Rounds For The Road Treat Yourself To The Affordable, Well-Maintained Courses Of The Banana Belt
Among the golf warnings I never received: Don’t play a course with “Ridge” in its name on a day when the wind is howling in excess of 30 miles an hour.
Which helps explain why my son, Wyatt, and I found ourselves on Quail Ridge Golf Course in Clarkston recently, fighting to keep our golf balls from blowing off the planet and wondering if we might have been better off scheduling a tee time on Pluto.
It was too bad our timing was so poor. We missed out on what could have been a fun round of golf on a short but challenging course that features wide-open fairways and slick, unreadable greens.
But our weekend golf outing was salvaged by a juicy Hawaiian burger and ice-cold beverage at Zany Graze that night, and a round of golf in sunny, near-windless conditions at Bryden Canyon Golf Course in Lewiston the following morning. So we left the Lewis Clark Valley understanding why the Banana Belt is such a popular early spring getaway spot for Spokane-area golfers.
For starters, the area is a relaxing, two-hour drive south of Spokane on Highway 195. It gets less snow than Spokane and warms up earlier in the spring. There is not a wide variety of public courses to play, but those you can get on are interesting, well-maintained and green up much earlier than those to the north.
In addition, several motels in the Lewiston-Clarkston area offer economical golf packages - most of which run throughout the summer.
Wyatt and I stayed at the Quality Inn Conference Center in Clarkston and found the accommodations splendid. The $95 golf package consisted of a river-view room with two queen beds and certificates for two rounds of golf at either Quail Ridge or Bryden Canyon.
The Quality Inn (509-758-9500), located near the south shore of the Snake River, overlooks the foothills that rim the valley and features an on-site restaurant (Shore Landing) and lounge (Dockside) that both look out onto an 18-hole, natural-grass putting course sandwiched between the motel and the river.
The putting course, complete with water hazards and sand traps, is part of Gateway Golf Center, which also has a full-service pro shop and lighted practice range with 20 hitting stalls and target greens. The putting green opened last fall and has become an instant hit with motel guests - golfers and non-golfers alike - according to Curt Johnson, manager of the Quality Inn.
Still, the migration of golfers from Spokane has been slow so far this spring.
“If we have a typical winter, we get quite a number,” Johnson said. “But our weather wasn’t all that great this winter, either.
“But since the weather’s turned a little bit, we’re starting to see more and more people coming down from Spokane and Canada.”
Among the other area motels that offer golf packages are the Ramada Inn (208-799-1000) and Inn America (208-746-4600) in Lewiston. In addition, the Riverview Inn (208-746-3311) offers special room rates for golfers.
Quail Ridge and Bryden Canyon are the only two public courses in the Lewiston-Clarkston area and both offer short but interesting challenges for golfers of all abilities. And the green fees - $15 at Quail Ridge and $13.50 at Bryden Canyon - are as affordable as any in the Pacific Northwest.
Quail Ridge, because of its slick, sloped greens, presents a tougher test for shot-makers than Bryden Canyon, even though it stretches only 5,603 yards.
Bryden, which plays to 6,103 yards, has a nice variety of holes, including a couple of risk-reward par-4s that are reachable off the tee. And the greens are not as treacherous as those at Quail Ridge.
Anyone with more than a couple of days to devote to their Banana Belt golf getaway might want to plan a day trip back north to the Pullman-Moscow area to play the courses at Washington State and the University of Idaho.
The University of Idaho Golf Course, which measures 6,154 yards, is perhaps the best public course in the Palouse area and a delight to play - for anyone without an aversion to elevated greens that don’t let you see the bottom of the flagsticks.
The WSU course is a peculiar 9-hole layout that boasts several tough, interesting holes.
And golfers should try to squeeze in at least one round at the Colfax Golf Club, a fun, flat 9-hole public course that has suffered some recent flooding problems, but always seems to green up quicker than other courses in the area.
, DataTimes