Fourteen hours earlier, our little band had gathered together in Lynnwood, watching the sun creep above the Cascades as we shuffled out of our respective homes in the pre-dawn light. We were tired, a little bedraggled and certainly in need of some coffee, but the light in our eyes was unmistakable. Our fellowship had been granted an intoxicating quest — to make a 392-mile round trip across the Cascade Mountains to play 36 holes on one of the most anticipated new tracks in the United States.
And we’d have the place all to ourselves.
In early 2013, word began to leak that a long-rumored destination course high in the Columbia River valley was not only a go, but was in fact nearly completed — and that none other than David McLay Kidd had been brought in to finish the job. Writer Tony Dear’s excellent piece in the December CG gave Washington golfers their first thorough look behind the scenes at Gamble Sands, what Kidd called one of just three “perfect” sites he had ever been given. The others? Oregon’s Bandon Dunes, which has yet to land outside the top-10 of any ranking of U.S. public tracks since it opened in 1999, and Scotland’s Machrihanish Dunes, which in 2013 moved past Turnberry to claim the title of Scotland’s No. 1 golf experience.
Needless to say, Gamble Sands shot to No. 1 on our list of must-play tracks in 2014.
So it was that we drank our coffee, munched on breakfast snacks and talked excitedly about the day ahead as we made our way across Highway 2 to Wenatchee, then up Highway 97 on a straight shot to Brewster. Could Gamble Sands possibly live up to the high expectations we were placing upon it?
As we drove past the tiny airstrip in Brewster, then followed unpaved roads past landmarks we had been told to look for like “the weigh station” and “the stack of apple crates,” it was hard to escape the sense that we were traveling back to a rural, unhurried, agricultural time and place, one where the hours are measured not so much by the hands of the clock as by the passage of the sun, and the entire world seems limited to the people you’re with, and the landscape you can take in with your eyes.
And what a landscape it was.
From the roundabout driveaway at the humble Gamble Sands clubhouse, we could see for miles in every direction — a treeless expanse that stretched north and east to a series of high ridges, south down the Columbia River valley (yes, in Brewster the Columbia briefly jogs south before continuing its 60-mile eastward jaunt), and west towards the small town of Brewster on the westward arm of river, backdropped by the snow-capped peaks of the North Cascades.
And before us — the golf course. Eighteen holes of wide-open fairways, sandy waste areas and bunkers, elevated tees, massive greens and a promise from Player Services Supervisor Nick Saper — “You guys are in for a lot of fun.”