Gamble Sands in Washington breaking ground on second course

Gamble Sands in Brewster, Washington, jumped onto golf’s map over the past decade with its David McLay Kidd-designed Sands course, a wide-open 18 that ranks as the No. 1 public-access layout in the state and No. 46 among all modern courses in the U.S. Built aside a working apple and cherry farm, Gamble Sands plays firm and fast over fescue and sand to wide fairways and giant greens.

For years Kidd and the Gebbers family, who own the remote resort and adjacent orchards, have been in discussions about adding a second course. That time has arrived.

Still unnamed, a new 18-hole course is part of a full resort expansion that includes nearly doubling the first-rate Inn at Gamble Sands that is frequently reached after a short flight from Seattle to Wenatchee followed by an hour’s drive up Highway 17.

Kidd told Golfweek the project is well underway, with permits in place and the starting points of construction decided. He and his crew will break ground this fall, then it’s off to the races next year, he said, with a planned grand opening in the summer of 2025.

The new course will be built just north of the existing 18 and the resort’s par-3 course, QuickSands, another Kidd creation that opened last year. Like the original 18, the new layout will overlook the Columbia River with scenic mountain views stretching for miles.

“It’s a sort of dramatic piece of land,” Kidd said of his plans for the second course. “There’s a little more to do than with the first course because they farmed it, so we’ve got to kind of rehab it back to the wild scrub of the high desert. But once we get all that done, I expect it to be a really good complement to the first one.”

The first course was a prime example of the Scottish designer’s new ethos, he has said, one that has evolved over the past decade.

After bursting onto the golf scene with his Bandon Dunes layout in Oregon in 1999, Kidd began building other courses with a greater emphasis on difficulty. That approach didn’t always work out, and he shifted gears to open Gamble Sands in 2014 with a focus on fun for any level of golfer on layouts across which it’s difficult to lose a ball. Sometimes-immense fairways over thrilling terrain, big greens, bouncy shots, feeder slopes, extreme playability – those became his talking points, and golfers flocked to Gamble Sands as well as his Mammoth Dunes course at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.

Kidd also recently signed on to build GrayBull in the Nebraska Sandhills,…