Funky course gets a reprieve

It is almost like a death in the family when a golf course goes down.

So even my wife seem to understand the urgency as I rushed to Port Townsend to play one of my favorite golf retreats — Discovery Bay, formerly known as Chevy Chase — before it closed.

It was early last month, they hadn't cut the fairways since December, there was only one other group on the course, but the round was as satisfying as it was sentimental.

I had to say goodbye.

For possibly the first time, there will be fewer golf courses in this country than the previous year, courses closing faster than they open.

North Shore in Tacoma is on its last legs, to be transformed next year into 860 homes if the final stage of permitting goes as expected.

Tall Chief near Fall City is 12 holes instead of 18 because of development. The owners of Lipoma Firs in Puyallup admit their course will someday be homes, not fairways.

A few years ago, I met with members of the long-gone Olympic View course in Ballard on a residential street corner and well-known Northwest players like Don Bies and Jerry Fehr pointed to a house where the first tee used to be.

Once courses go, they never come back.

Golf overbuilt in the 1990s and early 2000s. Although Tiger Woods brought unprecedented attention to the game, it still was plagued by the toos: too expensive, takes too much time, and is too hard to play.

What we've seen is a weeding-out process. Home developers are picking off the weak. A course has to find a niche, whether it is Bandon Dunes at $200 a round or Gold Mountain at $35 a round.

I talked some friends into playing the Port Townsend course, named Chevy Chase for more than 75 years, before it was no more.

They thought they were in Maine with views of Discovery Bay from the 1920s clubhouse, not to mention the course's quirky nature, like a 10-foot-high log platform that for years served as the second tee.

At one time you teed off across a road, and between a couple of cabins, on the ninth hole. The place was wonderfully funky.

But in trying to get too big — a second nine was added in 1996 — Discovery Bay, as it is now called, almost died. It had no niche.

I went up there preparing to write a requiem for a golf course, and found out instead that the course would live on after the owner, Mike Asmundson, said it was finished.

The easy route for Asmundson was to just let the course go and proceed with developing 48 lots on its borders.

He said the course had lost money 10 of the past 11 years and the bank wouldn't finance his project unless it was rid of golf. The county wouldn't let the land on which golf was played be developed, so it would just go wild and be some kind of impromptu park.

But the locals, whom Asmundson said were more passionate about saving the course than they had been about playing it, threatened to bog down the project.

So Asmundson will try to keep it going, but not at the level he had hoped. He is, after all, a golf architect. He designed the new back nine. He designed for Weyerhaeuser the course that is waiting to be played in Dupont.

His dream was to make the old, funky front nine as good as the back nine, which is very good. He was going to redo five holes, but instead will complete changes on holes No. 2 and No. 3 and do no more, content to keep the course self-sustaining, spending only what it brings in.

Perhaps less will be more.

He won't hire a pro. He'll cut the green fees from something over $30 to $20, no matter what day of the week, and just $15 for nine holes. He'll have an all-day rate of $25.

He'll also cut the maintenance budget from $250,000 a year to $180,000 or $10,000 a year for each hole.

He plans to use less water and fewer chemicals. They won't do any extensive sanding projects, or any projects at all.

"We're going to provide a quaint, rural golf experience," said Asmundson, "without excessive detailing of the course.

"The greens will be good; they've always been good."

Asmundson said the number of rounds dropped to barely 10,000 last year. He said the only time in the past decade the course made money was when nearby Dungeness golf course in Sequim had damage to its greens.

In retrospect, building the back nine and the ensuing $1 million debt was the course's undoing. Revenues didn't double; expenses did.

Those wanting inexpensive, bare-bones golf in the area went to the municipal course in Port Townsend. Those willing to spend more money played at Dungeness or Port Ludlow, or McCormick Woods, or Gold Mountain or Trophy Lake.

Discovery Bay remained the domain of only a few.

"It's important to give the course one last shot," said Asmundson. "I want to live here and be a part of this community, and the course is definitely part of the community."

He'd like to use the grand old clubhouse as a community gathering place, doing weddings and whatever else he can figure out.

As for the course, Asmundson said, "as long as you have good greens, that's all that matters. Forget the Augusta look. Maybe that's what's wrong with golf today."

Maybe it is.

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