Wine Valley Golf Club

Favorite Hole

No. 7, par 5, 535 yards

A reachable par 5 full of funneling slopes, the seventh hole at Wine Valley would never be called difficult. It does create a sense of consequence, however, with fearsome hazards and sound strategic design.

To get in position to go for the green in two, you will need to challenge a pair of vicious bunkers, which create a narrowing jog in the fairway. After a good tee shot, you’ll face another decision: try to carry the huge bunker in front of the hidden punchbowl green, or lay up to the left for an unobstructed approach. Going for the green is tougher from the right side of the fairway, and laying up is trickier from the left. Any effort that comes up short and doesn’t get far enough to the left will result in a completely blind pitch or bunker shot.

Although most of the green’s contours feed to the middle, there are defined pinnable sections that reward accuracy, such as a cheeky back-right shelf.

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Overall Thoughts

In most ways, 2008 was a deeply unfortunate year to build a golf course. The housing market, which fueled most U.S. golf development in the 1990s and early 2000s, was imploding. The Great Recession loomed. Course construction would soon enter a slump that would continue through the next decade.

For Wine Valley, however, the downturn yielded some unexpected benefits. Chief among these was that Kye Goalby and Dan Proctor became available to serve as shapers on the project. For the previous 15 years, Goalby and Proctor, two of the most in-demand golf course artisans in the world, had been continuously employed on new builds and renovations by the likes of Bill Coore, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse. But 2008 cleared their calendars, and lead architect Dan Hixson was able to lure them out to southeastern Washington.

Hixson himself has exceptional visual taste and judgment, and his courses are always well shaped and finished, so he deserves the lion’s share of the credit for Wine Valley’s aesthetics. Yet there’s no doubt that Goalby and Proctor gave the course an extra layer of artistry. The greens, though bold, never feel contrived. The exterior contours are elegantly executed, disguising drainage components while melding gracefully with the surrounding topography. The bunker shaping is even more impressive. The edges are naturalized in a site-specific way, combining native grasses with blunt, gouged-out loess walls. If you, like some golf architecture pundits, have grown weary of the modern “minimalist” bunker style, the work that Hixson’s shapers did at Wine Valley will be a shot in the arm. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

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Goalby, Wine Valley’s primary shaper, also contributed to the design of the excellent fourth hole. This short par 4 has a nearly 100-yard-wide fairway split into two 45-yard-wide landing zones by a center-line bunker. The intuitive play is straight at the green, just left of the bunker, but this line leaves a partly blind wedge over a half-acre-sized waste area to a shallow green. A tee shot to the right of the center-line bunker results in a longer approach but a better view and angle. “I edited [the fourth hole] a little,” Hixson told journalist Jay Flemma, “but the final product is a lot of Kye’s, and I’m happy to swallow my pride and say, ‘Hey Kye, it’s a much better hole.’”

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My only significant critique of Wine Valley’s architecture is that many of the holes—too many, in my opinion—sit in basins. Ten of the fairways on the course’s 13 par 4s and 5s have some sort of funneling effect. This was a routing choice, and an understandable one, as it allows less-than-expert players to get around an often-windy property without losing too many balls. But it makes Wine Valley a somewhat repetitive test of driving.

For this reason, a hole like No. 13, which places real strategic emphasis on the tee shot, stands out. The fairway runs along a ridge at the western edge of the site, cambering from right to left while the hole moves to the right. Taking on the bunkers on the inside of the dogleg shortens the approach, whereas bailing out to the left turns a long par 4 into a par 5. So, although the 13th fairway is nearly 70 yards across, a confident, accurate driver will have a greater advantage here than anywhere else at Wine Valley.

Ultimately, though, Hixson’s use of natural funnels doesn’t bother me too much because his hazards and greens are fierce enough to make up the holes challenging. Take the par-5 15th, which climbs through a valley alongside an alfalfa field. The hole’s primary hazards—a 100-yard-long wash along the left side of the fairway; a little bunker exactly where you’d want to lay up on your second shot; and a much bigger bunker, complete with one Wine Valley’s characteristic loess walls, guarding the front-left edge of the green—are imposing and punishing. The green is one of the smallest on the course, perched, and unforgiving of misses. This is a basin hole, yes, but not one that can be played mindlessly.

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Another silver lining of Wine Valley’s 2009 opening date was that, even if the owners had wanted to build houses on the property, the market wouldn’t have let them. To this day, the course feels truly secluded, with nearby Highway 12 as the only reminder of civilization.

Unfortunately, this version of Wine Valley may not last much longer. Earlier this year, the land surrounding the course was put up for sale. The listing touted “incredible views of golf and mountains” and noted that approval had been obtained “for 273 homes around the golf course.” People affiliated with Wine Valley are reluctant to speak on the subject, but a buyer has apparently been found; the sale is currently categorized as pending.

It’s unclear how many residences the buyer intends to build at Wine Valley, but the land plan included with the listing shows what’s possible.

This extent of development at Wine Valley would be devastating. It would block views, isolate fairways and greens from each other, and spoil the natural beauty and serenity that make the course worth seeking out. Further, it would suggest that the new owners don’t truly believe in the facility’s potential as a destination for avid, discerning golfers.

That said, there are many ways to incorporate real estate into a golf property, some less obtrusive than others. For example, at Wild Horse Golf Club in Nebraska, the sale of about 50 residential lots helped cover construction costs. Crucially, the homes are located near the perimeter of the site, at a tasteful distance from both each other and the course. This is what golf-adjacent real estate looks like when it’s used to fund a course rather than to maximize profits for an ownership group.

I can only hope the new steward of the land around Wine Valley’s golf holes makes the right choice. -GM

1 Egg

Wine Valley has notable strengths across the categories of land, design, and presentation. The addition of hundreds of homes to the property, however, would almost certainly cost the course its Egg.

Course Tour

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