Photo By Stephen Szurlej
By Ron Whitten
PURE POETRYThe delights of Osprey Meadows, Golf Digest's Best New Public Course $75 and Over, include rich green bluegrass fairways, gracefully sculptured bunkers, generous (and generously contoured) putting surfaces, all framed by marshland habitats, tallgrass meadows, clusters of birch, walls of towering Douglas firs and the panorama of 21-mile-long Lake Cascade, Idaho's version of Lake Tahoe—without the rooftops.
Set at the base of ski slopes, on rolling land not so hilly as to be unwalkable, Osprey Meadows bears the design variety of veteran course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr.: an inside corner bunker on one dogleg, an outside corner bunker on another, a center bunker on a straightaway hole.
Jones, now 67, has never fit the mold of a course designer. Liberal in his politics, Bohemian in his lifestyle, in recent years he has seemed more content reciting his poetry than playing his courses. He made just four visits to the site outside Donnelly, Idaho, but each time was inspired to put pen to paper, sometimes sketching out specific design features, other times scribbling out verses.
So much credit for the design of Osprey Meadows must also go to 49-year-old Bruce Charlton. Back in 1999, Charlton was one of four Jones Jr. design associates who collectively resigned in a bit of a palace revolt. But Charlton soon returned, lured by a share of the company and a promotion to president and chief design officer. It was a savvy move on Bobby's part. Despite an exhausting, globe-trotting schedule, Charlton found time to make extensive visits to Osprey Meadows during construction, attending to details of his mentor and his own imagination. The result is the fifth Best New win for the firm, its first since 1993.
The course has any number of fine risk-reward, moderate-length par 4s. (At a 4,900-foot elevation, the course plays a bit shorter than its 7,319 yards.) But its five par 3s are what make a round memorable. Each demands a different club and different shot.
Osprey Meadows also has five par 5s, but the dogleg-right, 547-yard 18th is disappointing. A pair of bisecting wetlands creates three landing areas and, unfortunately, makes it play for many golfers as a driver, wedge and then fairway wood into the green. It is not an ideal finish, indeed, not one worthy of the other 17 holes. But we are reminded that even some of America's greatest courses are beleaguered by a less-than-sterling 18th hole: Cypress Point and Yale are the classic examples. So Osprey Meadows' anticlimatic finish can be forgiven. (We've been told that its design will be addressed. Some trees might be removed, or an alternate green for average golfers placed short of the second wetlands.)
More curious is that all the wetlands about the course were marked with green stakes bearing the sign, "Environmentally Protected Area. Free Drop, No Penalty." That was a local rule intended to ease first-timers into a favorable introduction.
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