103
EUGENE
Country Club
PAR 4 440 YARDS
Eugene, OR
54l.345.0181
www.eugenecountryclub.com
The magnificent firs that stand sentinel at Eugene Country Club,
for decades the highest-ranked course in the Pacific Northwest,
are considered hallowed halls. In the 1960s, although already
the site of LPGA tour events, Eugene undertook an ambitious
renovation by the renowned Robert Trent Jones Sr. To enable
play to continue during construction and to limit removal of the
trees, Jones built greens where tees once were, and tees where
greens were. The result was a dramatic old course with towering
trees and new, diabolical green complexes.
Out there among the cathedral of firs and cedars is a testy par
4, the 440-yard 15th. Often the decider in match play, it's a hole
demanding a well-struck and well-placed drive to escape a long
line of trees on the left side of the fairway. The green is at the
end of a sharp dogleg left and is obscured from the tee shot with
anything hit left or short.
The telltale second shot is over a swale and among a series of
bunkers to a green that runs perpendicular to the fairway. Any
approach short is in a bunker or rolling down into the swale. The
best bailout is left of the green, but go too far and there is yet
another bunker with which to contend. The green—Stimpmeters
often read 13 or more at Eugene—slopes left to right.
15
Photograph by John R. Johnson
