With its profile at an all-time high just two-and-a-half months out from the 2015 U.S. Open, it’s no surprise to see Chambers Bay at No. 1 on the Golfweek list, where it has sat in every ranking since its 2007 opening (and indeed, where it ranked — albeit barely — in our most recent 2013 list). More surprising — though not by any means undeserved — was seeing Gamble Sands, the all-new David McLay Kidd course just north of Chelan, debut all the way up at No. 2, ahead of much-celebrated tracks like Wine Valley (No. 3) and Salish Cliffs (No. 4).
Loomis Trail, part of the Semiahmoo Resort in Blaine, rounded out the top-five, followed by Palouse Ridge, Semiahmoo Golf Club, Gold Mountain (Olympic), Desert Canyon and Trophy Lake
All in all, it’s a perfectly reasonable list — when we shared it with our readers on Facebook, there were only a few minor quibbles. Certainly no one felt that any of the courses just outright didn’t belong. In fact, the argument tilted more to the other side — how there are not necessarily courses that didn’t belong, but rather so many more that did — courses like The Home Course, Prospector at Suncadia, Washington National, Coal Creek, White Horse, Bear Mountain Ranch and Eaglemont, just to name a few. Cascade Golfer readers and voters ranked the Olympic course higher (I’m guessing Golfweek doesn’t consider its ridiculously low greens fee) and preferred Semiahmoo to Loomis Trail, but beyond that, the rankings were pretty similar. What I’ll be most interested to see this summer is how CG voters rank Gamble Sands (have enough voters made the trek across the Cascades since the course opened last fall?), and whether another year of existence bolster the candidacies of Salish Cliffs and Rope Rider, not to mention Palouse Ridge and Wine Valley.
In addition to Golfweek’s “Best Courses You Can Play.” the magazine published lists of the Best Resort Courses, Best Classic Courses, Best Modern Courses and Best Casino Courses, each of which included at least one Evergreen State representative. Perhaps the course with the most to celebrate was Gene Bates’ Salish Cliffs, which ranked sixth among U.S. casino courses and 43rd among U.S. resort courses, ahead of much more well-known candidates like the Stadium Course at PGA West, Bay Hill, the Links at Spanish Bay, Wolf Creek, Mauna Kea, We-Ko-Pa, Troon North, Turtle Bay, Crosswater and even its direct predecessor, Bates’ Circling Raven.
Click the links above to check out the full lists and then let us know — how did Golfweek do? Do you agree? Disagree? Feel free to list your own Washington Top-10, and we’ll factor it into our “Reader’s Choice” rankings when the full CG rankings are published this August.
