There’s one basic tenet that is non-negotiable when playing Chambers Bay: You can’t be an idiot. There is so much temptation, so many iffy angles that look just clean enough. The endless tricks will simply leave you standing with the ball a few yards ahead of you, in an even worse spot than where you found it. You’ll be standing there with only one thing on your mind: “I’m an idiot.” If you can avoid these moments, or, at the very least, limit their occurrences to something like once a side, then you can end up playing pretty well at the RTJ links masterpiece. 

It’s one of many reasons why Chambers is high up on my favorite courses ranking. Bring a steady club off the tee, shoot for the safe side of the greens, be able to lag putt adequately, and you can tell all your buddies that you tamed a course that left most participants of the 2015 U.S. Open perplexed. You might have a birdie look or two, but par is a very good score at Chambers Bay. 

RTJ’s design allows for flexibility, such that good shots can lead to great positions but poorly executed ones are extremely punishing. Take the first hole, a former Par 5 that’s now a long Par 4. There’s plenty of room to run the ball down the left side of the fairway, but pushing it up the right offers a better angle, avoiding the severe slope that dramatically juts off the left side of the green. Push it too far right, though, and you’re flirting with a fairway bunker. Slice one, and you’re in unnavigable fescue on the side of a mound and praying for a double bogey. 

The last time I was at Chambers, the week before the 2025 U.S. Open, the pins were set in the Sunday 2015 location to help celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Spieth’s big win. That meant a pin on the front right green of 1, and being the silly boy I am, I left my second shot short left of the green. It wasn’t a bad strike, just a little tug, but like much of Chambers, decent shots to tough places require perfect rescues. The course allows you to be a hero; it’s penal, but never relishes its own severity. Chambers Bay is extremely difficult, but it wants you to play well. It’s stern, but caring. Case in point? I hit a wonderful chip straight into the side of the hill on the left side of the green and it trickled to a few feet. An average drive, a decent but misplaced second shot, a great chip, and I was off with par.

Atmosphere is also paramount at Chambers. There are no carts allowed, and for my money, the views of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains are the most underrated in golf. It doesn’t get the hype of Bandon and it’s not on as many postcards as a place like Pebble Beach, but I could stand on the 15th tee box all day, looking longingly at the course‘s lone tree: a Douglas fir foregrounding the sea. 

It’s a view that encapsulates why we travel to play the game, why checking clubs—hoping they don’t break—and extended car rides with cranky backs and sore feet are more than worth it. There’s nothing better than walking up to the 10th green, a fickle landing surface so protected that the architects of NORAD could probably take some notes from RTJ. You crest the hill and get a glimpse at that water, take a quick glance at 16 fairway, and if you’re lucky, get a taste of true Scottish links golf as a train goes rumbling by. 

While I could wax endlessly about all these treats and delights that come along with a round at Chambers Bay, my favorite thing about the course is just how much shit is in the way. There are just so many big objects in your eyeline, so many Sisyphean mounds in the fairway, that even the most perplexing of decisions are visually thrilling. The 5th hole has a wonderfully cute pot bunker directly in front of the green, magnetizing your ball towards it no matter how conservatively you try to play. Seven has a mound in front of the green that eats more balls than the Green Monster. You can’t see the pin from the fairway, but anywhere on the green is better than trying to hit over its upslope or chopping down if you’ve managed to clear its apex but trundle into its backside. 

Eight is a long Par 5 built into a cliff with a terrifying drop down the right side and a steep bank on the left. If you go left, it sure is easy to shoot the ball right. If you go right? It’s more pinball before having to hike vertically back up to the fairway. Nine is a Par 3 from the top of the property that somehow never plays as downhill as it seems, and 11 has a protruding mound in the middle of the fairway. Try to get to the green from there and you’re gonna be muttering those three words: “I’m an idiot.”

Then, there’s the basement bunker, a cavernously deep collection of sand placed directly in the middle of the 18th fairway. It’s a gettable Par 5 if you can navigate your ball around this dead zone, but once you take the staircase down in there all you can do is take a 60 degree and pray all those lessons on elevating bunker shots come in handy.

Chambers Bay is, in short, a treat. It’s a fair test of golf but a test nevertheless. You leave exhausted, but itching to play it again. Or maybe that’s just some loose fescue in your shorts. Regardless, you’re leaving the old sand and gravel mine with a million ideas on how to play the course just a few shots smarter the next time around. And yeah, maybe with grass stuck to some spots in which grass should never be.

Thanks to Jeff Marsh (probably the person who has shot the most at Chambers Bay) for the photographs.