6/17/26

It’s the week of the U.S. Open, which means for some Pacific Northwest golf fans, another chance to lament about being one and done with hosting our National Championship after the 2015 U.S. Open was held at Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place. Understandably, there is a sensation of feeling left out of the men’s professional golf world, but for some reason, ardent PNW golf fans only have their sights set on blasting the USGA. The 2015 U.S. Open was, for the most part, a disaster. The frustration is valid, but there are some areas of golf that, for some reason, have gotten off scot-free and need to be held accountable.

The PGA of America has, by far, inexplicably gotten off the hook. For those who aren’t aware, the PGA of America was scheduled to host the 2010 PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish. The PGA of America made the pusillanimous decision to remove the 2010 PGA Championship from Sahalee because… get ready for it… the 2010 Winter Olympics were being held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Perhaps one of the most unbridled acts of stupidity in sports in the last 50 years. The PGA of America, at the time they pulled the plug on the 2010 PGA Championship, said, “We were concerned about the ability to market the Championship in the area when you’ve got the Olympics 200 miles away. It’s a concern. Any analysis suggests that the Olympics became a threat.” Last I checked, the World Cup Final is being held 100 miles from Shinnecock Hills, and just yesterday, a match was hosted at that site.

They also made statements such as, “We plan to come back,” and “Our target would be to bring the tournament back to Sahalee between 2012 and 2015,” and “We had a letter-of-intent to hold the tournament at Sahalee in 2010. We take that letter seriously. We intend to come back to Sahalee and Seattle. … We believe in your community, we believe in Seattle and we plan to come back.” Well, they didn’t come back, and haven’t come back despite their gobbledegook-filled statements. The PGA Championship has secured sites through 2035. Any guesses on where they won’t be going? If you answered Sahalee Country Club, you’d be correct.

That seems FAR greater a bungling than what the USGA did with the U.S. Open in 2015. In defense of the USGA, at least they held the U.S. Open at the course they “intended”. The region needs to start holding the PGA of America accountable. The PGA of America went to Sahalee twice for the KPMG PGA Championship in 2016 and 2024. Still, there’s been no conversation of a PGA Championship coming to either Sahalee or the region as a whole.

The PGA Tour has largely ignored the area as well, but with reports coming out of conversations of bringing a Tour event to Sahalee in 2028, possibly named the Seattle Open. The regime change at the PGA Tour is starting to bring some common sense to the Tour, and bringing primetime golf to their large audience on the East Coast is a great idea and could turn into a regular stop. While it’s long overdue, there does need to be credit to PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp for these changes, should they come to fruition. Perhaps that opens the door to a “Track 2” PGA Tour, LPGA, or Korn Ferry Tour event to also come to Washington, but we still need to be patient until the tournament at Sahalee is finalized.

Equipment manufacturers are very guilty in this issue of men’s professional golf not being played in the PNW. They had a chance to bifurcate golf and reel in the distance of golf balls. Instead, they decided to further feed into this current “steroid era” of golf and make balls fly further and club heads easier to hit for the professional player. At last year’s PGA Championship, Jordan Spieth, winner of the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers, admitted that his driving got better not because he’s worked on his swing mechanics, but because of driver technology letting him hit the ball just as far and fast despite missing the sweet spot on the face. Robert McIntyre has publicly talked about how he intentionally hits drives off the toe of the driver. In a more interesting time of golf, missing the sweet spot of the face meant punishment. Now, the pros wail away with little to no penalty, turning shorter courses obsolete.

When next year’s U.S. Open heads to Pebble Beach, one of the most iconic courses in the world, the course will be radically exposed due to it being a shorter course. It won’t be a true U.S. Open test unless the USGA digs deep into the gimmick playbook of setups. This is because manufacturers have their thumb on the scale of golf and are ruining the game. The ball goes too far, and unless bifuration takes place, which the USGA told Fried Egg Golf’s Joseph LaMagna that it is “back on the table”, or a significant rollback of at least 30 yards plus alterations to the heads of clubs to reintroduce the artistry of hitting golf shots and simply hitting the center of the club face, there will be fewer places to host men’s professional tournaments of any kind. Golf is already bifurcated, as professionals play balls that aren’t accessible to the public, shafts that are used by 0.1% of players in the world, among other customization options that the casual golfer can’t afford.

In a conversation with someone at the USGA, they told me the reason why a U.S. Open won’t be held at Chambers Bay in the near future is due to “infrastructure”. That checks out, as some fans, players, media members, and other staff were displeased with the mobility, or lack thereof, 11 years ago. University Place isn’t an easy place to navigate, and there’s only one direction to move people, and that’s east. Once there, it isn’t always a quick breeze up and down the I-5 corridor. Infrastructure is heavy on the minds of these organizations, especially after the tragedy at the 2024 PGA Championship, where a volunteer was killed just outside the tournament due to poor infrastructure. Chambers Bay is a gorgeous property and is a gem for golfers in the region, but let’s face it, attempting to move tens of thousands of fans per day, with deficient public transportation around the area, is a major hurdle.

Then, there’s setting up the course. With the ball going absurd distances, the USGA had to get gimmicky in 2015, which led to a gross mismanagement of the property and other U.S. Opens. There are a lot of new faces at the USGA now, and it’s not the same USGA from last decade. The issue still stands with the length of Chambers. On the card, it plays a measly 7,158 yards from the tips, which isn’t close to the yardage men’s professional golf needs for a proper test. Pebble Beach’s card has its furthest tees playing at just 6,801 yards, and that course has to use gimmick tee boxes just to stretch it out for PGA Tour events. Chambers Bay doesn’t deserve to be shown to the world under another gimmicky setup. This would only hurt the already lackluster reputation it carries throughout the large golf population.

Ultimately, if the PNW wants a major championship, golf ball distance needs to be significantly reduced, there needs to be major upgrades to the public transportation to the areas that want to host a major, and there needs to be an available date. As mentioned above, the next opening for a PGA Championship is 2036, and a U.S. Open is 2043. In 2043, the ball might be flying 400 yards, Elon Musk could design TPC Mars, or maybe a new golf course could be constructed in the state with major championship hosting in mind, in a spot that checks all of the boxes. Regardless of how the game looks in the next two decades, unless things significantly change, the region runs the risk of being left out of men’s professional major championship golf.

This area doesn’t deserve a gimmick-filled major championship like what happened in 2015, or for the rug to be pulled out underneath us like in 2010. It deserves a true major championship to show the world there’s excellent golf in the great northwest.

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