Golf Notebook | The new Wine Valley GC is no easy task despite no trees

The headline golf course opening in Washington this year is the public Wine Valley Golf Club, seven miles west of Walla Walla.

Designed by Dan Hixson whose debut course was Bandon Crossing in Bandon, Ore., the 18-hole, par-72 course opened in mid-April on the site of what were alfalfa and wheat fields. In promotional material, Hixson writes:

"This golf course is marked by open spaces and movement created by wind and water over thousands and thousands of years. Conditions change every day, or more often than that. You can't just come out here and play it the same way over and over. You've got to think and adapt, and to me, that is what makes golf fun."

The course doesn't have a single tree and Hixson said nature did most of the designing.

"We moved more dirt building three ponds and the driving range than we did on the course," Hixson said.

When Hixson first visited the site, he turned to John Thorsnes, the co-owner who will be director of golf, and said, "The hardest part is going to be finding the best 18 holes because I see as many as 150 holes from right here." (The other co-owner is Jim Pliska, owner of Emerald Valley Golf Club in Creswell, Ore.)

The standard greens fees will be $75 (plus tax) Friday through Sunday and $60 (plus tax) Monday through Thursday. From the championship tees, the course measures 7,360 yards and has been given a course rating (what an expert would shoot) of 75.5 and a slope rating of 130 (a standard course is 113).

From the white tees, the course is 5,845 yards with a 68.3 rating and a 118 slope for men and 73.7 and 124 for women.

There are plans to develop homesites around the course.

The initial clubhouse is a permanent building that is planned to become the banquet room when a clubhouse is built in 3-5 years that will include 10 rooms of on-site accommodations.

ThecourseWebsiteiswww.winevalleygolfclub.com.

Course changes

• Sun Country Golf Resort and RV Park outside Cle Elum opened its nine-hole addition last Saturday and now has 18 holes.

John Steidel (Eaglemont, Lynnwood, Canyon Lakes) designed the new holes, which are playing as holes No. 6 through No. 14 until a new clubhouse is built. The new holes total 2,646 yards from the back tees, giving the course a total of 5,507 yards. Par is 71 for men and 72 for women.

Steidel said one of his goals was to make the course "friendly." The Kennewick designer said some of the new short par-4's will remind golfers of the Lynnwood course.

Sun Country bills itself as a low-cost alternative to nearby Prospector at Suncadia.

Despite its lack of yardage, Sun Country has a rating of 68.1 from its back tees and a slope rating of 114 (113 is a "standard" course).

• The opening of the upscale Rope Rider course at Suncadia outside Cle Elum is being pushed back because of the slowdown in the economy. Construction or completion of the final seven holes will be stretched over this year and next year with the course expected to open in 2011, according to Brady Hatfield, head golf pro at Suncadia's Prospector course.

• After closing in early March for course rehabilitation and the replacement of many bentgrass greens with poa annua sod, the China Creek and Coal Creek courses at The Golf Club at Newcastle are due to reopen this month.

The China Creek course will reopen next Sunday (Mother's Day) and the Coal Creek course will reopen on a yet-undesignated date later in the month.

During the suspension of play, work was also done to improve many tees, bunkers and fairways. There were several aerification and drainage projects.

• Riverbend Golf Course in Kent has undergone a $1.25 million remodeling project that was prompted by U.S. Corps of Engineers flood-control work on the Green River that flows through the course. As a result, on the front nine there are three new greens, eight new tees and new bunkers on six holes. No overall yardage was lost. The front nine was closed from last September until April for construction.

• The opening of Cascadia Golf and Country Club, a John Harbottle III-designed public course in the planned massive Cascadia development outside Bonney Lake in Pierce County, has been postponed until the fall of 2010 or the spring of 2011, according to company president Patrick Kuo. The rough grading of the course has been completed.

• Port Ludlow Resort has closed its Trail Nine because of the economic downturn. The Trail Nine opened in 1992. The resort's other two nines remain open.

• In the biggest offseason deal in Puget Sound golf, Oki Golf purchased Trilogy Golf Club at Redmond Ridge and has renamed it The Golf Club at Redmond Ridge. Oki has nine properties and a total of 11 courses.

• Lake Spanaway Golf Course in Pierce County has new tees designed by Harbottle.

• Bellevue's par-3 hole No. 6 (it was No. 15 before nines were switched) is being extended with new tees capable of making it a 190-yard hole. The hole had been considered one of the weakest on the popular course.

• The Home Course in DuPont has changed yardage and par of two holes. No. 11 was a par 3 and is now a par 4. No. 12, which was a par 4, is now a par 3.

Notes

• UW men's coach Matt Thurmond will coach the U.S. team in the Palmer Cup June 3-5 at Cherry Hills Country Club outside Denver. The Palmer Cup is a U.S. vs. Europe competition between teams of eight golfers.

• Talk about a nice rotation of courses. The University of Washington men's team is welcome to practice at these course on these days: Mondays — Seattle Golf Club; Tuesdays — Overlake Golf and Country Club; Wednesdays — The Members Club at Aldarra; Thursdays — Inglewood Golf Club; Fridays — Broadmoor Golf Club. Also, the team is free to practice any time at Washington National, where they often have one end of the driving range to themselves.

The Husky women's team has this appealing rotation: Mondays — Broadmoor; Tuesdays — Aldarra; Wednesdays — Washington National; Thursdays — Sahalee Country Club; Fridays — Sand Point Country Club.

• The new 4,500-square foot indoor practice facility in Hec Edmundson Pavilion for UW golf teams will have its grand opening June 6. The facility will include hitting stations, indoor putting and a team lounge area.

• Golf Digest's top 10 courses in Washington for 2009: 1, Sahalee Country Club, Samamish; 2, Tumble Creek, Suncadia outside Cle Elum; 3, Members Club at Aldarra, Fall City; 4, Royal Oaks Country Club, Vancouver; 5, Chambers Bay (public), University Place; 6, TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge; 7, Canterwood Country Club, Gig Harbor; 8, Gold Mountain-Olympic, Bremerton; 9, Eaglemont (public), Mount Vernon; 10, Tacoma Country and Golf Club, Lakewood.

• The Puget Sound area is part of the Golf Channel Amateur Tour and there are 10 remaining local events including stops at The Home Course, Oakbrook Country Club, Gold Mountain-Olymic, Trophy Lake, Washington National and other courses. Local winners qualify for the 72-hole national championship. For further information, contact Frank Fauls at 360-943-6353 or fbfgolf@Comcast.net or visit www.theGOLFCHANNEL.com/amateurtour.

• The Washington State Golf Association is adding two new tournaments this year. One is the 18-hole WSGA Parent-Child Championship and the 36-hole Champion of Champions for men and women.

The Parent-Child Championship will be July 24 at McCormick Woods outside Port Orchard. Any combination of family members such as grandparent-grandchild or uncle-niece or nephew, is allowable. Stepchildren and adopted children are eligible and so are teams with an adult child and an older parent.

The Champions of Champions event will be Oct. 13-14 at The Home Course in DuPont. Club champions are eligible as are winners of WSGA events and the top 10 men on the performance list and top five women.

• The WSGA is sponsoring "casual golf days" this season that will enable golfers to play at private courses they might not otherwise get to play. The first "casual golf day" is today (April 30) at Tacoma Country and Golf Club. Only WSGA members may participate and the Tacoma fee of $99 includes lunch. Upcoming courses are the Spokane Country Club on May 14 and Chambers Bay on May 26.

• A three-day fall golf show, Golf Fest Northwest, is set for Sept. 25-27 at the Washington State Convention Center. The show will be presented by Seattle-based Varsity Communications, Inc., which publishes Cascade Golfer magazine and presents golf shows in Portland and other cities in the West.

• Attendance at the Seattle Golf Show in March was up 17 percent this year. The dates for next year's show haven't been determined but organizers hope to keep the event on the weekend before the NCAA basketball tournament begins.

• A coalition of golf interests has formed the group Washington Golf Alliance and the organization has commissioned an economic impact study of golf in the state.

Backers of the Alliance contend that legislators don't understand the role golf plays in the state economy by generating revenue and jobs. They hope that the study results in more respect for the golf industry and increased reluctance to pass legislation that they say interferes with it.

A similar study in Hawaii declared that in 2007 the economic impact of golf in the islands was $2.5 billion supporting nearly 30,187 jobs with $854 million of wage income.

People in the news

• O.D. Vincent, who won the individual Pac-10 title as a Washington Husky in 1988 then later successfully coached the Huskies from 1995-2001 is now senior associate athletic director at the UW.

Vincent, who coached golf at UCLA and Duke after leaving the UW, doesn't oversee golf at the UW but crew, swimming and tennis report to him as does the market and sports-information offices. Vincent's wife, the former Jana Ellis, is the daughter of former Husky swim coach Earl Ellis.

• Kim Welch, former WSU All-American and winner of The Golf Channel's "Big Break Ka'anapali" show, now has a multiyear partnership with Ka'anapli Golf Resort to promote the resort. Welch is on the LPGA Tour this year after finishing in the top 10 on the 2008 Duramed Futures Tour. Ka'anapali is her official home course.

• Kyle Stanley, a Clemson University junior from Gig Harbor who is among the nation's top collegiate golfers, got to play in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March as the winner of last year's Southern Amateur. Stanley missed the cut.

• Jonathan Moore, the Vancouver, Wash., native who won the 2006 NCAA championship playing for Oklahoma State, is playing on the eGolf Professional Tour, a mini-tour that was called the Tarheel Tour last season. Moore, a hero in the 2007 Walker Cup where he scored the clinching point, won an event last year on the Tarheel Tour but didn't get past the second stage of PGA Qualifying School. He is living in Tulsa, Okla., because his fiancée is attending optometry school there. Moore also competes in Monday qualifiers for the Nationwide and PGA Tour events.