Colin Gants – PGA Head Professional

(2010)

I have just started my 20th year as a Golf Professional at West Seattle GC and loved it ever since.  But why do I love it?  Length, variety of holes, the challenge and the views all combine to make West Seattle a great course.

West Seattle is unique in that most ‘traditional style’ courses have had a difficult time keeping up with the modernization of golf in that they are too short to meet the minimum yardage requirements that today’s golfers seem to find synonymous with ‘great’.  Many urban courses are built in areas confined by property boundaries, limiting the upgrades required to keep up with technological advance of today’s equipment.

Unfortunately and perhaps unfairly, you just don’t see any courses that are labeled as ‘great’ if they are only 6200 yards.  West Seattle is nearly 6800 yards which seems to get it past the first checkpoint of ‘greatness’.

Second, a course needs to have a variety of holes to capture the attention or memory of a golfer.  Hitting a bunch of drivers and wedges simply doesn’t get the juices flowing.  Conversely, having a course that is 7500 yards and beats you to death requiring second shot fairway woods and long irons is no fun either.  West Seattle has a great variety of holes:

West Seattle has four holes that dogleg to the right, four holes that dogleg to the left and six holes go straight away. There are uphill holes, downhill holes, side hill holes and flat holes.  There are some short interesting par 4’s (2, 7, 17); there are some long demanding par 4’s (5, 8, 14) and everything in between.

Two of my favorite holes are #2 and #16.  Hole #2 can be played as a drivable par four which provides options to a player as to weather they attempt to drive the green or take the close encroaching water hazard out of play and lay up.  I love the threat of the hazard playing down the entire length of the hole including about five feet right of the green.

In my opinion, hole #16 is the longest and hardest 350 yard hole in the world.  This is a perfect example of a short hole playing extremely difficult in relationship to par.  It seems like you can hit a good drive and still have 150 yards off an uphill lie to an elevated green.  Often times after a good drive I am preparing to hit my second shot and can’t believe I am hitting a driver and 5 or 6 iron to a 350 yard hole.  And after two shots, the hole is just beginning.  If you miss the green anywhere you have one of the most difficult shots to try and get up and down.  If you hit the green….well good luck because your only thought is ‘what do I have to do to two putt’.

Even better than the par 4’s is the fact that I think West Seattle has very nice par 3’s.  But when you put them all together as a set they are the best ‘group’ of par 3’s in the state.  Very few courses give four par 3’s that require four different clubs.

Hole #3 – 115 yards – Modern architects do not design short pitch par 3’s anymore.  I think every course should have one.

Hole #6 – 180 yards

Hole #11 – 160 yards

Hole #13 – 195 yards

Anytime I set up a tournament I am very cognizant of the fact I want to have the player swing four different clubs into the par 3’s.

Finally, the par 5’s at WS offer a nice variety from reachable (484yard) tight holes (#12) to unreachable 570 yard slight doglegging par 5’s (#9).

Lastly, the greens are always interesting and challenging.  We have 7 of them that are difficult (not in that they have been tricked up or bulldozed with humps) but they have been laid naturally on the terrain that you find them.  The greens provide great interest and challenge without being unfair.

West Seattle Golf Course does not favor one style of player.  Golfers do not get an advantage by being a long hitter or short hitter nor does it favor a golfer who fades the ball or draws the ball.  It is very well balanced in that it is equally as difficult off the tee as it is to hit your approach shots as it is to putt the greens.  Many courses, I feel, are poorly balanced in that they are fairly straight forward from tee to green but the putting surfaces are over-the-top difficult.  Other courses are extremely demanding and tight off the tee but have large un-descriptive greens.  And others have fairways that are 100 yards wide but their green complexes are tight and heavily bunkered.  If you are really trying to identify a great golfer and expose any weaknesses, West Seattle challenges all aspects of a golfer’s game without putting an unbalanced requirement on any one part of the game.

The best of all is that on any given day when you finish your round at West Seattle you can look into your bag and see that you have hit all 14 of your clubs in your bag. Very few courses yield this quality.

Oh, did I forget to mention the views?  West Seattle has the most scenic views on any course in the area.  It is an absolutely gorgeous setting meandering through a tranquil park-like setting overlooking our city’s beautiful skyline!  What a way to spend the day.

With all of that said, one of my biggest pet peeves is when golfers say, “West Seattle is a great course for a muni.”  I am in hopes that you will all agree that the modifier ‘for a muni’ needs to be dropped and West Seattle GC should be simply recognized as a ‘great course’.

I love this place!

Colin Gants
PGA Head Professional
West Seattle Golf Course

Colin Gants – PGA Head Professional

(2008)

Our beloved West Seattle Golf Course has received its share of attention lately.  The course we call home is no longer our little local secret.  A common description you have all heard in the past is that West Seattle GC is “A Great Course for a Muni”.  Not anymore…….Deservedly so, its beauty, layout, course condition and reputation has forced us to omit the modifier and simply classify it as “A Great Course!”

Within the last 7 years word started spreading like wildfire and we saw West Seattle Golf Course featured by numerous golf media.

Golf Magazine was the first to give the course national attention by featuring West Seattle GC as, “One of the Country’s Best Urban Municipals”.  This article firmly placed West Seattle on a national pedestal and the exposure to follow finally confirmed what we had been saying all along.

Rich Beem, 2002 PGA Champion, played most of his golf at West Seattle during the winter before going on tour.  After winning the major, The Seattle Times asked him about his days at West Seattle GC and he said, “West Seattle’s back nine is one of the most beautiful back nine’s you’ll find anywhere.”

Cascade Golfer rated West Seattle GC as the #2 Puget Sound Golf Course under $50 and spent most of the article raving about the bunker renovation project.  Here they write, “Filled with beautiful white sand, the 24 bunkers give the course a classic and sophisticated look. And the course has never looked better.”

A book written in 2004, Best Places to Golf devoted two pages to West Seattle GC and included, “The golf venue located closest to downtown Seattle may just be one of the world’s best munis!”  That in itself is a powerful statement but they go on to say, “ Built on the side of a hill and winding amid steep ravines and towering firs overlooking downtown’s modern skyline, West Seattle is a dramatic track with not a bad hole on the course.”

Cascade Golfer also included West Seattle’s Par 3 Third Hole in their article titled, “Favorite Par 3’s in the State.”

In 2006, Seattle Metropolitan Magazine voted West Seattle’s 12th Hole as Seattle’s Most Challenging Hole.  It was a fun, two page article describing the authors love and hate for the hole.

Golf Digest recently wrote, “Old trees decorate this long and difficult layout with plenty of variety.  You won’t find a flat lie on the course especially the very scenic back nine.”  Golf Digest also thought so much of the course that they included a beautiful photograph of West Seattle in their ‘Metro Golf’ story.  Not to reveal too much, but just this morning I spent 30 minutes on the phone with the editors of Golf Digest and West Seattle will again be featured in a future issue.  But the topic of the article may surprise you.  Stay tuned.

The Puget Sound Business Journal featured an article by David Wood titled, “West Seattle Golf Course is Golf with no Pretensions”.  Here you read, “With its cozy white clapboard clubhouse holding the high ground, there isn’t a pretentious bone in its 67 year old body.”  Later, describing the layout, “you’d better have your golf shoes laced up tight if you plan on playing from the back tees.  You find very few golfers bragging about taming West Seattle.  If you correctly navigate the minefield of the evil par-5 fourth and play the brutish par-4 eighth to a draw, you’re in the game at the turn.  However, playing the backside can be as difficult as being Britney Spears’ publicist.”  He goes on to dispel a rumor, “There is a school of thought in the local golf world disparaging the final five holes because they lay side-by-side like sardines in a tin.  This is poppycock!  Egan juiced every bit of golf possible out of that hillside and the holes are excellent.”  He sums up his feelings about West Seattle with, “Oh, I love it so!”

I attribute much of this attention to not only a wonderful layout by famed architect, H. Chandler Egan, but incredible day in and day out course condition.  This dramatic turnaround in our playing condition was orchestrated by West Seattle’s Superintendent, John Price and his staff.  Thank you for presenting the facility the way it deserves to be seen.  It makes us all proud to call West Seattle GC our home.