Featured Golf Trip: Gamble Sands

We have not dug into golf trip darling Gamble Sands since before it opened course number two, so let’s update the record. Starting with what we said way back in June of last year:

Gamble Sands represents just about as northerly a respite as you’ll find inside the continental 48. Located in Brewster, at the very top of Washington state, Gamble Sands has been making the rounds as a relative (and expanding) newcomer blending the purest of surroundings with top-level, accessible golf.

About that golf: Bandon Dunes-designer David McLay Kidd took a page from his Bandon playbook as he put a “renowned emphasis on fun” in building the Sands course, as GOLF ​puts it​. Golf Digest, which has the course ranked as the 30th-best public in America, ​calls it​ “extremely playable.” Think big-ass, contoured, fescue fairways with slopes that work for you rather than against. The views are big and ​seriously expansive​. Pair it with the resorts’s 14-hole Quicksands short course, which features large, undulating greens.

The lone detractor has been that, for a place as remote as Brewster, you really just had the two clear options for golf.

On that last note, well, no more. Late last summer, Gamble opened the Scarecrow course, another one from DMK—with associate Nick Schaan—that has been very well received. It was built “to be a little more frightening” than the original, Golf Digest writes, with holes that “slalom up and down over significant elevation changes of up to 70 feet,” a contrast to the flatter fairways of course number one. It won ​best new public course of 2025​ from the publication.

In an age of mega golf resorts that mix top architects, Gamble ran it back with DMK and stamped another great layout on what is quickly becoming a pacific northwest golf mecca—and a must-add to the bucket list.