By the 3rd tee it is obvious. The design team of Tom Weiskopf and
Jay Morrish has succeeded again. As you stand on this 424-yard par 4 and prepare
to launch your tee shot, it is impossible not to be overwhelmed by the view
straight ahead of snow-capped Mt. Bachelor, all 9,065 feet of it. Here on the
eastern slope of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, modern course architecture’s
version of Hope and Crosby has teased native land forms into vibrant golf
ground.
Welcome to Broken Top, centerpiece of an upscale golf community in
the old lumber town of Bend. Located 150 miles southeast of Portland, where
central Oregon’s grassland rises up to meet the mountains, Bend lies at
two-thirds of a mile above sea level between the Deschutes River and Deschutes
National Forest.
Weiskopf and Morrish formed a design partnership with nothing more
than a handshake and mutual respect to bind them in their collaboration. Morrish
maintained a studio in Oklahoma; Weiskopf worked out of his elegant,
second-floor office near the airport in Scottsdale, Arizona. The division of
labor was something of a right brain/left brain arrangement, with Morrish
assuming primary responsibility for routing, working drawings, drainage and
grasses, while Weiskopf oversaw playability, shotmaking, putting surfaces and
bunker depth and locations. (The partnership dissolved in 1994.)
Broken Top works because the site offers so many varied
textures—and 60 feet of natural elevation change. The holes weave their way
through dense woods, across open meadow and high desert floor, as well as on top
of exposed rock. Towering over the site are the stark images of the Cascade
Mountains 20 miles to the west. The property’s name, in fact, derives from a
hollowed-out volcano, the remnants of whose cinder cone forms a jagged edge
9,155 feet above sea level. Immediately to the south along that line of peaks in
the Cascades Range is Mt. Bachelor. To the north are the Three Sisters, all more
than 10,000 feet high.
The opening hole is a teaser of a par 4, only 353 yards, that
doglegs left around two crucial bunkers. It is the first of a handful of
partially blind tee shots, designed not to confuse but to make a golfer think.
The opening stretch of holes is routed through dense stands of pine and cedar
trees.
The front nine is routed counterclockwise, the back nine in the
opposite direction. Each side starts and ends on forested ground, but the middle
sections of each nine are located on the western side of the property and bring
the mountains into dramatic view. This sense of journey is enhanced because the
terrain also varies, with the back nine far more dramatic in terms of elevation
changes and deployment of rock outcroppings.
The first hole Weiskopf envisioned when he walked this site was the 356-yard
9th. The key feature on this sharp dogleg left is a scrubby granite outcropping
some 90 yards in front of the green, just beyond a massive waste bunker and to
the right of some towering pines. Golfers face three distinct options here, and
each one exacts a price if not properly executed: lay up short for a blind
approach; play over the right side of the outcropping for an open second shot
into the green; or gamble big-time left of trees by trying to carry the rocks
altogether and thereby drive the green.
Par: 72
Yardage: 7,153
Year founded: 1992
Architects: Jay Morrish and Tom Weiskopf
