Best of Washington State

Washington doesn't get enough credit as a golf destination. This trip corrects that. The route runs east from the Puget Sound to the high desert of central Washington, then crosses into Idaho's lake country before looping back through Spokane. The terrain shifts dramatically at every stop: links turf above saltwater, fescue-covered bluffs above the Columbia River, manicured lakeside resort, canyon-carved parkland. The golf matches it. Chambers Bay sets the tone. Built on a former sand and gravel mine above Puget Sound, Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s design is the closest thing to a true links course the American West has produced. The fairways are wide but the wind and elevation changes make nothing simple. It hosted the 2015 U.S. Open and walks like it. Play it on arrival before the trip finds its rhythm, or save it for the last morning before you drive east. Either way, it earns its place as the opening act. Gamble Sands is the main event. David McLay Kidd found something special in the dry, scrubby hills above the Columbia River in Brewster, a landscape that bears no resemblance to the wet, forested Washington most people imagine. The result is a minimalist, ground-game-forward course named the best new course in the country when it opened in 2014, and still ranked inside the top 15 on Golf Magazine's Top 100 You Can Play list. Budget two to three nights here. You'll need them. The property now has 50 holes. Scarecrow, Kidd's second full-length course and named Best New Public Course of 2025 by Golf Digest, sits on former cornfields overlooking the Columbia River Valley. It's a different routing, a different character, and fully worth a dedicated day. QuickSands rounds it out: a 14-hole short course that plays differently at every skill level. Don't skip it. The final leg crosses into Idaho. The Coeur d'Alene Resort course is unabashedly a resort experience, polished, scenic, and famous for the floating island green on the 14th hole that arrives by boat. It's not the most serious test you'll play all week, but it belongs on the itinerary. Circling Raven, 45 minutes south in Worley, is the serious golf: 620 acres of meadow and ponderosa pine, ranked No. 1 in Idaho by Golfweek, with a front nine that plays wide open before the back nine tightens into dense forest. If you're short on time, play Circling Raven first. If your flight out of Spokane allows it, Indian Canyon is worth an early morning round before you leave. Designed by H. Chandler Egan in 1930, the same architect who revised Pebble Beach, it swoops through a canyon above the city with fairways that haven't been touched much since Byron Nelson won a PGA Tour event here in 1945. A Golf Digest Top 25 public course for a green fee that will surprise you.