AS PORT LUDLOW Golf Club celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, the course, like many of us nearing middle age, was beginning to show its years.
Port Ludlow, once a certainty for inclusion on golf publications’ lists of the top Washington courses open to the public, hadn’t necessarily fallen into a state of decay, but more of disrepair.
The original vision of the course offered by famed architect Robert Muir Graves had been compromised.
Over time, changes intended to lower the difficulty level for the playing public were made.
This included filling in some of the course’s bunkering, the shrinking of green complexes and the loss of the original contouring along fairways and on greens.
And there were drainage problems on low-lying fairways during much of the winter and spring that made some stretches of the course a slog.
“It was a case of deferred maintenance,” Port Ludlow general Manager Shelly Washburn said.
“And with the economy taking a dive in 2009, so did the budget.
“The course wasn’t being maintained at the same level the property was when it was a true golf destination.”
Indeed, once a 27-hole facility with the original Tide and Timber nines and the 1992-constructed Trail nine, the economic downturn caused the course to shutter Trail in May 2009.
Washburn, a club member since 2008 and a winner of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association’s Super Senior Men’s Amateur in 2013, assumed his management role at the course last October.
Retired from a career in the automobile industry, Washburn was chair of the club’s greens committee when he was approached to oversee the course by its owners.
“HCV Pacific Partners, which owns Port Ludlow Associates, recognized it was time for the course to be renovated and to realize what it was in the beginning,” Washburn said.
“And that was a position as not just one of the top courses in the Pacific Northwest, but one of the top in the country.
“Now that was 1975, and there have been a lot of courses that have been built in the area and the country.
“But the irony of that is we are doing the work to put back sand traps that were taken out over the last who knows how many years.”
Washburn has a partner in trying to recapture the course’s former design glory in course superintendent Dick Schmidt, the original course superintendent during construction of the course in the early 1970s.
“Mr. Schmidt is an integral piece,” Washburn said.
“We wrote a business plan with a two-and-a-half-year renovation program.
“We call it a soft renovation because it won’t impair play in any way.
“He has all the knowledge of the infrastructure of the course and understands its nuances and how it can go back to the original configuration.”
First on the agenda was the purchase of a new excavator, which Washburn said has already paid for itself many times over.
Its primary use has been to clean out material from water elements on the property, fix partially blocked culverts and get water flowing on and off the course correctly.
“We’ve just been trying to get the course to be able to breathe,” Washburn said.
“Cleaning the creeks, the ponds, the bog, taking the perimeter and opening that up so everything feeds and collects at the right locations.”
Washburn said the work has caused the water table to drop between 3 and 4 feet in lower portions.
“There’s been so much work done that most people have no idea what’s out here,” Washburn said.
Next up on the rejuvenation schedule: working on the areas surrounding greens and bringing back the original flow of mounding to fairways and greens.
New silica sand is being brought in to fill sand traps.
And a new telemetric irrigiation system will soon provide data from all areas of the course.
“We are not impeding play in any way,” Washburn said.
“The course will stay open during these repairs. It’s a public venue and we want to garner, and not lose, business.”
One aspect of the course never needed an update: the serenity found in its nearly natural state.
The routing of the course ensures that in most cases, fairways are not side-by-side with houses or with other fairways.
On most of the Timber nine, now known as the back nine, golfers are on their own — there’s no feeling of being crowded or pushed by impatient groups behind them on the course.
“There are so many components that are special,” Washburn said.
“The first hole on Timber when you proceed to get to the dogleg and you look up and see the Olympic Mountains, it’s just staggeringly beautiful.
“Tide, you get to the fourth hole and you can watch eagles scoop prey out of the pond to the left.
“It’s nuts.”
Port Ludlow also is embracing young golfers. Head pro Darren Posey is the coach of the Chimacum High School golf team.
Washburn invites the North Olympic Peninsula golf community to come and see the process at work.
A $25 walking rate is available after noon weekdays, while that rate rises to $35 on weekends.
“The course is a jewel,” Washburn said.
“We are just repolishing the stone.”
Golf for Wolves
Golf 4 Grads, a four-person scramble event, is planned at Cedars at Dungeness Golf Course in Sequim on Sunday, May 15.
All proceeds from the event will help fund the Sequim High School Class of 2016’s safe and sober graduation night party in June.
A shotgun start will open the day’s play at 10 a.m.
The cost for the tournament is $85 per player and includes green fees, use of cart, lunch, KP’s, a long drive contest, chance at hole-in-one prizes and more.
Honey pots and a helicopter ball drop contest also are planned.
No handicap is needed to play.
To register, phone 360-683-6344.
Spring Shotgun
Peninsula Golf Club will host the 55th annual Port Angeles Spring Shotgun over Memorial Day Weekend.
This two-day stroke-play event features the biggest prize percentage payout on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Practice rounds are included in the $120-per- player entry fee.
A shotgun start will open play at 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, May 28-29.
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 57050 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.