Town Guides / Washington

The Bellingham Golf Guide

Bellingham sits in northwest Washington where the Cascades come down toward the bay, and its golf is built out of that ground: pine and cedar forest, creeks, elevation, and one mountain name that keeps following you around. Four anchor courses cover the town. Lake Padden is the city course in the pines. Sudden Valley is Ted Robinson's design on Lake Whatcom. Shuksan plays under the name of the 9,131 foot Cascade peak visible in the distance. Bellingham Golf and Country Club holds the private side of the ledger. A visitor can play most of this. That already makes Bellingham a friendlier golf town than most.

Start at the city course

Lake Padden Golf Course is where this guide starts, because it is where Bellingham golf starts for most people. Designed by Roy Goss and Glen Proctor and opened in 1971, it is a municipal par 72 of 6,575 yards carved through pine and cedar forest between Galbraith Mountain and Lake Padden. Municipal courses with a tournament record get our attention, and Lake Padden has one: it hosted the 1995 PNGA Public Links Championship and the 2003 Washington Senior Open, and Golf Digest rated it among the finest municipal courses in the Pacific Northwest. A city course that championship bodies trust is a city course with real bones, and the forest routing gives it a walk that feels nothing like the words municipal golf usually suggest.

Play Lake Padden first on a Bellingham trip. It sets the town's terms, tall trees, soft light, honest yardage, and it does it at public access with a muni's welcome. Golfers building the full local picture should read it against our Bellingham ranking, which orders all four anchors properly.

Then go climb Shuksan

Shuksan Golf Club is the second round, and it is a different animal. Rick Dvorak designed it, opened in 1994, built out of two farms, par 72 and 6,742 yards with more than 100 feet of elevation change, split by Ten Mile Creek. The finisher is the story the whole town tells: the par 5 18th, 525 yards, finishing at a two tiered island green, billed as the only par 5 island green in the Pacific Northwest. An island green on a par 5 is a dare disguised as a hole. Two good shots still leave you a third over water to a tiered target, which means the round's last full swing is its most exposed one. Golf Digest gave Shuksan four stars in its 1996-97 Places to Play guide, and the course has been living up to that early verdict ever since.

Sudden Valley, Ted Robinson's course on Lake Whatcom, and Bellingham Golf and Country Club round out the town. Sudden Valley gives the trip its lakeside community round, and the country club is the private option for golfers with a connection. Against the state picture in the full Washington state ranking, Bellingham's strength is depth at public prices rather than a single famous name.

The order matters for a practical reason too. Lake Padden's forest routing is the flatter, more sheltered walk of the two public anchors, and Shuksan asks for the climbing, with its 100 plus feet of elevation change and a creek splitting the ground. Fresh legs belong at Shuksan. Tired legs belong among the pines at Lake Padden, where the 6,575 yards ask for accuracy through the trees rather than power up the hills. Golfers who reverse the order usually feel it by Shuksan's back nine, right when Ten Mile Creek and the climbing start asking their questions in sequence.

The mistake, and the close

The one mistake visitors make is treating Bellingham as a stop on the way somewhere else and giving it one rushed round. The town's golf rewards the slower version: Lake Padden in the trees in the morning, Shuksan's elevation and that island green finish the next day, the mountain sitting in the distance the whole time like it is watching the scoring. Northwest Washington light does not hurry, and neither does this golf.

Come for the city course in the pines. Stay for the par 5 that ends on an island. Bellingham is not the loudest golf town in Washington, and on a still evening at Lake Padden, with the cedars going dark and one group still putting out, loud is the last thing you would want it to be.