# The Bellevue Golf Guide

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/bellevue-wa-golf-guide/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Guides / Washington


A leading golf course in Washington. Photo: Atomic Taco from Seattle, WA, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bellevue's golf story is the Eastside story in miniature. On one side of the ledger sits a municipal course in Bridle Trails that has served everyday golfers since 1968. On the other side sit private clubs in Bellevue and Medina, and just up the road in Redmond, Sahalee, where Vijay Singh won the 1998 PGA Championship in the pines. The hook for this guide writes itself: Sahalee hosted a major in the trees, and Bellevue's muni is the Eastside's everyman course. A visiting golfer will probably play only one of those. A smart one understands both before booking anything.

Bellevue Golf Course is the anchor you can actually use. Designed by David W. Kent and opened in 1968, it plays par 71 with five sets of tees in the Bridle Trails area. It is municipal, open year round, with a heated and lit driving range updated in 2015, which in Puget Sound winters is not a detail, it is the whole proposition. Narrow fairways lined with tall pine trees make accuracy off the tee the key, per GolfPass reviews, and the course received votes in the Cascade Golfer Washington public course ranking. Modest praise, honestly earned: this is the course Eastside beginners learn on and Eastside regulars walk without thinking.

## The private side of the lake's east shore

Glendale Country Club in Bellevue and Overlake Golf and Country Club in Medina make up the in town private tier, and Sahalee Country Club in Redmond is the name that travels. Our payload names them as anchors without deep course files, so we will not invent their yardages or architects here. What can be said from the record is the shape of the market: Bellevue and Medina hold established private clubs serving the Eastside's membership base, and Sahalee, close enough to count as part of this guide's orbit, is the championship outlier whose 1998 PGA put this side of Lake Washington on the national golf map for one week. Access to all three runs through membership and invitations. Estimates for private clubs of this standing run into the mid to high tier, and they are estimates, because these clubs do not publish numbers.

The order of play for a visitor is therefore simple and honest. Book Bellevue Golf Course first and play it early in the trip, when a tight, tree lined muni will set your expectations correctly for Eastside golf: straight beats long, and the pines do not negotiate. If a private invitation exists, it jumps the queue, and if that invitation is Sahalee, it becomes the trip. Our [Bellevue town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-bellevue-wa/) orders the town's courses, and [the full Washington state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-washington/) places this Eastside cluster against the state's public heavyweights.

## The mistake and the season

The one mistake visitors make is assuming Seattle's golf logic applies unchanged across the lake. The Eastside game is tighter, more private at the top, and more dependent on the muni at the base. The season point is the one the payload supports: Bellevue's muni runs year round with a heated range, which in this region means golf is a twelve month habit for locals rather than a summer event. Come in the wet months and you will have the narrow fairways nearly to yourself, which is its own kind of access.

End the day where the Eastside day ends, driving out of Bridle Trails under the pines with a muni scorecard in the bag. The majors were played up the road. The golf life of this town is played here.

One more Eastside reality belongs in any honest guide: the region's golf wealth and its golf access point in opposite directions. The private clubs named here serve one of the most prosperous suburbs in America, and their gates are the real architecture of Bellevue golf for most visitors. The municipal course is the correction to that picture, a public facility in Bridle Trails with five sets of tees, a year round calendar and a heated range, holding the everyday game together while the private side holds the prestige. Towns get judged by their best course. They should also get judged by their most used one. Bellevue's most used course has narrow fairways, tall pines and a designer, David W. Kent, whose name deserves to be said more often than it is. Say it on the first tee, then hit it straight.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.