Chambers Bay and John Ladenburg: He Built It, They’re Coming
John Ladenburg stops on the 18th fairway at Chambers Bay Golf Course near a bunker tunneled into the fairway, a trap so deep it’s called Chambers Basement. With stairs needed to reach the bottom, it more resembles a meteor crash site, or a wine cellar, or the safest place in University Place, Wash., to take cover during a tornado.
Of course, it’s unlikely a cyclone will ever rip through western Washington; in fact, it’s about as likely as the grand vision Ladenburg conceived more than a decade ago, when he proposed that University Place (pop. 32,000) build a championship-caliber, links-style golf course atop an abandoned gravel mine.
University Place—U.P.—is a suburb of Tacoma, and Tacoma is known for many things: the “Tacoma aroma” that envelops commuters as they pass through on Interstate 5, wide swaths of suburbia, industry, the port, nearby military bases and the Tacoma Dome, site of my high school graduation and home mostly to minor league sports in a minor league city. Tacoma will forever be in the shadow of Seattle, the overlooked half of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Except when it comes to golf.
“Nobody saw this,” Ladenburg says with a laugh. “I had to break a few legs and twist a few arms.”
He chips onto the 18th green. The Olympic Mountains form a spectacular backdrop beyond the train tracks and the blue waters of the Puget Sound and the waterfront homes on Fox Island. Later this month the world’s best golfers will descend upon University Place, and the trains will rumble by, and a bald eagle may drop in, and an international television audience will see U.P. for the first time. That’s because a golf course once labeled Ladenburg’s Folly will host the U.S. Open. Yes, that U.S. Open.
Ladenburg putts out, then retires to the clubhouse restaurant, which sits high above the course, the best views in Tacoma spread below. He orders a Chambers Bay Ale and begins to tell another unlikely success story—his own. For years Ladenburg, 65, worked as a federal prosecutor. He tried criminals for sexual abuse, gang violence and racketeering. In his spare time he traveled the country playing slo-pitch softball. Ladenburg is the third oldest of 16 children, and his family tree was stocked with so many softball enthusiasts it yielded two teams. Everyone wore the same jersey, with Ladenburg stitched across the back. The clan was even featured in SI.
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At 48, Ladenburg quit softball and took up golf. In 2000, he was elected Pierce County Executive. And that’s how a trial lawyer and a recreational third baseman came to be interested in creating a golf course now nicknamed America’s St. Andrews.
Chambers Bay buzzes with construction. The merchandise pavilion is mostly assembled. The corporate tents are in various stages. The Open, the crown jewel of the U.S. Golf Association, is taking shape.
It will be an Open of firsts: the first held in the Pacific Northwest, on fine fescue grass, with the potential to be played at more than 7,900 yards, contested on a course that opened a mere eight years ago.
The first Open in my hometown.
Ladenburg finishes his beer. He can picture it: Tiger Woods on 18, near the cement holding pens that resemble a Northwest Stonehenge; Rory McIlroy on 15, next to a forsaken fir, the only tree on the course; Jordan Spieth taking suggestions from a caddie who only a few years ago was teaching math to sixth-graders down the street from Chambers Bay.
A U.S. Open. In University Place. Who’d have thought?
“For all of us, the initial reaction was, It’s a pipe dream,” says Tipton. “It’s just not going to happen.”
Everything is different now, and yet the memories remain vivid. I drive past the restaurant where I downed 25 ribs to impress the father of my high school girlfriend … past the Jack in the Box where everyone gathered after football games … past the apartment complex my mother moved to after she and my father divorced … past the cemetery where we buried my childhood friend Shane.
And then … a golf course.
A golf course? That’s the last thing anyone could have expected.
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Before Chambers Bay became Chambers Bay, it housed lumber companies, a paper mill, a railroad operation and a succession of companies that mined more than 250 million tons of gravel over more than a century. The gravel was used to build freeways and highways and roads. The abundant sand was used in part to construct area courses.
In 1992, Pierce County purchased most of the 650-acre tract of land and its scrub trees and gravel mounds and shallow drainage pounds for $33 million. It needed a site for a wastewater treatment plant; the land and the views remained hidden beyond a barbed-wire fence. On the rare occasions it snowed, my friends and I would hop that fence and slide down the slopes.
Though he grew up in South Tacoma, Ladenburg was only vaguely aware of the gravel mine. But shortly after he took office, he went to view the property, and what he saw—a vast expanse of land with two miles of western exposure perched on a beach—startled him. Grandview Drive wound along the top of the property, and although the view below lived up to the name, no one, save for those who worked at the mine, actually saw it.
In the early 2000s, U.P. added a trail and sidewalks along Grandview. The enhancement wasn’t seen as simply an assist to walkers and joggers. Rather, Ladenburg wanted to broaden the county’s vision of what was possible for the gravel mine. To sell it, though, he believed the locals needed to see what lay below. Then, maybe, his idea wouldn’t sound so far-fetched.
Ladenburg’s grand plan: He wanted to build a golf course that was strong enough to host the U.S. Open multiple times.
O.K., it was a crazy idea. But perhaps, with the trail, less so.
Inspired by a book about Bethpage Black, the layout on Long Island that is by most accounts the first public course to host a U.S. Open, Ladenburg set his sights on the golf course. The county had a 50-year plan for the property, but he whittled that vision down to eight years. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” Ladenburg says. “I mean, we had to remove 1.4 million cubic tons of sand.” He hired consultants, one of whom told him, “This is as good as Pebble Beach, maybe better.” More than 70 firms applied to design the course.
Most decisions pointed toward making the venue U.S. Open–worthy. The state-of-the-art water treatment system. The open areas with room for tens of thousands of spectators. A ridge above the property that provides views of every hole. Stadium golf, Ladenburg calls it. Still, Tony Tipton, the director of the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, recalls, “For all of us, the initial reaction was, It’s a pipe dream. It’s just not going to happen.”
The plan required a $24 million commitment and the approval of three city councils. Robert Trent Jones Jr. was one of five design finalists to accommodate the county’s request for a 27-hole layout, but his company also included plans for an 18-hole routing. Building two nines made more sense, particularly for marquee tournaments, because it opened up more space between holes. That cemented the county’s decision to go with Jones. When the bid was submitted, his team passed out metal bag tags. They read: CHAMBERS CREEK GOLF COURSE—U.S. OPEN 2030.
Josh Lewis has an office that feels more like a bunker: concrete and windowless, shelves lined with books about agronomy and soil and golf architecture and a pamphlet titled Noxious Weeds of Washington State. An NCAA basketball tournament bracket sits near his computer. The tournament starts on this March morning, and then the Masters will be played and Floyd Mayweather Jr. will fight Manny Pacquiao. And then the sports world will turn its attention toward Chambers Bay and the U.S. Open.
As course superintendent Lewis is charged with maintaining championship co
Source: https://golf.com/news/chambers-bay-and-john-ladenburg-he-built-it-theyre-coming/
