With nearly 10 months until its opening, the David McLay-Kidd-designed golf course at Gamble Sands has officially been named. What are your thoughts on the name Scarecrow?
It’s intriguing, and I’d love to hear your perspective!
Scarecrow will open for public and resort-guest play on August 1, 2025, with tee times now available on www.GambleSands.com.
Nestled among the apple and cherry orchards of the Gebbers family farm, overlooking the majestic Columbia River Valley, McLay Kidd and design associate Nick Schaan have skillfully transformed a winding expanse of rolling terrain and a breathtaking ridgeline into a remarkable 18-hole golf course.
Scarecrow will boast a par of 71 and stretch across 6,900 yards, inviting all to embrace the game’s beauty.
Nick Schaan says
“This part of the site has higher, peakier spots that were more akin to classic sand-dune, sandhills type blowouts and we exposed some of those, we preserved some of those.
The piece of land (for the new course) is just smaller. If you draw a circle around the first course, it sits on 350-500 acres depending on how you draw it. This new course sits on about 300 acres, and so it’s a lot more compact, things are a bit closer together.
The whole golf course kind of climbs over this knob, through a saddle, up another knob, through a valley — you see a lot more of the river, hole after hole after hole. And you see a lot more golf that you’re not playing across the site.”
Besides the land, another critical difference between Scarecrow and the Sands Course is the size of the greens.