Doug’s World

The charm of Tyee

We played Tyee Valley Golf Course today. It has changed quite a bit from how I remember it in the 90s. It was always rough and ragged, but I felt its location at the south end of Sea-Tac airport, with 747s taking off overhead, was sort of charming. Of course, I grew up a couple miles away — I went to school in an area where many times a day teachers stopped talking to wait out the roar of a Boeing jet taking off from nearby Sea-Tac — so I may be biased.

But now Tyee is in bad shape. On its last legs, apparently: gutted, slashed and bleeding. They’ve started chipping away at the edges of the land in preparation for airport expansion, and the course has been modified to keep an 18-hole layout even though several holes or sections of holes have disappeared from what was already a small golf course.

Holes 12 and 13 — two of the best in the old days — are gone altogether, and a good chunk of the next two holes is missing as well. The former 18th is now the 8th and 9th, having been split into two holes including an uphill little afterthought of a par-3. The formerly fun par-5 14th is now a narrow little hole with a ridiculously tiny green on a lump, and right now it’s all a patchwork quilt of rectangular chunks of bentgrass sod. The 3rd, which was a fun short tight trouble-laden par-4, now has some type of brick building in the fairway at the landing zone, with a 50-foot wide path between the left side of it and OB, or a route around to the right that adds 100 yards to the hole and requires hitting your approach shot from in front of the 5th tee, which can be logistically challenging.

The grass is mostly dead, the ground mostly rock-hard and rock-infested, except where it’s rancid cesspools of standing dirty water. A deep ditch flanked by a large drainage pipe run across the course (requiring a long detour between the #5 fairway and its green), a huge hole surrounded by heavy equipment has replaced the first half of the 8th fairway, and a sign across the fence warns “CONTAMINATED SOIL.” Amidst all this new chaos, the longstanding charm of Tyee remains: 747s take off overhead, so close you can feel the whoosh and the roar of the engines shakes your teeth.

Here’s how bad the conditions were: I put a big dent in my 60-degree wedge today, caused by a buried rock I hit in the fairway. On the fairways or off (and how can you tell the difference any more?), there was so much trashed ground that it would be simpler to just mark the areas that are “Ground NOT Under Repair.”

As Megan said after a few holes, between 747s, “somebody should put this place out of its misery.”

But we had more fun as the day wore on, not least because it’s an incredible bargain. For $10 each (and $2.50 per Mike’s Lemonade), we golfed over six hours, including walking 27 holes and some chipping practice around the 7th green. Megan hit some great 6-irons, including one while we were playing #13 with three guys. (You see, the 13th and 16th are now the same hole, so since they were three holes ahead of us we all arrived at the 13/16 tee together and played it as a fivesome.)

There were plenty of motley characters on the course: the hipster, the Jerry Garcia look-alike, the guy with the two whiny chicks who talked loudly and rudely during Megan’s backswing, old guys playing alone, and beefy young guys with tattoos drinking and laughing. And, of course, us. Everyone was very friendly, which was a good thing because the messy crowded layout gives you plenty of chances to get to know the other paying customers.

So we’re averaging 26.5 holes per day this weekend. Did I mention we also practied putting and hit a big bucket of range balls at Maplewood earlier today? Nice to have Megan hooked, I’m riding this for all it’s worth.

Oh yeah, scores. Too tired to enter them in Golftrak, but let’s just say Megan had a rough day and I played with a vaguely familiar but nearly forgotten consistency, shooting 43-43-43 on three nines in a construction zone. I’ll bring the camera next time and get some photos for the archives, but it was fun to focus on the swing today. No shanks, a couple of snap-hooks, one slice, a lot of acceptable shots, and a few real schwings. The 2-iron was continuing its hot streak, and I hit one about 220 to plug into the soft turf at the front edge of the #8 green. Then I took a big swing with a wedge to gash open the turf behind the ball and pop it out, advancing it inches. It felt good to stab that dying course, I must say.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 11:35 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.