereandback.com to learn more or book an appointment to set your dreams into motion. cascadegolfer.com

Lustrous b Green PATCH OF

Youth Golf

Palmer Mutcheson winds up a tee shot competing for Snohomish High School.

A

sees a surge like never before

BY BOB SHERWIN • CG STAFF WRITER

ll around the country last year, and the Northwest was no exception, kids were restricted and restrained because of the COVID-19 pandemic, like no other time we can remember.

Sports seasons and events were sweepingly cancelled. Gyms, courts and playing fields

were left vacant for months on end. Indoor play was denied, and outdoor play was deemed too risky.

Someone took the ball, and everyone stayed home. Athletes inaction.

In this bleak confinement, however, there was a lustrous patch of green.

“Last summer and fall there was just one option,’’ said Evan Johnsen, director of programs and development

for First Tee of Greater Seattle, ‘’and it was golf. There was no soccer, no football, no baseball. You couldn’t play outdoors in groups. A lot of people picked up golf. So, that’s pretty cool.’’

It was cool because it got kids involved, they got out of the house and exercised safely. They could compete.

They could interact with their friends or meet new ones. They could be sort of normal, within limits.

“Golf is natural for social distancing,’’ said Tyler Johnsen, executive director of the Washington Junior Golf Association. “It certainly brought a lot of new people to the game.’’

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cascadegolfer.com

L Youth on Course has been one of the biggest hits with young golfers. Troy Andrew (right), CEO of Washington Golf, says his organization paid out more than $100,000 in course subsidies to propel the program.

ike everything else, however, golf was curtailed. Junior golfer tournaments, programs and events were canceled. High schools eliminated the golf seasons. But there were no padlocks on golf courses. Football players, basketball players, baseball/softball players, soccer players gravitated to where the grass is always greener. It was the only field of play remaining for them, continuing an activity in which the virus exposure rate was extremely low.

One of the ways in which boys and girls played frequently as well as cheaply was the Youth On Course program, sponsored by the United States Golf Association and Washington Golf. Any youngster, age 6 to 18, paid a $20 annual membership and, for $5 a round, they could play one of 58 designated courses around the state.

Youth On Course was started by the USGA in 2016 and adopted by Washington Golf. When a junior pays $5, Washington Golf reimburses that course the $5. Troy Andrew, CEO/Executive director of Washington Golf, said his organization paid out more than $100,000 last year. He figures there were more than 6,000 juniors who benefitted from the program.

“In the past three years, we’ve tripled in size,’’ said Andrew, whose organization represents more than 70,000 golfers in Washington and Northern Idaho. “With the pandemic, it really picked up. It has spread by word of mouth. The feedback we’ve gotten was that it’s an activity that kids can play when they couldn’t play other sports. We heard that constantly.’’

Among the courses involved in the program are such high-profile properties as Gold Mountain, Indian Canyon, Suncadia, Sun Country and Chambers Bay, site of the 2015 U.S. Open. “Chambers Bay jumped right on it,’’ Andrew said. ”It’s one of our biggest selling points.’’ The courses set the times, mostly non-peak hours, but what they have found is that the junior players often are accompanied by a full-price adult (or two). “The parents are out playing more,’’ Andrew said.

“They can afford to play and spend time with their son or daughter. When we made the decision to do this, we did not want to come in and compete (with other junior programs) and do something they were doing,’’ he added. “We wanted to complement the other junior programs, plugging in perfectly to what they are doing.’’

Girls golf has seen the largest rise in the history of the sport at the youth, high school and association levels.

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F Local First Tee leader Evan Johnson is at the forefront of the youth golf boom. The First Tee emphasizes life skills as youngsters matriculate through the program.

A

irst tee’s Evan Johnsen said Youth On Course “is an incredible program that we needed for a long time. In the long run, we need the next generation to play.’’

In the short run, they are, as Johnsen said, “our waiting lists have never been longer.’’

First Tee is a creation of the World Golf Foundation in 1997. It emphasizes life skills as youngsters matriculate through the program. There are four other First Tee organizations in the state, Central Washington, Inland Valley in the Spokane area, South Puget Sound, from Pierce County to the Oregon border, and North Puget Sound, from Snohomish to the Canadian border.

First Tee of Greater Seattle, which started operations in 2002, had been servicing more than 100,000 students in King County schools and another 2,000 at various participating golf courses. Last year with students going through online learning at home and limitations on group gatherings, Johnsen said his organization had greatly reduced numbers.

This year, returning members were given first shot at re-registering. A week later, it was opened to the public. All the classes/programs were maxed out before the public could even be invited. To accommodate the higher demand, the organization cut the spring program in half to allow a second session and double the participation.

“We have lots of new players in the program,’’ Johnsen said. “I think things are going in a good direction here. There has been a huge spike in golf. It will be interesting to see what it looks like a year from now. It might taper off, but I think a lot will stay with it.’’ Johnsen added that among his organization’s tenets is tending to the physical and mental health of the youngsters. He said the pandemic may have caused some to experience claustrophobia and depression. “They’re feeling normal again with a renewed appreciation for the game for both adults and kids,’’ he said.

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Apple Tree Resort • Yakima

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Andrew Hershey, longtime boys golf coach at Shoreline’s Shorewood High School, understands the malaise that his golfers felt during the pandemic, exacerbated by the reduction or cancellation of prep golf seasons. He tried to help them by holding a Virtual Open throughout the state, conducted by the Washington State High School Golf Association.

There were 63 high schools participating. Boys and girls played their own courses and reported their best nine-hole scores. It worked out well, as more players played more rounds than anticipated. “They were playing so much,’’ Hershey said. “More in the off season than they ever have.’’

That might be one reason why WJGA’s Tyler Johnsen is seeing tee sheets filled for tournaments around the state. He said the districts west of the Cascades traditionally fill up quickly but this year even eastern Washington districts are maxing out.

“Judging from the numbers I’ve seen,’’ he said, “we’re certainly seeing a lot more players.’’

T The WJGA has been the state’s competitive arm dating all the way back to 1977 when Fred Couples won the first championship at Yakima CC. Now, Tyler Johnsen is leading the WJGA and its many programs and outreach efforts.

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he WJGA’s primary focus is running district, regional and state tournaments for boys and girls.

There are six WJGA districts: 1. Everett north to the border. 2. Seattle area. 3. West Tacoma south to the border. 4. Yakima, Tri-Cities, NE Oregon. 5. Spokane area. 6. South King County and East Pierce County.

There are four age groups, 8-11, 12-13, 14-15 and 1618. Each of the six districts holds one-day tournaments for their local juniors to qualify for the two-day, 36hole district tournaments. The top players then advance to the 44th WJGA State Championship at Glendale CC in August.

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Joey Mutcheson as been head coach at Snohomish High School for 25 years.

His love of golf has bled into his son Palmer -- an SHS standout.

It is a tournament, the first since 2019, that has always drawn the premium players. Fred Couples, the greatest golfer to come out of the state, won the first WJGA championship in 1977, at Yakima CC. Others participants have gone on to professional careers, such as Ryan Moore, Kyle Stanley, Joel Dahmen, Michael and Andrew Putnam, Paige and Brock Mackenzie, Alex Prugh and Andres Gonzales.

Joe Mutcheson, who has been Snohomish High golf coach for 25 years and won a pair of state championships, said, “nowadays, you have to shoot under par to win a tournament.’’ “There’s a really strong level of golf now,’’ he added. “Lots of kids are playing at a high level.’’ The last time Mutcheson and the Panthers won the state was 2009 when Ryan Moore and Andres Gonzales dueled for the state title. With increased play and so many boys and girls switching from other sports to golf, will we see another wave of potential stars on a national level?

“The talent pool is deep in this area,’’ Mutcheson said. “They hit it so stinkin’ far now. That’s the way of golf, hit it as far as you can. Kids now are generally training earlier. And the technology is amazing for both the balls and the clubs.’’ There may be a bright Mutcheson future as his son Palmer, a freshman, already carries a low single digit handicap. There are other top junior players a short drive away at Shorewood, Ben Borgida, and brothers Issey and Tysey Tanimura.

Stanwood’s Conrad Chisman carries a plus handicap as a high school freshman. But he was beaten in the Eastern Open by 14-year-old Jeff Seong from Tacoma. The Seattle area keeps churning out high quality players. Mercer Island senior Ethan Evans, a former state champion who won the 2019 WJGA title, is a Duke recruit. He joins former Bellevue star Ian Siebers on the Blue Devils roster.

Jaxon Dubiel, son of CG’s Sales Manager and Tournament Director Simon Dubiel, is a product of the youth golf boom. Jaxon started the pandemic like most beginners hovering around 100 for 18 holes. Now, with his pandemic energy focused on golf, he’s breaking 80, playing for Mountlake Terrace High School and competing in the WJGA.

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Northwestern University has awarded a scholarship to West Seattle High’s Lauryn Nguyen, a two-time WJGA champion. “Certainly, we have some highly recruited boys and girls,’’ WJGA’s Tyler Johnsen said.

“We have more people shooting under par than in the past.’’ Redmond High’s Akshay Anand, who won the state title at age 15 two years ago, is one to watch. His sister, Adithi Anand, is a former WJGA state champion and a freshman on the University of Washington golf team.

There’s a multitude of outstanding prep girls, including Interlake’s Gigi Lund and Emma Long, Lakewood High sister’s Kiana and Malia Schroder, and Peninsula’s Kailey Bass and Makenna Mehlert.

Coming back from a world turned upside down, golf in this part of the world has survived and thrived, improving in quantity and quality.

“When you think of the golf boom, it’s an investment in the future that’s got to happen,’’ said Washington Golf’s Troy Andrew. “Our one goal is exactly that, to grow the game.’’

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From the Ball Field to the Boardroom

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White Horse Golf Club • Kingston

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White Horse Golf Club KINGSTON

For the second straight year, legions of golf fans won’t be coming to the White Horse Golf Course for the Legends Cup, the LPGA Senior Tour event that was supposed to be held in June. The Cup, sponsored by the Suquamish Tribe, which operates the Kingston, Wash. course as well as the Clearwater Casino 10 miles away, was canceled again because of COVID concerns. Many of the participants are from foreign countries such as Canada, Great Britain and Australia, and travel restrictions still make overseas travel difficult or impossible. The course still hopes to host the women professionals next year, however.

The year-old pandemic that forced the cancelation has provided a surprise benefit to local golfers seeking more tee times, though. Golf has prospered over the past several months throughout the region because it’s considered safe. “The entire COVID situation played out in remarkable fashion for the golf industry,” says Bruce Christy, White Horse’s head golf professional. “The course has had to close or limit areas such as food service, special events and lessons, but golfers just continued to show up. We’ve been beyond busy. We got so busy, in fact, we had to hire another assistant professional — Damian Hawley.”

Every month is record setting, and has been for 13 months in a row. “We’re getting many new golfers, returning golfers and core golfers,” Christy adds. “We’ve set the bar higher than we ever have, and we’re getting a lot of people here for the first time who tell us they’re blown away by the quality of the course conditions.”

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White Horse’s best quality — besides the always well-maintained playing surfaces — is the fact golfers can get lost amid the Western Hemlock, Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines. The course gently takes you through the pristine ancient forests of the Kitsap Peninsula. The other thing that brings folks out — many taking the 30-minute ferry across the Sound from Edmonds — is affordability, with green fees under $70. The stay-and-play package with the casino has also been a popular option.

While there won’t be a LPGA senior event this year, the course does have plans for three Seahawks-related events during the summer months, including a Mike Tice celebrity event.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of safety concerns, the course has suspended its van shuttle pickup service at the Kingston ferry, five minutes from the course. As conditions and protocols change, the course hopes to reinstitute this service.

YARDAGE (PAR) 5,524-7,093 (Par 72) RATES $48 (18 holes with cart) during the week. $65 on weekends. Twilight: $29* TEL (360) 297-4468 WEB whitehorsegolf.com * Check website for current rates 2021 N

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Kahler Glen Golf & Ski Resort • Leavenworth

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Kahler Glen Golf & Ski Resort LEAVENWORTH

Mountain golf is very difficult to get right. In an effort to accentuate the site’s most exciting features, and build ‘signature’ holes that look great on magazine covers, designers can sometimes overdo the drama and forget about playability.

It’s great having rocky outcroppings, severe elevation changes, mountain lakes and streams, stately pines, etc. dotted throughout the course, but they’re no good if the golf holes themselves are a little awkward, exhausting, and just plain difficult.

Golf holes are meant to be played, not just photographed.

If you can take a beautiful setting with all the above-mentioned attractions, and weave in 18 enjoyable holes that are not only photogenic but which you want to play again and again, you have something truly special. What makes Kahler Glen Golf Course at Kahler Glen Golf & Ski Rsport so remarkable though is that its wonderful blend of beauty and player-friendliness was created by a guy who might have taken a golf architecture course with the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America — GCSAA prior to building it, but hadn’t built a single golf course before, and hasn’t since.

Randy Pelton founded Pelton Wood Products in Wenatchee in 1980 with friends Greg and Barbara Week. In 1984, the partners purchased a 40-acre plot 20 miles north of Leavenworth off Highway 2/State Route 207 and bordering Lake Wenatchee State Park where they built Kahler Glen’s first nine holes. In the early ‘90s, after purchasing another 120 acres, they built the second nine and expanded the development. “We created house lots,” says Pelton, “and built town houses, a recreation center, the restaurant/bar and the clubhouse.”

The resulting 18-hole course has matured into one of the most popular in the state. Kahler Glen currently enjoys a 93.2 percent approval/recommend rate on Golfpass.com, and reviewers comment on how much they enjoy the scenery and the layout, as well its invariably excellent condition.

There are numerous outstanding holes, but the two par 5s on the front-nine, beautiful short par 4 10th, and medium-length par 4 13th with the toaster-rack mounds to the left of the fairway deserve special mention. And then there is the final four, a closing quartet you will not soon forget, comprising two gorgeous par 3s, a narrow dogleg par 4 and the very tempting, but dangerous, par 5 finisher.

The course measures just 5,893 yards from the back, but will provide more than enough challenge for most golfers. Whatever you shoot though, you’re just going to love being at Kahler Glen.

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YARDAGE (PAR) 4,737-5,893 (Par 70) RATES $55 (18 holes with cart) weekdays, $69 weekends, special on Wednesdays $25* TEL (509) 763-4025 WEB kahlerglen.com * Check website for current rates

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PLAY AT BEAUTIFUL

Scenic 18 Hole Public Golf Course Fall City, Washington East of Seattle

Golf Digest Best Places to Play 2004 and 2008!

S G O L F

FALLS C O U R S E

Online Tee Times and Web Specials Available snoqualmiefallsgolf.com (425) 441-8049 or (425) 222-5244

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West Seattle • Seattle

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West Seattle Golf Course SEATTLE

West Seattle Golf Course, attempting to stay ahead of any COVID-19 restrictions, has launched a unique option designed to keep golfers playing safe — play fewer and faster. The venerable course, opened in 1940, has set up a ‘Fast Lane’ program in which only twosomes will be allowed to play Mondays and Fridays before 9 a.m.

The aim is to avoid ‘stack-ups’ — large gatherings in the clubhouse, restaurant and pro shop that could contribute to potential exposure to the virus. The club wants players to maintain distancing and ‘keep it moving’, while guaranteeing rounds of 3 ½ hours.

Golfer safety is the club’s top priority for as long as there continues to be pandemic protocols. Players have been ‘stacking up’ at West Seattle for more than 80 years now. For decades, it has been one of the busiest layouts in the Seattle area.

It was designed by famed golf course architect H. Chandler Egan who updated Pebble Beach alongside Alister Mackenzie ahead of the 1929 U.S. Amateur, a title Egan won twice. Unfortunately, Egan never saw his plans for West Seattle reach fruition. He died in 1936, a year before work began on the course.

West Seattle has had its moments — hosting a Bryon Nelson exhibition in 1951, the 1953 USGA National Public Links, and the 1977 Washington State Junior Match Play that featured 17-year-old Fred Couples beating 14-year-old Rick Fehr on the 19th hole of their match.

Seattle golfers have long taken advantage of the reasonable green fees — as low as $38 on weekdays, $42.50 on the weekend — as well as the views. The hilly and more difficult back nine affords some of the finest vistas of downtown

Seattle, and you can also catch a glimpse or two of Mt. Rainier.

Premier Golf Centers, LLC has operated the course on behalf of the City of Seattle since 2001. Seattle’s other golf facilities — Jefferson Park, Jackson Park and Interbay Golf Center — are also managed by Premier.

In late summer, West Seattle will host the final round the 87th Annual Seattle Amateur Championship. The three-day event starts Sept. 4 at Jackson Park and moves to Jefferson for the second round. West Seattle will close out the event with the final round on Labor Day — Mon., Sept. 6.

YARDAGE (PAR) 4,756-6,805 (Par 72) RATES $38 weekdays, $42.50 weekends.

Early bird (Mon.-Fri.) $28.50* TEL (206) 935-5187 WEB Premiergc.com/-west-seattle-golf-course * Check website for current rates

Jug Mountain Ranch • McCall, Idaho

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Play 36 in Southwest Idaho

e love telling our readers about great new courses and areas to visit, but the real payoff is sending them there. Enter to win at CascadeGolfer.com and you could be playing both McCall and Jug Mountain Golf Clubs this summer, while your buddies are only reading about them.

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Northwest Golf Media Association closes its doors after 26 years Group leaves historic marks in philanthropy, education and golf journalist advocacy

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BY JEFF SHELLEY • CO-FOUNDER • NORTHWEST GOLF MEDIA ASSOCIATION

ascade Golfer’s Publisher, Dick Stephens, asked me to write about the Northwest Golf Media Association (NWGMA). So here’s a glimpse at the nonprofit organization’s 26-year journey.

One night in August 1995 over some liquid refreshments and a roaring campfire, Bob Spiwak and I — two Washingtonians and regular members of the Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA) who had become disillusioned with the organization’s East Coast bias — started a Northwest-centric golf media association. This all occurred after a tournament at Bob’s fabled, ultra-private, Whispering Rattlesnakes Golf & Flubbers Club in Mazama. Thus, the NWGMA was born.

Primarily due to transportation costs, we rarely traveled to the GWAA’s annual events on the East Coast and did what any renegade Northwesterner would do -- form a regional media association that reflected interest in the beautiful golf found in our own neck of the woods.

Since Bob resided in a remote part of north-central Washington, I — a Seattleite — took the reins of promoting the new organization to my fellow golf scribes, while Spiwak did the same as best he could east of the Cascades.

It helped that, in the mid-1990s, I was media director of the Fred Couples Invitational, a two-day event hosted by the Emerald City golf legend that attracted many PGA Tour stars as well as international media to Seattle. To ramp up memberships in the nascent organization, my wife, Anni, and daughter, Erica, handed out Xeroxed application forms to regional reporters attending these tournaments, several of whom became NWGMA founding members.

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Co-founder Anni Shelley (bottom right) at one of the final NWGMA events at Sand Point GC with our editor and past Distinguished Service Award recipient Tony Dear (top left), star course designer David McLay Kidd (bottom left) and Seahawks legend Sidney Rice.

I continued to cajole and twist arms among media folks from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia over the next few years. But, with my volunteer time dwindling and more books to write and publish, I went to the Pacific Northwest Golf Association (PNGA) for assistance. Then executive director John Bodenhamer — now in upper manwagement at the USGA — kindly stepped in and helped, recognizing that the NWGMA served an important purpose. For a few years thereafter, the PNGA handled the day-to-day operations, with its communications director, Angie Wean, serving as our initial managing director.

In 1999, bylaws were created and, soon after, the NWGMA became a 501(c)7 nonprofit. These steps led to an organizational structure with a Board of Directors consisting of member-elected officers: president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and an appointed managing director. Membership categories — Regular (working golf media) and Associate (individuals from the Northwest golf industry) — were also established with commensurate dues for each.

I served as the original president and was followed — in succession for various-length terms — by Paul Ramsdell, Guy Generaux, Tom Cade, John Tipping and Bob Sherwin.

Wean was succeeded as managing director by Lisa Murray-Speltz and, lastly, my wife. In its prime, the NWGMA boasted a robust roster of 125 members who worked for print, television, radio and internet entities.

To honor notable media contributors to Northwest golf, the Distinguished Service Award was created in

2000. Voted on by Regular members, Doug McArthur was its first recipient, my longtime friend and fellow golf writer Dick Stephens, the last. In-between honorees included media folks from Washington, Oregon and B.C. Following McArthur, a sports director for Tacoma’s KTAC radio and the tournament director of the LPGA Tour’s SAFECO Classic, the winners were: Dale Johnson (founding father of the modern PNW Section of the PGA and OGA; sportswriter for The Oregonian from 1947-59); Margaret Maves (media coordinator for LPGA Tour’s Safeway Classic and other Portland tournaments); Bruce King (KOMO-TV’s popular sports director, four-time winner of the Washington State Sportscaster of the Year award and two-time Emmy winner); Bob Robinson (longtime golf columnist for The Oregonian who covered dozens of PGA Tour events and majors); Blaine Newnham (The Seattle Times columnist and author of the book, “America’s St. Andrews”); Bill Yeend (Seattle TV/radio personality who hosted two Seattle golf shows on TV); yours truly; Ramsdell (sportswriter for Tacoma News Tribune, The Seattle Times and Eugene Register-Guard); Craig Smith (longtime Seattle Times golf and high-school sportswriter); Paul Backman (executive director of WWGCSA and Northwest Turfgrass Association who worked with media to preserve golf’s role in the region); Bodenhamer (founder of PNW Golfer Magazine and prime backer of “Championships & Friendships: The First 100 Years of the PNGA); Arv Olson (the voice of golf for the Vancouver Sun newspaper over 38 years); Mike Riste (founder of the BC Golf House, co-author of cascadegolfer.com

“Championships & Friendships” with Shelley, and author of “Just Call Me Mac” — a biography of golf architect Arthur Vernon Macan); Dan Murnan (founder of Cybergolf. com, which grew into one of the world’s most-visited golf websites); Kent “Cookie” Gilchrist (covered golf and hockey for the Vancouver Province during a 37-year career); Cade (PNGA senior director of communications and editor/publisher of “America’s St. Andrews”); and Tony Dear (Bellingham-based author of several books and contributor to many national and regional golf publications — including Cascade Golfer).

In 2010, the Local Legends Award was inaugurated, with Spiwak the first recipient at the association’s annual tournament-banquet at Everett Golf & Country Club. Over the years, these yearly NWGMA events were held at such fine golf clubs as Seattle, Broadmoor, Fircrest, Tacoma, Sand Point, Rainier, Inglewood, Chambers Bay, Pumpkin Ridge, Sahalee, White Horse and Bellingham.

Other Local Legends award recipients include: Loren Lippert (a now-retired Salem mailman who played over 1,000 golf courses, including every single one in the Northwest, and a valuable resource for NW golf writers); Jerry Fehr (20-time club champion at Sand Point Country Club, longtime executive director of the Washington Junior Golf Association, winner of the 1961 Washington Open and father of former PGA Tour player, Rick Fehr); Kent Myers (winner of more Oregon amateur championships than anyone, PNGA Senior Amateur champion, and 2001 Pacific Northwest Hall of Fame inductee); the late John Harbottle III (prolific Tacoma-based golf architect, son of PNGA Hall of Fame members John and Pat Harbottle, and frequent speaker at NWGMA meetings); George Jonson (accountant and longtime board member of PNGA and WA Golf, a key advisor for golf clubs and associations, and leader of the fight against taxing donated rounds of golf for charities and schools/colleges); Mary Lou Mulflur (coach of UW’s women’s golf team for 38 years, led Huskies to 2016 NCAA championship); Ken Still (popular PGA Tour player from Tacoma who played on 1969 Ryder Cup and PGA Tour Champions for 11 years); and Steve Kealy (superintendent at Glendale Country Club in Bellevue, board member of First Green and recipient of two GCSAA national awards).

Co-founding an organization that honored these individuals was very humbling and satisfying. But the thing I am probably most proud of was establishing an NWGMA scholarship for college students interested in becoming a sportswriter. We handed out $2,500 checks (yes, the oversized tournament-winner variety) to Pete Treperinas, Christopher Shaw, Jade Richardson and Jack Russillo. After celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2020, the NWGMA was dissolved earlier this year.

I made the following announcement to the remaining members to explain why: “I — with prior approval by the Board of Directors — have dissolved the nonprofit Northwest Golf Media Association with the State of Washington as of February 9, 2021. The reasons behind this decision: an increasing lack of involvement by the membership; the gradual irrelevance of the association’s mission; lack of golf-media outlets these days; and my desire to step away from trying to keep it sustained through these challenges.

“It has been a mostly fun ride for me and the NWGMA, whose ‘swan song’ was our Oct. 22, 2020, annual cascadegolfer.com

tournament-luncheon on a beautiful day at Sand Point Country Club. I am truly thankful to those of you who believed in the group and contributed to its advancement over the last 25 years. I believe that the NWGMA once had a purpose, but, sadly, this no longer seems the case.

“Thanks again to all who have stuck with and supported the NWGMA, paid annual dues, participated in events and, especially, your friendships and dedication to golf in the Pacific Northwest.”

“By law, funds left in a nonprofit’s bank account must be distributed to similar organizations. NWGMA funds were dispensed to the PNGA, which will use their portion as possible “seed money” for a new scholarship fund; the Northwest Turfgrass Association (now headed by Ramsdell) for one of its two annual scholarships; and In Our Backyard, a Bend, Oregon-based organization which seeks to put an end to human trafficking.”

President Sherwin wrote a note to the members in the NWGMA’s website in advance of the 2020 event at Sand Point, explaining the association’s accomplishments over the years.

“The NWGMA was created in 1995 for those who ‘write, edit, discuss, produce and otherwise impart golf-related articles, books, columns for newspapers, magazines, television, radio, internet, social media and all other forms of communication.”

“Through the years, the nonprofit organization has had a major impact on the region’s golf industry. It has been at the forefront of media spread for events such as the PGA Championship (at Sahalee); the U.S. Amateur

and U.S. Open (both at Chambers Bay); the annual Boeing Classic (Snoqualmie Ridge); dozens of local/regional events and notable players; and detailing the emergence of Chambers Bay, Bandon Dunes, Gamble Sands, and many other new courses.

“NWGMA meetings have also put the spotlight on golf course superintendents, environmental issues related to the game (including water usage), challenges faced by golf-industry changes, and many other newsworthy topics.

“However, changes in media outlets and reporting priorities have reduced the numbers of us golf-related folks. Consequently, NWGMA membership and — particularly — participation, have been affected (the pandemic certainly hasn’t helped).”

I’d like to think the NWGMA played an important role while it lasted, and I’m proud that Bob and I fathered it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jeff Shelley has written and published nine books as well as numerous articles for print and online media over his lengthy career. Among his titles are three editions of the book, “Golf Courses of the Pacific Northwest.” The Seattle resident was the editorial director of Cybergolf.com from 2000-15. For seven years he served as the board president of First Green, an educational outreach program that is now part of the Golf Course Superintendents of America and Environmental Institute for Golf. For more of his writings, many of which are about his golf travels in the Northwest, visit golfcoursetrades.com/tag/jeff-shelley/.

JULY 2021

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POST GAME

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MAJOR MILESTONE — Mickelson’s mark is unparalleled doing what no pro athlete could or can do at 50

BY BOB SHERWIN • CG STAFF WRITER

ow rare was it for 50-year-old Phil Mickelson to win the PGA Championship last month? So rare, there are virtually no parallels anywhere in sports.

It was a remarkable, once-in-our-lifetime feat, especially considering how substandard Mickelson’s numbers were entering the Major.

He was ranked 194th among the PGA Tour professionals in strokes gained off the tee.

His scoring average was beyond 170th. He was ranked 168th in the FedEx Cup standings heading to Kiawah Island, and had won just $344,000 through 34 tournaments in the 2020-21 wraparound PGA Tour schedule.

In early May, Mickelson dropped to 115th in the World Golf Rankings. He had spent a record 1,425 weeks inside the top 100 – since Aug. 15, 1993 — and just 67 of them outside the top 50.

Mickelson was missing fairways, putts and cuts (four in his previous nine tournaments). He appeared on the same inevitable slide as so many other once-prominent PGA stars, his skills fading and his status falling. That’s why they invented the (50 and older) senior tour.

There was a hint that he might be capable of such a monumental achievement the previous week at the Wells Fargo Championship where he opened with a 7-under-par 64 to lead all the young’uns by two strokes. However, he followed that with 75, 76 and 76 to finish 69th, failing to finish in the top 20 for his 18th consecutive tournament.

Yet, he insisted that he was ‘close’. Only he would know; few would believe. According to the folks who are in the business of determining potential major winners, Mickelson’s chances were slim to forgetaboutit. Bookies listed him between 200-to-1 and 300-to-1 to win at Kiawah Island.

But he did. No one had accomplished anything like it in 53 years. The previous oldest player to win a Major was Julius Boros, two generations earlier, at the 1968 PGA Championship. Boros was 48 years, four months, 18 days. Mickelson was 50 years, 11 months and eight days. A good indication of how unparalleled Mickelson’s victory was, is that Boros had beaten the previous record set by Tom Morris, Sr. (46 years, three months, 10 days) at the 1867 Open Championship – 101 years earlier.

In the final analysis, everything lined up for Mickelson to break the age record. Mickelson was the right guy, at the right time, on the right course, in the right sport. We’ve seen other aging athletes with sustained excellence. QB/kicker George Blanda played for 86

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26 seasons until he was 48 years old, and prolific hockey scorer Gordie Howe played 26 seasons until he was 52. They are admired for their sustained success, but they are ‘team’ players. It’s difficult to evaluate an aging players’ contribution within a team framework.

Individual sports, such as golf, tennis, boxing or auto racing, are the best examples for historical age comparisons. Whatever happens, whatever the outcome, it’s all on them. In tennis, which requires supreme fitness and stamina, the oldest to win a Grand Slam event was 44-year-old Ken Rosewall in the 1972 Australian Open. Roger Federer, who has won 20 Grand Slam titles, is 39 and at the back edge of his competitive career.

In the high-speed, quick-reaction sport of auto racing, drivers in their 40s become dangers to themselves and others on the track. A.J. Foyt and Al Unser each won their record fourth Indy 500 at age 47. That was pushing it. Helio Castroneves won his fourth in May, at the age of 46. Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio remains the oldest Formula One driving champion, winning in 1957 at 46 years, 41 days. Bobby Allison and Richard Petty were 45 when they won the NASCAR Cup Series Drivers’ Championship titles. Boxers literally take a beating to limit their careers, but the money is too inviting and the promoters too unscrupulous, leading to imprudent comebacks of past-prime boxers.

The length of the Kiawah Island course played to Mickelson’s advantage. It was among the longest ever for a Major at more than 7,660 yards. Mickelson, who lost 20 pounds and committed himself to better fitness and diet, is still hitting his drives within range of the flexible power boys. For that reason, he plays only sporadically on the ‘retirement’ Champions Tour because, he says, “I’m still bombing my drives.”

Plus, Mickelson might be the greatest short-iron player in history, and Kiawah Island was built on sand with massive waste areas throughout the property — that’s his wheelhouse. On the par 3 5th in the final round, Mickelson flashed his short-game prowess, holing out from the waste area to take a two-stroke lead.

Mother Nature also lent a hand, blowing 25-to-30 mph winds through the first two rounds. Mickelson started at 7:49 am on the back nine Thursday and worked his way through the hazardous stretch from 15-18 before the wind speed had doubled by the afternoon. He hit 11 of 14 fairways in the first round. Those winds caused some of his primary contenders — Dustin Johnson, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Adam Scott, Marc Leishman and Sergio Garcia — to miss the cut.

Favorites such as Rory McIIroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Tyrrell Hatton made the cut, but never broke 70 and finished well back. Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay, Webb Simpson, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Victor Hovland couldn’t sustain any weekend threats.

Brooks Koepka, who was two in 1992 when Mickelson first turned pro, was in the final pairing — impressive given he was still six months away from a full recovery following knee surgery in March – but shot 74 on Sunday.

Mickelson punctuated his path to victory on the par 5 16th when he hit the longest drive of the week, 366 yards – 20 yards past Koepka, to set up a birdie and become the oldest champion in 161 years of major championship golf. After the win, Mickelson moved up to 32nd in the world — a spot he first reached in February 1994 when he was 23 years old.

There were a few Northwest golfers who had decent finishes. Former Oregon stars Aaron Wise (50th) and Wyndham Clark (58th) each earned a check, as did former University of Washington standout Joel Dahmen who finished 68th, pushing his year’s earnings past $1 million. They will all likely be in the field for the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines — something of a ‘home course’ for Mickelson who grew up in the San Diego area.

The U.S. Open, where he has finished second six times, is the title Mickelson needs to complete the career Grand Slam (winning all four Majors). His PGA victory earned him five more chances to finally win it.

The Championship starts June 17 — one day after Mickelson turns 51. cascadegolfer.com