The Best Public Golf Courses in the Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest doesn't just have good muni golf, it's home to some of the best public golf in the entire country. From a former sand quarry that hosted a U.S. Open to a high desert layout carved out of lava rock, this region punches way above its weight when it comes to courses anyone can book a tee time on.

We're narrowing it down to five: the tracks that define public golf in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Here's how we'd rank them, from great to the best of the best.

5. Circling Raven Golf Club

Tucked into 620 acres of rolling Palouse hills at the Coeur d'Alene Casino Resort in Worley, Idaho, Circling Raven is the kind of course that makes you forget you're on a tee sheet at all. Designed by Gene Bates in partnership with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, the layout swings from golden prairie to pine-lined corridors to wetlands crossed by North Fork Rock Creek, all without a house in sight. It's a long test from the tips at just under 7,200 yards, but the fairways are generous enough that mid-handicappers won't get beat up. Add in a top-tier practice facility, a laid-back casino resort right next door, and green fees that are still a relative bargain, and it's easy to see why Golfweek has repeatedly named it Idaho's best public course.

4. Gamble Sands (Sands Course)

Perched on a sandy plateau above the Columbia River in Brewster, Washington, Gamble Sands is David McLay Kidd's love letter to fun golf. Golf Digest named it Best New Course in 2014, and it's easy to understand why: the fescue fairways are absurdly wide, the greens are enormous punchbowls and backstops, and the "friendly contours" funnel even mediocre shots back toward the target. There's essentially no rough and barely a lost ball to be found, which means low-handicappers can go low and everyone else can post a career round. It's a haul to get there — figure four-plus hours from Seattle — but between the golf, the Columbia River views, and the burgers at Danny Boy's, it's one of the most purely enjoyable rounds in the entire Northwest.

3. Pronghorn Golf Club (Nicklaus Course)

Oregon's only Jack Nicklaus signature design sits on 640 acres of BLM high desert north of Bend, at the heart of the Juniper Preserve resort. Ancient lava rock outcroppings, juniper forest, and framed views of Mt. Bachelor, Broken Top, and the Three Sisters give the course a raw, prehistoric character you won't find anywhere else in the region. It's deceptively tough — tight tee shots, multi-level greens, and a real premium on accuracy over raw distance — but the conditioning is some of the best you'll find at any public course in the country. A regular on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Public Courses, Pronghorn delivers a private-club experience without a membership requirement, right down to the forecaddies and the resort-level service.

2. Tetherow

Tetherow is Bend's most polarizing golf course, and that's exactly the point. David McLay Kidd built this Scottish heathland-style layout in 2008 on land scarred by an old forest fire, and the result is all fescue, all the time — rugged bunkering, blind tee shots, and green complexes with more movement than almost anything else in Central Oregon. Golfers tend to either love the challenge or leave frustrated by three-putts they never saw coming, but nobody argues with the views: the Cascades, including Three Sisters and Broken Top, loom over nearly every hole. It rewards repeat visits as you learn where to miss and how to read the ground game, and it remains one of the most distinctive, memorable rounds anywhere in the Northwest.

1. Chambers Bay

There's a reason Chambers Bay tops this list — it's the only public course in the region actually built to host a U.S. Open, and it delivers on that scale every time you play it. Carved out of an abandoned sand and gravel quarry on the shores of Puget Sound, Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s 2007 design is a true links course: firm, fast fescue and poa fairways, cavernous bunkers, a single tree on the entire property, and greens that demand a completely different kind of imagination than anything else in the Northwest. It's walking-only, and the terrain makes it one of the toughest walks in golf, but that's part of the pilgrimage. Add in sweeping views of the Sound, the rumble of the BNSF line running along the water, and the history of hosting the 2010 U.S. Amateur and 2015 U.S. Open, and you've got a genuine bucket-list round that happens to be open to the public. If you only play one course on this list, make it this one.