I played here on 05/04/12 from the Black tees (74.5/137/7037) on a cool, blustery day. There are plenty of men’s tee boxes to choose from (4 sets) and I played one set forward from all the way back. Even that was too much for me in the wet and windy conditions. The Home Course is not your traditional tree lined Northwest course. In fact, it is an open layout with large, sloping greens, cavernous bunkers, and stunning views of the local area. The course sits close to the Puget Sound and a couple times I paused to take in the view. Mt. Rainier is visible on a clear day, but I was not able to see it because of the cloud cover. The course is fairly new (opened in 2007) and because it is such a new layout I was surprised by the wet conditions. I realize that it rains pretty much nonstop here, but I expected the course to drain better. Maybe I caught it the day after a down pour, who knows, but the course was very soggy with lots of standing water. Other course conditions were good and the greens rolled well. The greens drained well compared to the rest of the course. When I played the rough was thin and the fescue was down, but I think that if these parts of the course were grown up it would make for an incredibly difficult test. As far as the layout, the course had me guessing on some holes with some blind shots and the long par 3’s and par 5’s wore me out. I loved the open layout as I hit it pretty crooked so this did not result in too many lost balls. I also liked that the course was very walkable, an element that many newer courses overlook. I walked it on a Friday afternoon in less than 4 hours and for the $40 price, I thought it was reasonable. While homes are visible from a few holes they did not come into play. No hole stood out design wise to me as a signature hole as most were solid, but the 17th hole was my favorite just for the view off the back of the green. My piece of advice would be to move up a tee box, especially if it is wet. My criticisms, while small, include all long par 3’s without much variety in club selection and I did not think the yardages were marked well.The Home Course gets ranked up there pretty high on my list of 15 or 20 courses that I’ve played in the Pacific Northwest.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):