Once, playing golf in June in northern Vermont, I was amazed to see snow on the higher slopes of an adjacent ski area. But until a magical summer visit to Oregon, I had never skied the same time I played golf.
Flying into the city of Portland, Oregon, I stared at the awe-inspiring, snow-covered summit of Mt. Hood from my plane window. I was headed toward twin golf destinations, Sunriver in the desert east of the Cascades and Bandon Dunes on the Pacific coast, north of the Oregon-California border. But first I planned to visit Mt. Hood’s Timberline Lodge, where the ski season lasts longer than anywhere else in North America.
In just a short-sleeved shirt, and a fleece jacket that I soon discarded, I spent an entire morning taking run after heart-stopping run on the slick Palmer snowfields, a large, square-shaped arrangement of ski lanes used for instruction by kids at ski camps and training by members of the United States Olympic ski team.
Below me, meadows of wild flowers mingled with the ash-encrusted remnants of ancient lava flows. Looking toward the south, across a nearby lake and then mile upon mile of sunlit evergreens, I picked out the distant, majestic shape of Mt. Batchelor, which the next day would be the backdrop for my Sunriver golf.
Even the drive down from the mountains, past widely varying vistas of natural grandeur and into the cool, quite air of the desert to Sunriver, reminded me, as the sports psychologists tell us, that golf is journey rather than a destination. That sense of motion, of being taken to a new place, was reinforced as soon as I teed off early in the morning at Sunriver’s award-winning Crosswater course.
Actually one of three layouts at this inviting, well-run resort with a feeling of the out-of-doors blending harmoniously with many creature comforts (pools, outdoor Jacuzzi, al fresco dining), Crosswater is aptly named. Many of its holes cross or border two rivers, the Deschutes and the Little Deschutes, both of them so beguiling that I found myself standing transfixed at shadows of trout or wind-driven ripples along a sandy shore.
The golf got my attention, too. Designed by Bob Cupp and opened in 1995, Crosswater artfully blends great shot values with extraordinarily beautiful natural features. One of my favorite holes, the 4th, calls for a fairway wood or long iron off the tee, though it also tempts the golfer to hit driver and get closer to the severe, dogleg lefthand turn in the fairway. Wetlands and woods to the left of that fairway protect a narrow green, bordered in back by a short precipice and severe rough.
Routed in two counter-clockwise circles of nine holes each, Crosswater never repeats itself. The par-5 6th is very long: 635 yards from the tips (though the altitude accounts for some of that extra distance). It is followed by a medium-length par-3 that is almost all carry. The even longer par-5 12th sweeps crescent-shaped around a lovely, serene lake, while the tee of the par-4 14th abuts the clear, rushing water of the Deschutes River. I wanted to come back and pitch a tent there, in the hollow between the tee and the 13th green, a par-3 over wetlands where frogs seemed to calling, “Don’t leave, don’t leave.”
With mixed emotions, I headed west, back over the mountains to the ocean. En route, taking a shortcut to the main highway, I was stopped by a construction crew, and during the wait for one-way traffic to change direction a black bear ambled across the road, only a few hundred yards from my car.
Soon, discarding the sunglasses I’d used skiing at Mt. Hood and playing golf at Sunriver, and adding every bit of raingear I’d brought with me, I found myself standing forlornly on the first tee of Bandon Dunes (developed and owned by Mike Keiser, an alumnus of Amherst College). It was pouring, with wind-driven sheets of rain coming in off the Pacific Ocean. Except for the most hardy—or foolish—no one was on the golf course, or its new neighbor, Pacific Dunes.
I had been looking forward to playing Bandon Dunes since I heard about it soon after it opened in 1999, to reviews that might modestly be described as incredible. A true links course, designed by a young Scott named David Kidd, Bandon was built on a large stretch of undeveloped, coastal land. With the 2001 addition of the adjacent Pacific Dunes, designed by American architect Tom Doak–and, since my visit, three more courses, one of which is a par 3 with 13 holes–the place still has an old-world, open feeling.
Despite the rain, I was immediately enraptured by the British-style sod bunkering, large greens and fairways protected by rough with uncut, natural grasses and numerous dunes, and an intricate routing (two figure eights) to and from the omnipresent sea. I was completely soaked by the end of my round, and deliriously happy.
The next morning—cool, clear, sunny—I teed off amidst the gorse and flowers of Pacific Dunes and fell in love all over again. By the time I reached the par-4 4th that lines a cliff high above the thundering surf, I was literally shouting for joy, just as I had a few days before on my first descent at Timberline. If you call yourself a golfer, go to Bandon now, before the secret’s completely out.