Why this announced PNW Muni was my favorite course I played in 2025

I was fortunate enough to play many courses that were new to me in 2025, but my visit to Chambers Bay, the muni darling of the Pacific Northwest and site of the 2015 US Open, was by far my favorite for one simple reason:

I didn’t know what to expect and it completely exceeded any expectations I had in the end.

You see, three factors had shaped my view of Chambers Bay: 1) That 2015 US Open, won by Jordan Spieth, where pros and fans alike complained about bumpy greens, an odd setup with a changing par, and a sketchy Dustin Johnson 3-putt to cap it off. 2) My own father’s experience with the course and him telling me he didn’t like it…hard way to start for the ole muni. 3) The recent praise for the course (championed by GOLF’s own Seattleite Dylan Dethier), which has had its greens redone and has since hosted the 2022 US Women’s Amateur.

But it’s golf, and when I planned a trip to Bend, Oregon and then Seattle last November, I knew I had to drive to University Place to check out the course for myself.

My first attempt to book a tee time at Chambers a month before my visit was fruitless. I wasn’t sure what kind of demand there would be in late fall in the Pacific Northwest where the weather could have been anything, but there were no tee times available for a single.

Luckily the course allows you to put your name on a waiting list for a spot and less than two hours after I put my name on it I got a text at 10:36am on the day I wanted to play that there was still a spot available. Enough time to make the hour-long drive from Seattle and get back that evening in time for a dance class at the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum with my fiancé.

Lo and behold, I would be paired with a father and two sons from the Pittsburgh area, making our group a full-fledged Keystone state quartet.

It turned out that we were extremely lucky with the day we wanted to play. I just got back from three days in Bend where I experienced perhaps the worst three-day weather I’d ever seen there (and I lived there for two years. We had rain and wind every day in a place known for its 300 annual days of sunshine.)

The weather in Seattle and Tacoma is likely to be much more unpredictable, so when I saw a 40 percent chance of rain on the day of my tee time at Chambers, I prepared for the worst.

But by the time I arrived at the golf course, the clouds held off and the sun shone on the course, the site of an old sand quarry along the Puget Sound and the centerpiece of a 930-acre park. The temperatures were in the mid-50s and all I had to decide was whether it was too hot for my outer layer or not.

There is a bit of a process when you check in to play at Chambers. The car park and clubhouse are located above the course with beautiful views of the grounds and after check-in you will be taken to the first tee and driving range, complete with a brand new halfway house.

After hitting a few balls on the range, I decided to play the blue tees at 6,748 yards – one step away from the tips. The actual length of the course is over 7,800 meters, but a pro shop employee told me that you “must have played in a US Open” to go there.

The first hole sets you up for the day, a downhill tee shot with a huge dune on the right, a huge rolling fairway descending to the 18th fairway below and an elevated green. At times this hole played like a par-5, but I had to start my round with a brutal par-4 of almost 500 yards.

This is where I made by far my best three shots of the day. A toasty drive straight up the middle and then a flushed 7-iron to about 18 feet, which I converted for an opening birdie. I thought, was this really where the US Open was?

From what the starter and other staff members told me, all the changes to the course since the US Open have made playing the links-style course easier. But given the course’s design with uneven lies, huge bunkers and wildly sloping greens, there were still places where you could make big numbers.

For me, the course is about having fun and playing a fun and exciting round. That means there were plenty of birdies and bogeys on my card.

Sometimes you would look at a tee shot and wonder how far the corner was from the fairway or a bunker, only to see that it was much further or shorter than it appeared. The elevation change really played with my depth perception.

Throughout the loop you’ll go up and down and over the expansive grounds, which have about 200 feet of elevation change as you go between the shore of the Puget Sound and Grandview Drive that overlooks it.

There are some holes where you have loads of room to play off the tee, and then there are others like No. 5, No. 8 and No. 10 where you seemingly have to thread a needle between bunkers or a huge drop-off.

It certainly seems like you’ll need to thread a needle on No. 12, a short, uphill par-4 where a long skinny green sits between two huge hills. I thought I had missed it completely when I jammed my 250 mini driver on what looked like the wrong side of the right hills. But when I got to the green I was shocked to see my ball just below the green with just a simple uphill putt for Eagle.

Was that luck or my plan all along? We’ll never know! (Yes, we do!)

The 12th is the final uphill climb before the dramatic finish of the long 14th descent and the signature section 15-17 along the BNSF railroads and the Puget Sound coast.

That was something I again did not expect. I love trains and think having railway lines next to a golf course makes it instantly better. Look at all the great courses in Scotland that have a railway line nearby, especially along the Ayrshire coast with places like Troon, Prestwick, Western Gails and more on either side of the course.

The freight train line runs past numbers 15-17 at Chambers – the 16th is even called ‘Derailed’ – but 15-20 trains must have passed by in the five hours of my round (yes, it’s a big course with big greens and big hills and it’s a muni, it took a while to play!).

I wanted to make sure I could get a photo of the lone pine tree behind the 15th green, the only tree on the property, with the train behind it. Right on cue, as we walked onto the 15th tee, a beautiful little drop shot par 3 with the water behind it, the train rolled right through.

An earlier birdie on 13 had me level again, but bogeys on 15, 17 and 18 took me to a disappointing 75, but that was the only thing I could be disappointed with.

I got the tee time, got the perfect weather day, and got to enjoy one of America’s great public golf courses. In terms of days playing a single far from home, it was hard to top.

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