Design Notebook: A Tour of Gamble Sands No. 2

In the latest installment of Design Notebook, Garrett reflects on a trip to Gamble Sands, which featured a tour of the Washington resort’s upcoming course with architect David McLay Kidd. We also have a brief note on LiDAR-assisted design.

New Kidd on the bluff

On October 16 and 17, I joined a group hosted by the golf architect David McLay Kidd at the Gamble Sands resort in Washington. Among the attendees of the event were members of Kidd’s growing design team, representatives from his current projects (which include Westport Golf Links on the coast of Washington, Loraloma outside of Austin, and Graybull in the Nebraska Sandhills), a handful of investors, and a few journalists. We played rounds at the Sands course, a regulation layout that opened in 2014, and Quicksands, a short course that debuted last year—both designed by Kidd. We also toured his under-construction, yet-to-be-named second 18-hole design at the resort.

David McLay Kidd on site at his new Gamble Sands project

Gamble Sands is owned by the Gebbers family, which presides over vast holdings in the high desert of northern Washington. The Gebberses’ primary business is apple and cherry production. Several times during the event, Kidd emphasized that golf is a relatively insignificant contributor to the family’s wealth. Still, the Gebberses see potential in the resort and are moving to raise its status from a regional to a national golf destination. According to general manager Blake Froling, who fielded a few questions during a presentation given by Kidd and his design partner Nick Schaan on the evening of October 16, Gamble Sands would like to lengthen guests’ stays and attract more out-of-state play. To these ends, the resort will add 40 lodging units by October next year and open a second regulation course, which will be ready for preview play by next fall and public play by summer 2025.

Gamble Sands No. 2, for which Kidd has proposed the name “Fescue Sands,” sits just north of the resort’s current footprint, on a set of large bluffs and chasms. From the high points of the property, the views of the Columbia River are even more striking than the famous ones from the front nine of the first course.

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The new design bears many of the hallmarks of Kidd’s recent work: wide, heaving fairways; large, undulating greens surrounded by feeder slopes and flashed bunkers; diagonal hazards requiring long carries for aggressive lines and short ones for more conservative, circuitous routes; and a routing that journeys from vista to vista, not returning to its starting point until the final hole.

Yet Kidd insists that Gamble Sands No. 2 will be immediately and obviously distinct from its predecessor. For one thing, the topography will be more consistently severe. While the Sands course skirts around huge landforms, the hole corridors themselves are quite walkable. (In fact, according to an event attendee who worked on the project, Kidd initially envisioned the course as walking-only. After spending a few days on the high-desert site in the summer heat, however, he changed his mind.) The second 18 will be a more up-and-down affair, traveling directly across massive ridges and gullies.

A map of the under-construction second 18-hole course at Gamble Sands

Kidd also maintains that the new course will be harder, with smaller greens and tighter lines of charm. This is an important point. It was at Gamble Sands that Kidd launched the second act of his career, shedding his early reputation as a builder of difficult tests like Tetherow and the Castle Course at St. Andrews, and embracing width, fun, and playability. The Sands, with its capacious fairways and friendly greens, was well received. Kidd has since designed several other courses in a similar vein—most notably Mammoth Dunes at the Sand Valley resort in Wisconsin. In my view, Mammoth Dunes pushes the principle of playability a tad too far. Its vast expanses of short grass and funneling green contours strike me as overly accommodating—to the degree that conquering the course feels like an expectation rather than a well-earned achievement. So I’m curious to see how Kidd ratchets up the challenge at Gamble Sands No. 2 while staying true to his stated belief that a fun golf course is one that allows an average player to swing with confidence.

During my October 17 walk around the construction site, five holes were finished and seeded, several were at various stages of shaping, and a few had only been staked out. It’s unwise to make general judgments about a course at this point in the building process, but here are a few preliminary observations:

1. The land is as dramatic as Kidd promised. The valley that the first two and last four holes play through and around is particularly impressive. The 15th and 16th holes, a par 5 and a par 3, will be favorites of drone photographers, bending spectacularly around the rim of the chasm. They look like a blast to play. I may be more excited, though, for the 17th and 18th, which run along the tumbling valley floor. The holes have not yet been shaped, but their topography appears well suited to golf—eventful but not excessively large-scale. My one concern about the property overall is that it may not be comfortably walkable.

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2. Another postcard hole will be the short par-3 11th, which plays to a promontory that naturally accommodates a small green complex. The routing maneuver used to get in and out of this corner of the site is somewhat awkward, requiring a walk (or ride) around the 12th tee and back to the 11th tee, but once you see the way the green hovers above the Columbia River valley, you’ll understand why Kidd wanted the course to get to this spot.

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3. Obviously I have no sense of how the new course’s turf will turn out, but Kidd says it will be 100% fescue, and I can report that the 80-20 fescue-bentgrass blend at Sands and Quicksands is sensational. Like, freakishly good. With the advantages of the same soil, climate, and agronomy team, I’d guess that Gamble Sands No. 2’s playing surfaces will be equally terrific. -Garrett Morrison

What would Tom Doak do with a flattish Florida property?

We’re starting to find out.

On Saturday, Doak posted a photo on Instagram of the 12th fairway at Rolling Sands, an under-construction club northwest of Jupiter, Florida. “Are we really building a golf course in SE Florida that uses St. Andrews and Muirfield and North Berwick and Pine Valley as our inspirations?” he wrote. “Well, why aim lower?”

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A post shared by Tom Doak (@doakgolf)

When Doak says “inspirations,” he means something more specific than the word usually connotes. His team at Rolling Sands is using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data of fairway contours at classic courses as a jumping-off point for shaping work. Leading the project is Brian Zager, who assisted with bringing Peter Flory’s digital models to life at the Lido.

Doak elaborated on his team’s approach in a reply to a comment on his post: “[The holes are] not exact copies due to drainage issues and a different context and setting. And once we get the base version out there we throw away the plan and edit however we want. But if this photo looks a lot like the approach to the 13th at Pine Valley, that was the idea—which is probably not what our neighbors here in Florida are doing. [Thinking face emoji] And how is that different from building another version of the Biarritz hole, which everyone else (except me) thinks is genius?”

Look, there’s not enough space in a humble Design Notebook item to sort through all of the complexities here, so we’ll toss it to you. What do you think about this way of absorbing and adapting influences? -GM

A course we photographed recently

The Sands at Gamble Sands—designed by David McLay Kidd, opened in 2014

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Quotable

“If you get those dudes thinking, they’re in trouble.” -Pete Dye (on pro golfers)

If you have a question you want us to address in a future edition of Design Notebook, put it in the comments below!