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ALDARRA
Golf Club
PAR 3 234 YARDS
Sammamish, WA
425.222.7828
www.aldarragolfclub.com
Aldarra Golf Club remains true to its mission to provide pure golf. No starting times,
no swimming pool, no greens committee, few tournaments—just golf. And despite
its inviting nature and grace, the course has teeth and a snarl, best represented by
the 15th hole that triggers the home stretch or what the members call the "Gauntlet."
There can be no more challenging par 3 in the Northwest than the 15th at Aldarra.
The purity of the hole begins on the tee. A tall tree on each side eliminates playing
any kind of big slice or hook to the hole, which rests uneasily 234 yards from the back
tee and 197 yards from the member tees. The next visual obstacle is a large, deep
bunker protecting the middle of the green. Those who can't fly the bunker are pretty
much out of luck, and those who can must still stop a 200-yard shot on a narrow,
nasty green. Anything left and short of the bunker can roll 30 yards back toward the
tee because of a false front; anything that misses the green right or long can find a
hazard. The nostalgia offered by the grain silo to the left of the hole sometimes gets
short shrift, as survival—not sentiment—is the primary instinct needed when playing
the 15th.
Aldarra is a special course on a unique piece of property, one of the fine works by
world-renowned architect Tom Fazio. It is at times a sprawling vestige of a Northwest
farm, and at other times a tree-lined forest that dips in and out of valleys, the browns
and reds of its fescue grasses set against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains—
where the Gauntlet awaits.
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Photograph by Rob Perry
