Major player at Home

It would be easy to write off The Home Course as the "other" course for this week's U.S. Amateur.

But there are no afterthoughts for the United States Golf Association.

The Home Course, in DuPont, isn’t just good enough to be part of the USGA’s premier amateur championship. It’s just good.

As the assisting course, the auxiliary course, the helping course, The Home Course finishes up its part of the 110th Amateur today with a second day of stroke-play qualifying. The top 64 players after one round each at Chambers Bay and The Home Course advance to match-play brackets at Chambers Bay beginning Wednesday.

Chambers Bay, the primary host course, has taken its place as a star in the USGA galaxy. The Amateur, a plum in its own right, will also be a test and a preview of how elite players manage the course as the USGA and the golf world keep an eye on the biggest prize in all of American golf: the U.S. Open, scheduled for 2015 at Chambers Bay.

So The Home Course is the “other” course this week. And that’s OK, for a 3-year-old course that was a remediation project before it could be a golf project.

When course architect Mike Asmundson began his work, it was only after a hazmat contractor had cleaned up the 700-acre grounds of a former explosives manufacturer, entombing “a million yards of arsenic” underground.

“It was a great site, a lot of character,” Asmundson said.

In those days, the property was still owned by Weyerhaeuser. It was not until the golf course was built that the Pacific Northwest Golf Association, the regional arm of the USGA, got involved.

Today, The Home Course is the “home” course of the PNGA and Washington State Golf Association, and when the clubhouse and office buildings are completed, it will be the official headquarters for Northwest golf.

Last week, a team from the USGA, led by Mike Davis, senior director of rules and competitions, took a last walk on The Home Course with a local contingent, including Asmundson, The Home Course director of golf Ron Hagen, course superintendent Kelly Donaldson and PNGA executive director John Bodenhamer.

“At this stage of the game, they’re well-satisfied,” superintendent Donaldson said of the USGA, a couple days after Davis and Co. walked the course.

Asmundson, who lives in Port Townsend, has designed courses in Vermont, Hawaii, California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. He designed six courses in Chile, among them the first public course in Santiago, the capital and largest city, for which he donated his design services.

Asmundson got Donaldson to come work with him in Chile, and while there Donaldson trained Chilean superintendents how to maintain modern golf courses.

The professional partnership between Asmundson and Donaldson is so tight that the architect said, “I wouldn’t want to build a golf course without him, if I had my choice.”

Asmundson said similar professionalism and teamwork characterized the effort to bringing the U.S. Amateur here, starting with the USGA and the PNGA/WSGA right on down through The Home Course staff.

For his part, Donaldson has enlisted a troupe of professional volunteers from around the region, including Chris Goodman, superintendent at Meadow Park Golf Course, and John Leslie, superintendent at Lake Tapps Golf Course, who are cutting the holes on the front nine during the Amateur rounds at The Home Course; John Alexander and crew of Fircrest Golf Club are cutting the back nine holes.

For the record, The Home Course is playing to 7,437 yards for the Amateur, and the Stimpmeter, at USGA behest, is rolling at a slick-quick 13 feet on the greens.

His own maintenance staff, Donaldson said, is the best he’s ever worked with.

“They do a great job of owning the quality of work they produce,” he said.

Asmundsen, with an international portfolio of golf courses, is fond of the course he created in DuPont – its scale, its openness, its diversity.

“There’s not a weak hole on it,” Asmundson said.

“Everybody’s got a postcard hole. I don’t. It’s 18 holes, and they’re all great holes. It’s a strong golf course.”

Yes, The Home Course is the other course this week. The other major championship course.

GOLF CENTRAL

It’s been said the audience for the Amateur is a different breed than the galleries for the Boeing Classic, the Champions Tour event this weekend at TPC Snoqualmie Ridge in Snoqualmie.

It could also be said it’s unfortunate the two events were scheduled the same week, that it forces potential spectators to choose between the amateurs or the senior tour pros in the culminating the weekend of the biggest summer ever for big-time tournament golf in Puget Sound.

Certainly, plenty of people will manage to watch part of each tournament. It’s all good golf, on good, spectator-friendly courses.

Fans who got a taste of Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer and the other stellar seniors at the U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee three weeks ago might be inclined to steer a little farther north and east to Snoqualmie. And Friday, the first day of competition, it’s free.

All spectators will get complimentary access to TPC Snoqualmie Ridge on Friday. Around 11:20 a.m., the start of the tournament will be signaled by a Boeing 777 circling the area and flying over the clubhouse at about 1,000 feet.

Olympia freelance writer Bart Potter can be reached at greygoatee06@comcast.net