Just as the economy begins to recover, the Squaxin Island tribe prepares to open a stunning new Gene Bates-designed course among steep bluffs and towering pines in Shelton
by Craig Smith
So, here I am, stuck in the mud with a famous golf course designer.
Gene Bates is showing me the cleared land on a hillside that will become the second hole of Salish Cliffs Golf Club. The wheels on his SUV are spinning in glop from an overnight drenching, the latest chapter of an all-too-soggy spring.
Do we call AAA? Hardly. Bates gets on his cell phone and within minutes I hear a rumble on the hillside. A bulldozer muscles its way down the hill, the operator smiles at Bates, and then begins pushing dirt around. Presto! We escape on what amounts to an immediately rebuilt construction road.
We visit the other holes under construction without incident, which might qualify as a mild surprise because this is a course being carved out of thick woods in one of the wettest springs on record.
As we visit one crafted hole under construction after another, I am watching the golf equivalent of an unborn baby. The more we drive and see, the more my thoughts shift from, Where are we going to get stuck next? to, This is going to be a contender for a berth on top-10 lists of Washington courses.
The par-72, public Salish Cliffs is expected to open next spring. It will have a lot going for it: length (7,300 yards from back tees but a modest 6,000 from whites), no homes (and no plans for any), a verdant setting and big greens.
Sixteen of the holes will be set apart, lending to a “what’s next?” sense of adventure plus tranquility. The flipside, though, is that this is going to be primarily a cart course because of the long jaunts from some tees to next greens.
The course is a remarkable 600 feet from its low point to the high point atop a towering bluff, but the gains are gradual. Bates describes it as “almost like steps on a staircase.”
The course will have a monster green shared by holes No. 9 and No. 18, a double-ended driving range and a short-game practice area. Fairways and greens will be bent grass, and Bates said there are chemicals now on the market that resist the intrusion of poa grass onto greens.
The bunkers are going to be creatively shaped and filled with gorgeous white sand.
“When I see big ovals or circles or whatever, I just think of it as an oval or circle golf course,” Bates said.
“I like to put some character into the bunker styles. They speak to you.”
Like all top designers, Bates has each caliber of golfer in mind.
“The guy playing from the championship tees is going to have to work the ball,” he said. “The guy playing blue tees will have to do it a little bit.”
Life won’t be so complicated for golfers using the white tees. Those folks will find the landing areas generous, as will men and women who play the forward tees.
As Bates has said, “It’s not going to be the type of golf course that’s narrow and has a lot of penal aspects to it.” In other words, he wants people saying, “That was fun and I can do better,” rather than, “That course was too tough for me.”
The harsh spring has pushed a planned soft opening this fall into next spring. When the course has its official opening, however, it will be a big deal — course debuts have become rare events, not only in these parts but also across the nation.
The only opening in the Puget Sound area this year was the kid-friendly “Little Si” course that Mount Si Golf Course built next to its driving range. The opening of Salish Cliffs will draw national attention.
Native American tribes are becoming a new force in Northwest golf, and this course fits the pattern. Salish Cliffs is the project of the Squaxin Island Tribe and will be an amenity of the Little Creek Casino Resort, just a half-mile from the course The tribe owns land elsewhere but understandably wanted the course near the hotel rooms, restaurants and gaming.
The Squaxin Island Tribe is the latest Western Washington tribe to make Northwest golf headlines. The Jamestown S’Kallam Tribe that operates the 7 Cedars Casino bought Dungeness Golf Course outside Sequim in 2007. This year, the Suquamish Tribe that operates the Clearwater Casino Resort took over White Horse Golf Club outside Kingston.
Ground was broken for Salish Cliffs back in 2006, but everything was put on hold months later because of other tribal projects, including a major expansion at the casino-resort that now has about 190 guest rooms.
Work on the course resumed last year.
Ray Peters, executive director of the Squaxin Island Tribe, said the tribe started exploring the addition of a golf course about seven years ago. He said the appeal of a quality golf course is that “it can make the resort a true destination.”
In doing their homework, Squaxin tribal leaders visited several tribal-owned courses in other states, but one of the courses that made the biggest impression on them wasn’t that far away — Circling Raven in Worley, Idaho, southeast of Spokane.
The course is owned by the Coeur d’Alene tribe and its various awards include “best Native American course” and inclusion on Golf magazine’s list of “100 Courses You Can Play.”
The Circling Raven architect was Bates. So, it wasn’t a big surprise when the Squaxin folks selected Bates to be their architect. Implicit in the contract was the unstated challenge, “Let’s see if you do for us what you did for them.”
Bates doesn’t like to compare Salish Cliffs with dry-climate Circling Raven, but has conceded that one similarity is well-separated holes.
This will be the second Northwest course for Florida-based Bates, and he and the Squaxin leadership sound sincere when they talk about how they like working with each other.
“He’s about creating a relationship and really delivering,” said Peters.
Bates said he likes the tribal officials with whom he works and their willingness to spend to make sure things are done properly.
“We’ve had the financial resources to do it right, take advantages of the opportunities on site,” he said.
Bates said the golf course will cost about $9 million and the project cost will be about $10 million, including the clubhouse.
Bates worked with Jack Nicklaus in the 1980s before splitting off on his own. He has partnered on several courses (though not this one) with Fred Couples. Bates’ portfolio includes Bayonet and Blackhorse Golf Courses in Monterey, Calif., and Soldier Hollow Golf Course in Midway, Utah. Soldier Hollow will host the 2012 USGA Amateur Public Links championship.
Salish Cliffs is about 90 minutes from Seattle and will be a cinch to find because of its proximity to the casino-resort at the intersection of Highways 101 and 108, about five miles south of Shelton.
The course is within an hour of quality courses in Bremerton (Gold Mountain, McCormick Woods and Trophy Lake) and is even closer to quality Pierce County offerings of Chambers Bay and The Home Course, and the two courses at The Golf Club at Hawks Prairie outside Lacey. It doesn’t take much imagination to start putting together multi-day golf itineraries that spend at least one night at the Little Creek Casino Resort.
Peters said greens fees haven’t been determined, but noted, “This is going to be a high-end course with reasonable greens fees.” Resort guests traditionally receive reduced greens fees and “stay-and-play” packages are standard in the industry.
While riding around with Bates, I remarked that Salish Cliffs is a total change from the last course I wrote about — treeless Wine Valley Golf Club outside Walla Walla.
I told Bates, “The architect and co-owner over there said were so many natural holes on the property that the challenge was deciding which ones to build and which ones to reject. It was sort of like, ‘The holes are speaking to me.’ I hardly think that is your situation here.”
“You took the words out of my mouth,” he said with a smile, adding, “My reflection was that the bigger the challenge, the more spectacular the results can be.”
Bates said he and the crew got a pleasant surprise when they started moving dirt, because there was an absence of rock.
As we were concluding our tour, Bates surprised and amused me.
“I like to think of a golf course as a human body,” he said. “The skeleton is equivalent to the routing. You have to have solid routing to be able to build solid framework for a good golf course. The internal plumbing is your circulatory system. That’s the irrigation system for a golf course. The digestive system — that’s the drainage system on a golf course. The muscle is the earthmoving and the general top-building of the golf course, the dirt and all that stuff. The facial features and the rear end and the legs and the beautification of it are the shaping process. And then, basically the grass and the sand and everything else is the makeup.”
The results aren’t in, but at this point it looks like Bates’ latest “body” may just be his most beautiful yet.
Craig Smith is a freelance writer in the Seattle area. Smith worked for more than two decades covering sports for the Seattle Times, and earned the Northwest Golf Media Association’s prestigious Distinguished Service Award in 2009.