Pumpkin Ridge Might Be Best Pick

Don't be surprised if by year's end the U.S. Open golf championship has been awarded to Pumpkin Ridge for 2003.

Thirty minutes from downtown Portland, on the road to Astoria, in the farms and firs of rural Oregon, Pumpkin Ridge is clearly where it's at in Northwest golf.

"A truly unique setting, farm land, mature foliage and trees, but also open, links-style land for two golf courses of many moods," said Judy Bell, president of the United States Golf Association. "There are many of us who would like to bring the Open championship here."

Not quite six years old, Pumpkin Ridge already has a rich and varied tradition - the third U.S. Amateur title by Tiger Woods last summer, and Nancy Lopez's stirring attempt to win her first U.S. Women's Open last weekend - plus the backing of Portland's sports-starved minions.

The U.S. Amateur drew the biggest crowds for the event since Bobby Jones played in the 1930s. The crowds at the Women's Open were unprecedented.

"Fabulously, things have just gone fabulously here," Bell said. "The course was in better shape this summer than last summer."

It comes at a good time for Pumpkin Ridge. The USGA is in the process of picking a site for 2003.

"We like the idea of the Open being played on a course the public can enjoy," Bell said. "It is also a personal goal of mine to have each of our 13 tournaments played in the Northwest."

The Open has never been played in the Northwest.

Sahalee in Redmond, site of next year's PGA, and the Eugene Country Club in Oregon are generally the Northwest's top-rated courses. Bell agreed that Eugene lacks gallery and hotel space. She said Sahalee officials said they weren't interested in the Open.

Pumpkin Ridge is the total package - two golf courses, two clubhouses, immense range and practice facilities, sufficient gallery space and more parking than any Open venue before it.

"We've got 500 acres for parking, and depending what farmer we make a deal with, we can have more," said Marvin French, one of four principal owners of the complex.

The dream, when French and Gay Davis, another owner, drove out the Sunset Highway to look at 350 acres of farm land, was to build a course on which the U.S. Open could be played.

"We knew they had to bring the tournament to the Northwest one day," said Davis, "and we knew there was no other facility that could handle it."

They had the vision of a "pure golf facility," but little money. When Shigeru Ito of Nagoya, Japan, was turned back in an effort to buy Emerald Valley outside Eugene, he threw in with the Pumpkin Ridge gang to the tune of $20 million.

They hired Bob Cupp, long a principal designer for Jack Nicklaus. Cupp convinced them to build two courses of separate but equal value.

The U.S. Open is an immense undertaking. Most venues need two courses, one to play and the other on which to park cars and patron and press tents.

Most new 36-hole layouts, however, are real-estate developments, far-flung holes demanding a cart, which is prohibited by the USGA for championships.

The Amateur and the Women's Open at Pumpkin Ridge were played on the private Witch Hollow course, where initiation fees are $40,000. Bell, however, wants the men's Open to be played on the Ghost Creek course because it has more room for fans and is public.

Green fees at Ghost Creek are $75 during the week, and $90 on weekends.

The only project of similar magnitude in Washington is in Newcastle on a hill above Bellevue. Cupp has designed two courses for Newcastle, just as he did Pumpkin Ridge. He says they will be comparable, only the views of Seattle will be more spectacular than those of Oregon mint fields.

Newcastle will open one 18, Coal Creek, next spring and is expected to charge $75 green fees for both courses.

A time may come when Newcastle challenges Pumpkin Ridge for the biggest of tournaments, but for now the Oregon course is the leader in both its clubhouses.

You can contact Blaine Newnham by voice mail at 464-2364.