The enduring appeal of Sahalee Country Club – where in the late 1960s Ted Robinson carved 27 holes from evergreen forest just east of Seattle – is a reminder that great golf design is not a one-size-fits-all exercise.

With its single-file fairways framed by towering firs and cedars, Sahalee exemplifies a style of course – where each hole sits in natural isolation – that some decades ago was considered the ultimate golf experience. It stands in celebratory defiance of the modern movement to extreme width, and as one of the best of its kind retains a lofty position in rankings; Golf Digest places it third in the state of Washington.

At the 2024 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, which was played over the South and North nines, Sahalee was met with glowing praise. “It’s almost majestic; very peaceful and amazing,” said Brooke Henderson, who won the PGA the previous time it was held at Sahalee, in 2016.

Once a tee peg is in the ground, that majesty defines the golfing challenge. The extreme height of the trees appears to further narrow chutes that set out a very precise requirement for the drive, which on most holes requires fearless accuracy. Negotiating the tee shot successfully brings a sense of relief and maybe a moment to breathe in the glorious natural environment, albeit knowing the sound of urethane on cedar is never far away.

Sahalee’s trees are central to its appeal, character and challenge – so their management must be carefully considered. This is not the place to get too cavalier with a chainsaw.

The club’s relationship with architect Rees Jones was established ahead of the 1998 PGA Championship. “He started by doing the bunkers, and saw that we kind of had a diamond in the rough,” says Jim Pike, who has worked at Sahalee since the 1980s in several roles from golf pro to general manager. “Some of the trees created double penalties; we had trees in bunkers and trees in front of bunkers. So Rees carefully selected which trees to take out to make the golf course more playable.”

That first major championship was a hit, the US Senior Open followed in 2010 and the club has never looked back. Following a masterplan prepared by Jones and his associate Steve Weisser, Sahalee prepared for its 2024 major with a comprehensive overhaul of bunkers and perhaps its most extensive phase of tree management yet.

At most courses, the removal of 500 trees would completely change the character of the design. At Sahalee, that represented a modest and thoughtful trimming of its stock. “For some people, a tree management plan means removing all of them,” says Weisser. “But we analysed about 7,500 at Sahalee and, between the arborist reports and shade studies, we pretty much know every one of them. Everyone at the club knows them too; you can mention a maple on the left of the fourth to members and they’ll know which one you’re talking about. Jim and I spent a lot of time watching how individual trees come into play for different types of player, their effect on shade, their health and a whole lot of other things. It was a long process – I don’t know how many versions of the tree management plan we did, but there were lots.”

Some ‘controversial’ trees that were very much in the line of play have been removed, notably on the eighth, close to the green on the eleventh, on the approach to the twelfth, and in the second landing area of the sixteenth. “Now that they are gone, I don’t think people miss them,” says Weisser.

But arguably the most important aspect of the tree work has been to raise the canopy. “Under the direction of Rees and Steve, our superintendent has removed lower branches of trees to get some airflow,” says Pike. This is helpful for turf health but has two key additional benefits: there is now more often a route to recovery when shots end up in trees, and the removal of lower limbs has “highlighted the beautiful terrain of the golf course,” according to Pike, and provided more of a sense of the overall site and the connections between holes that previously felt very separate.

“It’s what a lot of clubs should be doing,” says Jones. “They shouldn’t be taking out as many trees as they do. They should just raise the canopies because you then have to manufacture shots, turn the ball one way or another. And you have to think about how to recover from a bad shot. With wide open golf courses, it’s the same shot every time.”

Jones and team have also redesigned the bunkers at Sahalee. Primarily, this was to improve performance – by installing new lining, drainage and sand – but it has also given the design team an opportunity to make some significant revisions to bunker style and placement. The latter is driven primarily by the desire to retain strategic relevance in keeping with modern hitting distances, but the tree clearance has also opened opportunities for new locations that embrace the site topography. “When we took out trees, it gave us more room to tie in the bunkers to the natural grade,” says Jones.

In terms of style, bunkers now have the wavy edges that are becoming something of a hallmark of Jones’s recent work, aspects of bunker design that were slowly lost over years of maintenance have been restored, and some adjustments have been made for accessibility – it is now easy to walk in and out of each bunker.

“The focus has always been, number one, making the golf course playable for the members, and number two, being championship ready,” says Pike. “I think every club in America complains about bunkers, but ours are now 100 per cent better.”

There have been other changes too, notably the extension of the pond and removal of a saving bunker on the front left of the tenth green (the opening hole of the North nine), making the short downhill approach more thought-provoking. The East nine – which is a similar length and stature as both the South and North but not part of the tournament configuration – has also received attention in equal measure.

The result of the renovation is a layout that further endorses Sahalee’s credentials as best-in-class, and may give many visitors a newfound appreciation of tree-lined golf.

“The beauty of Sahalee is that you have got to manage and master the mental side of the game as much as on any major championship course in the world,” says Jones. “You can never let up and there is never a free shot.”

This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.