By Dan Raley
Full of imaginative and beckoning golf courses, the Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas sit across from Seattle like oversized greens, surrounded by water on three sides.
The trick is reaching those greens, selecting the proper approach shot and landing in the middle of all of that bliss.
With six highly decorated courses serving as destination targets, lumping two together at a time, the following are three recommended trips to escape the big city rat race and leave all that cement and asphalt behind. Pick one excursion, and you can cross or skirt the chilly waters of Puget Sound with little trouble and turn up in a golf paradise unique to the Northwest.
Base your choice on budget, convenience or simply scenic beauty. Prepare to become lost in a world that caters to the little white ball and little else. Watch out for the black bears and coyotes. Check out the region’s landmark mountain peaks from a different angle. Grumble when you have to come home.
By Air
Port Ludlow Golf Club
Running late for your tee time? Kenmore Air can deliver you to Port Ludlow Golf Club in as little as 15 to 20 minutes.
The Seattle-based airline will customize a round-trip seaplane charter for your foursome (or two foursomes) for roughly $225 to $240 per person. You can fly out of Lake Union at 8 a.m. or later (neighborhood noise abatements prevent earlier departures), or from Lake Washington as early as 7:30.
Kenmore Air will fly four golfers in a six-seat DeHavilland Beaver plane, or eight players in a 10-seat Otter. Rent clubs at the course, and there’s room and weight for more golfers on board — and the airfare becomes lower.
“It’s a market we’re very interested in,” said Craig O’Neal, Kenmore Air director of sales and marketing. “It’s like scuba diving. We go to the place they frequent. The problem is they have an awful lot of gear. But we’re happy to see these people. We can go anywhere there’s a dock.”
Port Ludlow has a marina slip in place to accommodate the incoming seaplanes from Seattle and keeps shuttle rides from either the course or its inn on the alert to shuttle golfers to the pro shop or reservation counter. Kenmore Air averages a couple of these customized flights per month, and is hoping to greatly expand business.
If it’s a day trip, golfers need to be on board for the quick return flight before dark. Again, regulations limit the flight hours.
“We’ve got to be back in the barn by sunset,” O’Neal said.
Port Ludlow, a Robert Muir Graves design once described by Esquire as the “most scenic course in the world,” offers 27 holes with its Tide, Timber and Trail nines. The latter, considered the toughest nine of the three and the final one built, has had trees and vegetation removed to lighten the golf load, improve the views and allow in more sunshine.
“It’s easier to play and it’s the prettiest nine in Western Washington now,” assistant pro Ryan Gorton said. “The views are outstanding there.”
The Tide and Timber, played together, put Port Ludlow at its best, with that particular 6,787-yard layout previously ranking the facility as one of the nation’s top-10 resort courses and drawing travel writers to it like mosquitoes. An 18-hole round costs $52 weekday, $60 weekend. Add another $15 to play all 27.
Fairways are narrow, greens are elevated and stumps protrude from wetlands. Usually a little on the damp side, the course plays significantly longer than listed. The par-5s are the unforgettable holes, especially the 512-yard fourth on the Tide nine and the 537-yard third on the Timber. It’s always a testy round of golf.
If you’re in no hurry to return to the big city, the Port Ludlow Inn has 37 rooms available with package rates. One-night stays with golf, carts and breakfast run $239 per person, $299 double occupancy.
Want to add some golf variety to this trip, and willing to log a few highway miles? Fly to Port Angeles first. Kenmore Air covers this route with a fixed-wheel aircraft, a nine-seat Cessna Caravan, offering six scheduled flights per day out of Boeing Field, seven during peak season.
The cost is $65 to $85 per person each way, with a 70-pound bag allowance. If packing more equipment than that, you might have to purchase another seat. Kenmore leaves Boeing Field as early as 7:30 a.m. and departs Port Angeles as late as 7:30 p.m. This flight takes just 35 minutes.
Why Port Angeles? After renting a car, you’re just 15 minutes from the Cedars at Dungeness Golf Course in Sequim, a long-time favorite of Northwest golfers — primarily for its un-Northwestlike weather. Residents like to brag how their little corner of the state, described as “The Blue Hole” by airline pilots, receives just 13 inches of annual rain compared to 17 for Palm Springs, Calif., and 38 for the Seattle area. There’s some wind at times, but just a trace of the wet stuff.
The Jack Reimer-designed golf course stretches out 6,456 yards, is more wide-open than others in the region and offers several personal touches, such as the crab claw-shaped bunker on the signature 483-yard, par-5 third hole. Postcard views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Vancouver Island can be seen from course vantage points. And keeping with the Cascade Golfer theme of world-class golf at affordable rates, an 18-hole round costs just $34 weekdays, $39 weekend.
Cedars at Dungeness, owned for the past year by the Jamestown S’Kallam Tribe, the same people who operate the nearby 7 Cedars Casino, has no shortage of amenities. Its airy Double Eagle Steak and Seafood Restaurant is even popular with local residents who don’t play golf. The course has stay-and-play packages lined up with eight different Sequim motels. The 61-room Holiday Plaza Sequim Inn and Suites, formerly a Ramada Inn, is the largest, offering one-night golf packages for $99 single occupancy, $138 double occupancy.
For those eager to reach this sunbelt stretch, but not by plane or car, Sequim also offers 22 transient slips at the John Wayne Marina for boaters in search of golf. Call the course for a ride from the dock.
Want to play Cedars at Dungeness and Port Ludlow on the same trip? The courses are located just 40 miles apart down Highways 101 and 104. They’re different in price and terrain, but they provide a nice variety while holding up the most northwestern corner of the state for quality golf. Kenmore Air can connect you to each one separately, or both of them in the same trip.
Golf by air is a novel approach — not yet widely advertised, but easily accessible to the player with a sense of adventure.