{"id":427,"date":"2009-09-20T10:02:39","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T17:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffwallach.com\/?p=427"},"modified":"2011-03-02T17:13:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T00:13:05","slug":"musical-score-rtj-iis-new-chambers-bay-golf-course-sings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/golf\/courses-and-travel\/427\/musical-score-rtj-iis-new-chambers-bay-golf-course-sings","title":{"rendered":"Musical Score! RTJ II\u2019s New Chambers Bay Golf Course Sings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chambers Bay arouses a toasty longing for other great courses you\u2019ve played or seen or that exist in the collective golfing unconscious. Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry<\/p><\/div>\n

Much like great music or literature, the best golf courses can ratchet up your emotions directly, but they can also create a rich nostalgia by stirring memories and feelings associated with other masterpieces of their artistic genre that you\u2019re familiar with.\u00a0 Chambers Bay, the new public course designed by Robert Trent Jones II outside Tacoma, Washington, immediately elicits intense, symphonic, even operatic tinglings.\u00a0 At different moments the course resonates like a Mozart aria, a Hendrix guitar riff, an orchestra playing Wagner, and a crooning Hank Williams ballad.\u00a0 It moves you directly with the sheer epic beauty of rolling grasslands pouring between wild mounds and tipping down toward the edge of Puget Sound in great green glory.\u00a0 It amps you up with the potential heroics of golf shots that demand a pulling out of stops and a swinging out of shoes.\u00a0 At other moments the course mellows you by keening mournfully like the melodic climbing and plunging of an Irish jig.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Chambers Bay arouses a toasty longing for other great courses you\u2019ve played or seen or that exist in the collective golfing unconscious.\u00a0 Holes are not derivative but simply evocative in the same way as a purely struck Santana chord or a violin melody played by Isaac Stern.\u00a0 Citing how this evocation works in another artistic genre, poet and golf course architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr. himself compares it to Proust being flooded with childhood memories by a piece of cake.<\/p>\n

Chambers Bay\u2019s overall character is Irish, connoting Ballybunion with holes tunneling between massive sandy ridges.\u00a0 Amusing quirks (not the least of which is a train running past occasionally) speak with the Scottish lilt of Prestwick or North Berwick. You can\u2019t help but compare Chambers Bay to the idyllic linkslands at Bandon Dunes six hours down the coast.\u00a0 Certain aspects echo Nicklaus\u2019s brilliant efforts at Old Works, in Montana, also a reclamation site.\u00a0 And yet other views conjure Pete Dye\u2019s artistry at Whistling Straits.\u00a0 These tiny revelations alight fleetingly, without warning, and lend a component of happy reminiscence and surprise to playing the course.<\/p>\n

For most of the past century, the current site of Chambers Bay was home to a gristmill, saw mill, and gravel mine.\u00a0 When the property was abandoned some years ago it appeared as an unsightly gouge in the surrounding Northwest landscape of forested islands and distant views of the snow-capped Olympic Mountains.<\/p>\n

Not only does the Chambers Bay Golf Course tell a triumphant reclamation story about turning a wasteland into a gorgeous asset; it also illustrates how a government can actually act in the best interests of its constituents.\u00a0 The visionaries behind the larger Chambers Creek Project\u2014which includes the golf course, parks and other amenities spread across 930 acres\u2014were not real estate developers or corporate CEOs.\u00a0 County Executives such as John Ladenburg, and other public servants such as county project manager Tony Tipton architected the concept of this brilliant walking-only public golf course that locals can play at a great discount because they funded it.<\/p>\n

And in case you thought Chambers Bay might be missing any crucial angle of perfection, throw in that romance of the passing trains (which may at some future point stop at the property), boats plying the blue waters of the Sound (one day golfers may be able to arrive by boat), and even \u201cancient\u201d ruins adjacent to the playing surfaces\u2014in this case, the castle-like ramparts of huge sorting bins left over from the mining era.\u00a0 Lastly, the course was envisioned to host tournaments\u2014and not just for local sticks but featuring the big boys, playing from 7,600 tough, windy yards, in front of 40,000 fans.\u00a0 Major tournaments\u2014and by major, that\u2019s exactly what I mean. \u00a0The USGA, which had been hoping to host the U.S. Open in this far flung but golfalicious corner of the country, has made a fine choice for the 2015 event.<\/p>\n

Upon arrival, drive toward a clubhouse that seems perched on the very precipice of the continent.\u00a0 Just beyond it, 200 vertical feet of earth have been clawed away over the past century, creating a concave topography recently crafted into massive dunes carved by raging rivers of green turf edged with acres of wild waste areas and hectic fescues, all punctuated by soft, sculpted, rolling greens. Seen from above, contrasts stand out.<\/p>\n

Then you descend, confusing your notion that heaven is a place above us.\u00a0 Below, the overall mood is of mystery as you appreciate the scale and intimacies of a site full of mounds and humps and hummocks, sideslopes and sheer drops, all drifting and tilting westward toward the gleaming waters of Puget Sound.\u00a0 And at the very edge, a lone fir\u2014the only tree on property\u2014 marks the transition where sand dunes drop down to the sea.<\/p>\n

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Second hole. Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry<\/p><\/div>\n

The golf holes themselves are sublime, each proffering choices and intricacies.\u00a0 Fairways are huge, allowing players to swing with abandon.\u00a0 Waste areas are as large as northeastern states. \u00a0Wind may suggest adoption of a ground game, but you can punch run ups or attack aerially or invent a hundred other creative ways to play these holes, which may seem different each time you confront them.\u00a0 As Robert Trent Jones, Jr. says, \u201cYou can play more options at Chambers Bay than at the Chicago Futures market.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are few tee boxes in the traditional sense\u2014just ribbons of fairway set with markers\u2014which couldn\u2019t be more different from the classical runway tees that characterized RTJ II\u2019s earliest work. Jones describes the greens as \u201cextensions of the fairways, not separate features.\u201d\u00a0 Neither is there much traditional bunkering\u2014another sign that this design firm has been resuscitated by young talent, fresh corporate vision, and the enduring architectural poetry of Jones himself.\u00a0 In fact, the architect reflects that the Chambers Bay project reminded him of his work on such other links masterpieces as Spanish Bay and Australia\u2019s Cape Schank.\u00a0 He gives much of the credit for the fine work at Chambers Bay to architect Bruce Charlton, the man behind many great Jones layouts, who was assisted by Jay Blasi, a talented 28-year-old with a very bright future.<\/p>\n

According to Jones, the first hole at Chambers Bay offers \u201cechoes of the Old Course at St. Andrews.\u00a0 Numbers one and eighteen share a joined fairway that\u2019s one big, grassy turfland.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 But Chambers Bay evokes St. Andrews in other ways, as well.\u00a0 Jones continues, \u201cIn terms of community, the towns own both courses.\u00a0 There are walking trails through both and both have a sewage plant adjacent to the course.\u00a0 As a player of both courses your game and character are very much on display\u2014everyone can see you and watch you play.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, many of the holes at Chambers Bay play close by to a public trail system where galleries gather\u2014as they do at St. Andrews\u2019s Road Hole and the eighteenth green\u2014 to give witness.\u00a0 Jones also believes that Chambers Bay will help Tacoma the way the golf courses help St. Andrews\u2014by attracting people and aiding in the town\u2019s renaissance.<\/p>\n

The brilliance and versatility of the design are both subtle and obvious at different times.\u00a0 Multiple fairways on a number of holes serve up different views and shot values. Rather than prancing around the topography\u2019s major feature as many courses do, and instead of teasing to build tension, the opening hole here plays right smack at Puget Sound.<\/p>\n

Further on, number six green and surrounding humps reinforce the course\u2019s Irish pedigree.\u00a0 Number seven presents a sort of neo-classic Cape Hole bending right around a huge waste area and presenting two huge waste mounds in the fairway fronting the green, creating some blind approaches depending upon where your drive lands.<\/p>\n

Jay Blasi calls number eight \u201cpossibly the longest hole in the world without a bunker.\u201d\u00a0 The fairway is a 602-yard expanse of grassed mesas tucked between steep sideslopes\u2014the upper left slope helping balls back to the fairway, the lower right hustling them away forever.\u00a0 The front side ends with the most epic hole on the course\u2014a terrific par three of between 132 and 227 yards with a drop of over 100 feet over a ravine that looks like something out of Middle Earth.\u00a0 The sculpted half punchbowl green floats above a huge waste area and falls off in the back to serve up views of Mount Olympus.\u00a0 Do not look back from the green to the tee if you\u2019re prone to vertigo.\u00a0 And keep an eye out for hobbits.<\/p>\n

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Tenth hole. Photo by John and Jeannine Henebry<\/p><\/div>\n

The back side opens with a perfect and perfectly Bandonesque par four that narrows as it climbs uphill toward the green between two massive dunes that close in like the walls of a canyon. Jones calls the hole, with it\u2019s manufactured dunes \u201cone of my master works.\u00a0 It plays into a tunnel like an uphill version of Spyglass number four\u2014the view is wide open with the sea in the distance yet it still feels claustrophobic.\u201d Number twelve presents the ever-loveable drivable par four\u2014but in this case you\u2019ll need to crush a blind shot 300 yards uphill to the largest but craziest green on the course.\u00a0 At number thirteen the layout assumes an openness that allows for some calming breaths and expansive views across the entire golfing grounds.\u00a0 Rest while you can.<\/p>\n

The finish is both unusual and strong, with two par threes and a par five coming in the final four holes.\u00a0 Number fifteen presents a 175-yard downhill par three with a pot bunker left, a huge bowl o\u2019 waste area, and the layout\u2019s lone tree and Puget Sound beyond.\u00a0 Seventeen is a long par three that will usually play into the wind and that can stretch to 240 yards over snaky waste areas with a narrow opening to the green.\u00a0 Eighteen departs from the edge of the water beside ancient mining ruins and disappears into the Irish distance beyond curving waste areas where leprechauns surely frolic.<\/p>\n

RTJ II risked several innovative techniques in designing Chambers Bay.\u00a0 The firm left deep tire ruts in much of the constructed mounding to hold grass seed and water because those areas of play are not irrigated.\u00a0 Nature will shape and weather these dunes as it sees fit.\u00a0 The sort of post-industrial look can appear very cool or utterly alarming, and only time will tell whether thickening fescues will soften these lines as intended.\u00a0 The company also designed holes five and six so they can be played as either long or short holes depending upon which of two greens is in play on five (which determines which set of tees you play from on number six), thus lending the course additional flexibility.\u00a0 And although it\u2019s a walking-only course, Chambers is no walk in the park, with several steep climbs and descents that could\u00a0 lead to slow play\u2014hence an active caddy program.\u00a0 Surely the superb management of KemperSports will address any problems that arise.<\/p>\n

No real estate will ever mar the landscape at Chambers Bay, though future plans may include lodgings and even a second golf course.\u00a0 But that\u2019s an encore that hasn\u2019t yet been played.\u00a0 So hold up your lighter, cheer wildly, and hope for another rousing song.<\/p>\n

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From left to right: Bruce Charlton, Robert Trent Jones, Jr., and Jay Blasi.<\/p><\/div>\n

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