I've had a few days to reflect since coming back from the great Pacific Northwest, and to just sort of explain, while I am a Southern Californian at heart, the summers of my youth, at least three weeks to one month of it annually were spent in Oregon, with visits to the great state of Washington. I want to explain that there is some sentimentality and bias here.
With that, I feel very fortunate and lucky in the fact I've gotten to see two of the these states great courses before they opened: Pacific Dunes and Chambers Bay.
Without having to reprise in detail of just how great Pacific Dunes, and all of Bandon is for that matter, I think what is most important is the fact that you have one of the more commercially viable golf architecture firms, Robert Trent Jones II redirecting their energies and throwing their hat into an arena which they are in complete foreign territory, or at least, territory which places them into a class and style which they are unaccustomed too--the golf course connoisseur. (such as ourselves--the guys that will prod, nitpick and over-analyze a golf course to its most extreme.)
Chambers Bay is "our" kind of golf course.
This wasn't the best piece of property which to build a golf course, but it certainly has to be one of th more dramatic being that it's an old abandon quarry that from the top of it's bluff on the shoreline of Pugent Sound. It makes a perfect setting for the city chiefs to jump off of, should this elaborate scheme to build a municipal 'walking-only' course on the scale of what us purists would call a great golfing experience!
You see, Chambers Bay is built for people like us. The attention to detail of grasping the history of the site itself, as well as utilizing features which are not only 'golfable,' but are going to make us want to get back there again and again. However, I must warn that sites like this do have some quirks to them. In this case there is a hilly nature to Chambers that might set the tone to criticisms of it not being the best routing. You just look at the one corner of the property and say to yourself, "I have to play up to there?!?!" (It's really not that bad, as the routing more or less gently take you up to those points)
I think there is only one definitive way of answering this: I dare any city to build something similar and not face some sort of opposition that could render the entire project null and void. For that, I think the routing is about as good as it could get when considering that the non-golfing public was brought into mind for their hiking trails.
But this is a GREAT thing. The mixing of the public getting to actually walk near and around the course and see others play--similar to that of the Old Course of St. Andrews; the trains running back and forth along the front shoreline which are a unique part of the experience, and even the eventual building or rebuilding of the old pier to allow oats to tie-up and make there was about the place--something much bigger yet to come.
Given I was just off of the road after a 26 hour drive from Southern California, the course might have been like a dream or mirage to me, but given the experience, I'll do my best to explain what I saw and what I think.
If any of you like golf, then go to Chambers Bay. I can easily say that it's the best modern day municipally-owned golf course built--at least from what I've seen.
The opening hole, is going to be a killer--somewhat straight--STRAIGHT INTO THE SAME WIND that in 1938 was responsible for sending the nearby Tacoma Narrows Bridge aka Galloping Gerde, rocking back and forth to it's demise, when it eventually ripped itself apart and fell into the sound below. The fairway movement if reminiscent of that rocking back and forth nature, playing off of the huge sand hill, hence my thinking that it's a perfect name for the golf hole.
There is going to be plenty of movement at Chambers on the greens and throughout the fairways. It's going to be a roller coaster ride of excitement while playing golf, all the while giving you a view of the lower Pugent Sound that could produce a postcard so dramatic, that sales from it could fund Mike Keiser's next golf projects.
Some of the shaping is magnificent at Chambers Bay. Some of the tees look as if they were bought form a links course on the East Coast of Scotland and shipped over complete. There are other areas which you can tell, need to be given a little more time, but that would be nitpicking.
In trying to keep this short and sweet, Expect this course, make this course a must see on your next trip to Bandon or more. It's only about 2 hours max from Portland's airport and the drive up is more then decent.
In closing, I want to add that your going to be hearing a lot about RTJII himself, being involved in this project--more then any in a long, long time. Being that I want to give credit where credit is due, I refuse to believe that. This golf course is like no other RTJII you've ever seen. So much, that it's obvious whoever Jay Blasi is, he has done a lot of studying, reading and shares a passion for the sport and it's history that far exceeds anything the Jones family has ever done or accomplished in their great and fortunate golfing lifetimes. However I do credit RTJII, Strawnie and Bruce for giving this kid his chance to prove himself. He certainly has built one hell of a golf course. At least of what my tired old eyes saw.