Clear Creek Tahoe - Pure Golf in the Sierra Nevadas

By: Blaine Newnham

They found a special place halfway up the mountain. Then they found a couple of guys to match their mountains, the celebrated design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous, the absolutely wonderful Clear Creek Tahoe golf course in the shadow of the great Sierra Nevada mountains was mothballed in 2011, generating more than a year's worth of weeds in the bunkers and fairways mowed only to keep them from going wild.

Now, back on its feet - leaner and meaner if that's possible for a posh private golf club, Clear Creek Tahoe may be the best buy in the country.

No initiation fee, simply yearly dues of $7,500 for a family membership to play a course by perhaps the world's most lauded designers, Coore and Crenshaw, who most recently did the updating on Pinehurst No. 2 and have perhaps America's most acclaimed modern course, Sand Hills in Nebraska. They've also done, among others, Bandon Trails in Oregon and the Kapalua Plantation course on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

If what you want is a pure strain of golf perhaps not possible before the financial fallout of 2008 when every new course - public or private - was fancier than the one before it, this might be it.

Clear Creek Tahoe has gotten past the need for a clubhouse with 400 mostly unused lockers, or a banquet hall, or comfort stations every few holes to keep the kids, and their parents, satisfied.

This is minimal elegance, if there is such a thing. Denim is OK everywhere but the course. A visitor playing with a member is charged just $75.

It is a golf course that, at this point, has no homes around it, a golf course you can walk, one that features the famed, "timeless" Coore-Crenshaw bunkering, but also one that was designed to be self-sustaining, even halfway up the mountain on the way from Carson City.

As the story goes, Coore at first turned back the developers' advances, saying that his firm didn't do mountain courses. And, then, on a trip to see the site, as they drove up the east side of the Sierra he was losing what little interest he had with each upward mile.

But Coore found out what the developers already knew: There was a valley in the mountainside, that it wasn't poor soil and rocks but a lovely place for a golf course within 1,600 acres of wilderness. In the following years, Coore spent 70 days on-site, treating the property he had despised with great care.

"Bill Coore did the final shaping himself," said Colin Campbell, the director of golf. "I couldn't imagine Jack Nicklaus doing that."

On what Campbell calls a "saddle" in the mountains, Clear Creek Tahoe has most of its elevation gain and loss in one hole. There's no sense that the course was chipped out of rocks as many mountain courses are.

Right now, there are 115 members. With little play, the course is pristine, matching the surroundings. There is a small practice range and a delightful pro shop-clubhouse building that at some point will be replaced by a larger clubhouse. But not too large.

Restructuring the project's ownership during the mothball phase - going from four partners to two - has left the golf club in better fiscal shape. Even when it was shut down, Campbell, who had left Scotland and his job as head pro at Loch Lomond to open Clear Creek, was kept on the payroll to be ready for a re-opening.

"The owners showed great loyalty and integrity," said Campbell. "It reflects in the way this club has developed."

Clear Creek Tahoe has a Nevada address, but it's only 25 minutes from Stateline and the California border on the glitzy south shore of Lake Tahoe. The golf season is normally about six months long, from late April to late September. Although Clear Creek Tahoe is a long-term residential complex, there are no houses on the course now and no lots for sale.

Simply, it's pure golf, a survivor of the Great Recession, without the extravagances of Martis Camp or Lahontan in nearby Truckee, Calif.

The goal was never to build a course to hold a championship event. But as the owners, Jim Taylor and Chip Hanly, put it, they wanted a course that left you refreshed after the day's first round and ready for more.

Clear Creek Tahoe is less than 45 minutes from Reno International Airport, but it feels a world away. It will likely draw most members from the San Francisco Bay Area.

But those who like a private, but less presumptuous, course may make their way here from anywhere.

Blaine Newnham has covered golf for 50 years. He still cherishes the memory of following Ben Hogan for 18 holes during the first round of the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. He worked then for the Oakland Tribune, where he covered the Oakland Raiders during the first three seasons of head coach John Madden. Blaine moved on to Eugene, Ore., in 1971 as sports editor and columnist, covering the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. He covered five Olympics all together - Mexico City, Munich, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Athens - before retiring in early 2005 from the Seattle Times. He covered his first Masters in 1987 when Larry Mize chipped in to beat Greg Norman, and his last in 2005 when Tiger Woods chip dramatically teetered on the lip at No. 16 and rolled in. He saw Woods' four straight major wins in 2000 and 2001, and Payne Stewart's par putt to win the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. In 2005, Blaine received the Northwest Golf Media Association's Distinguished Service Award. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "America's St. Andrews," which tells the colorful back-story of how Chambers Bay was selected as the site of the 2015 U.S. Open. Due for release on October 1, 2014, the book may be pre-ordered at www.AmericasStAndrews.com. He and his wife, Joanna, live in Indianola, Wash., where the Dungeness crabs outnumber the people.

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