Sahalee Country Club

Ted Robinson designed Sahalee Country Club in 1969 on a piece of Sammamish, Washington Plateau land east of Seattle. The site sits in a dense second-growth forest of Douglas fir and western red cedar, and Robinson routed the eighteen holes through the canopy with the natural drainage corridors as the architectural framework. The course operates three nine-hole loops — North, South, and East — that combine into different eighteen-hole rotations depending on the day and tournament use. Sahalee gained significant national prominence in 1998 when the PGA Championship was played on the South-North combination, with Vijay Singh winning his first major.

The South-North combination plays around 7,200 yards par 70 from the championship markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. Robinson routed the holes through the forest with corridor widths that put a premium on accurate tee balls — the second-growth Douglas fir alongside the fairways grew to championship-narrowing dimensions by the time the 1998 PGA arrived. Tour scoring averages at Sahalee for the 1998 PGA were among the highest for a major championship in the modern era; the tree corridors and the Pacific Northwest agronomy combined to produce conditions that tested ball-striking more than any other Pacific Northwest course. Sahalee also hosted the 2002 WGC-NEC Invitational (Craig Parry) and the 2010 U.S. Senior Open (Bernhard Langer).

Sahalee is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional Eastside Seattle business and professional families, including several connected to Microsoft and the broader tech-corridor economy. The hospitality model is traditional country club, and the club has invested in continuous restoration since the 1998 PGA to keep the routing at championship-rotation standard.

Pacific Northwest climate gives Sahalee a playing season of March through November, with the firmest conditions in August and September. The Douglas fir canopy keeps the routing cooler in mid-summer than the surrounding suburban Seattle area. The course operates through the wet winter months with reduced play given the typical Pacific Northwest rain pattern, but rarely closes completely.