Golf at U.S. Open host Chambers Bay is worth missing your Sea-Tac flight for

PHOENIX, AZ – I should be home by now, cuddling up in my own bed after 11 days in the Pacific Northwest from San Francisco up to Tacoma, checking out such prolific golf courses managed by Kemper Sports as presidents Cup host Harding Park, Bandon Dunes and Chambers Bay (along with some lesser-known courses along the way).

But I just couldn’t get off the dang golf course this afternoon. You probably wouldn’t either if you were in the middle of a round on Chambers Bay in mid-70s heat, hardly a breath of wind and nary a cloud above.

I thought I’d get in more than 14 holes before having to scoot off, but the foursomes before us had the nightmarish combination of 20-handicap swings, while scouring for their balls in the fescue and reading each putt like their own U.S. Open was on the line. So when I came off the course a little later than I had wanted, and heavy traffic on I-5 slapped me in the face, I was soon at the mercy of U.S. Airways’ flight routes, and I’ll get home 12 hours later than scheduled. Ah well.

Chambers Bay is certainly unlike any previous U.S. Open host, and though it’s seeded with fescue and designed to be a links course, it’s unlike any British Open host I’ve seen too. It’s a modern hybrid, sitting somewhere between St. Andrews and quarry reclamation golf courses that have been built in recent years like Bay Harbor in northern Michigan and Granite Links in Boston.

Stay tuned for a column on just how linksy Chambers Bay is, as well as a photo gallery, that is if I ever make it back home to Austin since I’m rollin’ stand-by tomorrow. But what is undebatable is that Chambers Bay is load of fun to play, and as WorldGolf.com Senior Contributor Jason Deegan wrote in his recent review of the course, it’s not horribly difficult for the mid-handicapper who plays the right set of tees, thanks to wide fairways and large greens. We’ll see just how difficult it is to the game’s best next year at the U.S. Amateur. And sorry Jason, the fog was long gone by the first green during my round.

A lot of on-tee chit-chats at Chambers Bay helped lead to my failure to make an afternoon flight out of Sea-Tac Sunday.

You can follow Brandon Tucker’s golf blog and more on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brandontucker or follow WorldGolf.com at Twitter.com/worldgolf . Have a golf travel question for Brandon? Email him by clicking here