World-class golf ... in Tacoma

TACOMA — I still remember getting the first postcard from Bandon Dunes in 1998 announcing development of a British-style, dunes golf course on the remote southern Oregon coast where there would be no carts allowed and green fees would be $100.

I knew Bandon, Ore., and how difficult it was to get there, and to suggest it could create a course comparable to Ballybunion in Ireland had to be so much hype and hooey.

"That's got no chance to succeed," I thought.

Which brings us now to Chambers Bay, an exhausted gravel pit south of the Narrows Bridge in Tacoma where Pierce County has built a $20 million links course that, like Bandon, will demand golfers walk the course while charging greens fees that peak at $150.

Last week, on a cold, foggy morning, I walked most of the course. I came prepared to rag on the county for forsaking public players, for creating a playground for rich guys at the expense of taxpayers.

Then you imagine the unimaginable, of playing a links course that compares with anything in the British Isles but has a backdrop of Puget Sound, views that spread across the water to Anderson and McNeil islands, all the way to the snow-capped Olympics.

Chambers Bay expects to open for public play the third week of June. It will be operated by Kemper Sports of Chicago, which also operates Bandon Dunes.

It is my guess that those who rate courses will conclude this is the best new course in the country. It looked to me to have more good golf holes than either Bandon Dunes or the resort's second course, Pacific Dunes, the latter recently ranked the country's top public-access golf course, surpassing Pebble Beach.

The course meanders through three-story high dunes designed not by God, but by the architectural team of Robert Trent Jones Jr., which played God with remarkable creativity and concern, gracefully shaping sand over 200 acres.

"There is no other site like it in the United States," said Jay Balsi, the lead architect for Jones. "It was screaming for a great links golf course."

Chambers Bay is inherently not as spectacular as Bandon Dunes because it isn't on the Pacific Ocean, or as quirky, but, as far as I could tell, looks to be in the same league.

Why Tacoma?

It is either one man's fantasy — or his folly — with the golfers and the voters ultimately deciding. County executive John Ladenburg didn't want to waste the site for just another public golf course.

"The golfers in Pierce County have plenty of good, reasonably priced places to play," he said. "This is about economic development for Pierce County."

It is also about Ladenburg's political future. He is gambling that revenues from the course will pay off the bonds to build it and then some. That Chambers Bay will become the place you have to play in Puget Sound. Of course, if it doesn't, taxpayers will be left to replace the divots.

The county's sewer district owns the property, nearly 900 acres. In upgrading its treatment plant, it needed an area to dispose of treated effluent. A golf course made sense.

But what kind of golf course? The original idea embraced 27 holes of really good public golf. The obvious designer would be local John Harbottle, who has done great work in the West, including Bremerton's Gold Mountain.

But Ladenburg wanted more. Or less. He wanted 18 great holes, not 27 good ones, so Tacoma could go after the U.S. Open or the U.S. Amateur. He wanted Robert Trent Jones Jr. to do the best work of his considerable career in a huge sandbox that knew no limitations.

The site was as big as Jones needed. The ground nothing but gravel and sand. There were no housing plots to worry about, no wetlands. No budget restraints.

Jones left two giant ridges on the well-mined property, but around them moved more than a million cubic yards of sand to the edge of the property, sifted it, then replaced it to look like Ireland.

Fairways are as wide as the architects wanted them to be, dunes as high as sand could be piled, bunkers everywhere, one covering almost 6 acres. One hole has two greens, another two fairways. A train runs between the course and the water, like along the coast of England or Scotland.

Right now you can see the marks left by tractors that shaped the dunes. In six months, under tall, wispy fescue grass, you won't. Ten years from now you'll think that the course just came that way.

"It's really better than I ever imagined," Ladenburg said.

So they built it. But will they come?

It doesn't have the getting-away-from-it appeal of Bandon Dunes. But neither is it a seven-hour drive from Seattle, although on Friday afternoons it might feel like it. There will eventually be overnight accommodations on the property.

Rather than Bandon Dunes, the comparable might be the recently renovated Harding Park in San Francisco. Or even Torrey Pines in San Diego, site of the 2008 U.S. Open. They have become the place you want to play when you're in town.

Harding Park charges $165 a round, Bandon Dunes $240. In that company, Chambers Bay is cheap. But put up against Gold Mountain, the site of the U.S. Public Links championship where green fees are $40, it is expensive.

Pierce County residents will get a price break, paying green fees as low as $65. Other locals might well choose to play the course in the winter, when rates are lower and firm conditions make for great year-round play.

Whatever happens, this is the real deal. The course isn't a links wannabe. Fescue grass will make greens slow and fairways fast. The battle will be with the wind and the bunkers, and, of course, your family finances.

In Tacoma, of all places.

Comments for Blaine Newnham can be e-mailed to sports@seattletimes.com