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<\/a>David McLay Kidd<\/p><\/div>\n
The late William Stafford was born in Kansas, but moved to Oregon for good in the mid-1950\u2019s to begin a long tenure at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, named for the great Pacific northwest explorers. Stafford was a transplant, yes, but he ultimately took the state to his heart and it to him, naming him the Poet Laureate of Oregon in 1975.<\/p>\n
The state can do that to you. David McLay Kidd is a Scotsman who came to Oregon to design a golf course and found his ship had come in after he laid out the first, eponymous, course at Bandon Dunes. Kidd went on work on the Castle Course at St. Andrews, Machrihanish Dunes back in the old country and others. But it was when he returned to Oregon to work on the Tetherow Golf Club<\/a> that he was fully swept away, and became a transplant himself. He now makes his home in Bend.<\/p>\n Not that he\u2019s left the old ways too far behind. If one was driven blindfolded to first tee at Tetherow and the covering only then removed, it might take some convincing that downtown Bend is only about eight minutes away. The wide-open, virtually treeless expanse stretching out in front suggests that one is far distant from normal commerce, and quite possibly perched on the edge of the Atlantic on a Scottish links course. But then the Cascade range comes back into focus, and the central Oregon high desert flora.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no question that one is far from a remotely similar golf course in the area. Kidd was able to plop a Scottish themed links-style course here because there was a huge forest fire in the area (the Awbrey Hall fire) in 1990 that burned through 3,300 acres. The sparsely treed landscape puts the wind into play more than on other Oregon courses, and Tetherow also eschews the more common well-watered bent or blue grasses in favor of occasionally browned-out fescue.<\/p>\n From the first tee at Tetherow<\/p><\/div>\n The resultant firm and fast fairways and greens changes the way the game should be played here. One way it shouldn\u2019t be played is from the tips, called the Kidd tees, stretching to 7,298 yards. This would be suicidal for a mid-handicapper. Kidd himself has called the tee boxes here the Hard, Harder or Impossible, and it\u2019s difficult to tell how much he was joking. When the course first opened in July of 2008 there seemed to be no middle ground in reactions\u2014people either loved it or hated it, the latter reaction mainly because the course simply seemed too difficult.<\/p>\n It has been softened since, but it\u2019s not soft. Our group played a combo between the Black (6,955 yards) and Tan (6,459) tees, which worked out to a 72.4\/137 rating and was more than enough to chew on.<\/p>\n It helps to know how to play the course. As co-owner Chris Van der Velde told us, \u201cYou have to take a forecaddie here, and my recommendation is to listen to him.\u201d We listened to Van der Velde, who played our first nine with us (holes 10-18), who designed the course\u2019s yardage book, who played on the European Tour from 1989-2002 (and cashed in a handful of PGATour checks as well), and who still has game despite dual knee replacement surgeries.<\/p>\n Chris Van der Velde (right) with Golf Road Warrior Jeff Wallach<\/p><\/div>\n He pointed out areas where he and Kidd has hacked away a mound here, or widened the fairways there, and his entertaining scenic tour may have blinded me to his strategic advice: my second nine was nine strokes better than the first half.<\/p>\n By then I knew that flying the ball at the pins was pointless. \u201cUse the bump and run whenever you can,\u201d said Van der Velde. \u201cThe air game won\u2019t be that successful here, so use the wedge only when you really need to fly it over something. The rest of the time, take your putter and run your ball right over the ridges.\u201d<\/p>\n Chris Van der Velde showing good form at the dramatic seventeenth hole<\/p><\/div>\n Any time I can take the wedge out of my hands around the green it\u2019s a good thing. But even once on the greens there are adventures to be had. The canted slopes can take a ball in unpredictable directions. Maybe even into the cup, if lucky. I can\u2019t claim more than that on the 189-yard seventh, after I exploded out of a bunker left of the green and had the ball roll far from the hole. I had to hit about an eighty-foot putt over all sorts of humps and tilts, afraid that I was under-clubbed. The ball took a wild run and dove right in, a most improbable sandy.<\/p>\n Tetherow’s par-3 seventeenth hole<\/p><\/div>\n Jeff Wallach, in a sandy mess of scrub behind the fourth green, completely muffed his intended shot, yet the ball managed to dribble onto the surface and somehow acquired momentum\u2014winding up less than a foot from the hole.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>