SAMMAMISH – As Inbee Park made her way around Westchester Country Club, dismantling the course en route to a third consecutive KPMG Women’s PGA Championship title, it was announced that Sahalee Country Club would be the next venue to test the aptitude of her game.

It would be less than 365 days before the world’s best players would descend on the course for the first championship in six years, which last hosted the 2010 U.S. Senior Open and the PGA Tour’s NEC World Golf Championship in 2002, the quick turnaround providing limited time for Sahalee Country Club’s Course Superintendent Tom Huesgen to get the course championship ready.

“We basically came to an agreement to host this event less than a year ago today, it was last year during the event at Westchester it was announced it would be at Sahalee, so it came together rather quick,” Huesgen told LPGA.com via phone. “We had some projects underway mainly to do with tree trimming, working on trees. It’s a heavily forested course, not removals as much as limbing and opening up for air circulation and visibility to grow healthier turf grass, I would say, and playability when off the fairway and there are trees so we were already embarking on that project on the front nine.”

In the spring of this year that same work was completed on the back nine. Designed by golf course architect Tom Robinson in the 1960’s and later redesigned by Rees Jones in 1996, the course was laid out in a forest, which led to heavily tree-lined fairways with greens surrounded by towering pines.

“Sahalee is known for its trees and is certainly what make the character of this golf course,” said Huesgen. “The golf course is a fairly traditional style and architecture but its carved out of a forest of some pretty heavily dense tees and that’s what adds to the challenge and intimidation factor.”

The rough and greens won’t be any less of a challenge says Huesgen, who anticipates the rough will be between two and three inches in height with greens running around 11 ½ on the stimpmeter. The difficulty of both will hinge on the weather forecast, which Huesgen says looks favorable so far with just a slight chance of precipitation later in the week.

Sahalee will play to 6,624 this week at a par 71. The course record 63, was set in 2002 by Robert Allenby.

Tree-Lined Fairways Create Tough Test At Sahalee

Related Articles