JACOBSEN / HARDY DESIGN
Bend Oregon Golf Hotel and Resort

Starting with its design of The Oregon Golf Club in 1992, Jacobsen Hardy Golf Course Design has produced a succession of award-winning layouts, including Moorpark CC north of Los Angeles, named to Golf Magazine's "Top 10 New Courses You Can Play" in 2003; Houston's Redstone Golf Club, site of the PGA Tour's Shell Houston Open; and Hammock Bay Golf & Country Club in Naples, Florida, listed among Travel+Leisure Golf's Top 10 Private Clubs to debut in 2004.

In 2007, Jacobsen Hardy completed and opened is first ever Central Oregon golf course at Brasada Ranch. The team made the most of the site, routing 18 holes in, across and along the edges of a network of breathtaking high desert canyons to offer broad panoramas of the Cascade Mountain Range. The result is a truly extraordinary Oregon golf course.

"There's so much to see during a round at Brasada, it's such a feast for the eyes, that we had to make some strategic decisions about when to create visual drama and when to simply get out of the way," said Peter Jacobsen. "It's unbelievably dramatic, nearly a mountain golf experience with all the elevation change, but very high desert in terms of the surrounding vegetation, which is unique to Central Oregon. When we first arrived on site, it struck us all as being similar to Desert Mountain, in Scottsdale, but with juniper in place of the cactus. It's a singular golf environment, and the course we created here accentuates every bit of it."

Jacobsen Hardy reached this balance by routing holes in, across and along the edges of Brasada’s sprawling network of canyons. With such precipitous elevation changes, in addition to long panoramic views of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains, it would have been fruitless to create features that attempted to compete in size and scope. Accordingly, the bunkering and green surrounds are subtly rendered at Brasada Ranch.

A few physical course elements do compete effectively against the incredible scenery for the golfer’s attention. The 80-foot-high wooden golf cart trestle, which delivers players back to the clubhouse and serves as backdrop to the par-5 finishing hole, more than holds its own.

The cabins and homes of Brasada Ranch never intrude on the 7,295-yard golf course just outside Bend Oregon. Rex VanHoose, Jacobsen Hardy senior vice president/managing architect, notes that his firm was given an extremely wide berth in laying out Brasada Canyons’ incredible Central Oregon golf course. "The fairways at Brasada Ranch are extraordinarily wide for a whole host of reasons—because we were given a free hand by the developers, because the wind can pick up in the afternoons, and because holes framed by canyon walls tend to look narrow, even when they aren't. Combating that optical illusion was an aesthetic decision, but we had another reason for this width: Fairways on a grand scale fit the character of this property. With so many 360-degree views of the valley floor, with so many holes looking across at Mt. Jefferson, Three Sisters, Broken Top and Mt. Bachelor, we wanted the golf course to have its own sense of grandeur. And it does."

It’s hard to argue against the majestic beauty of the Brasada Ranch natural setting. The rolling high desert terrain here is as beautiful to admire as it is amazing to golf. During design, we moved as little land as possible. Our course takes full advantage of the gorgeous, original Central Oregon natural environment. By adopting a low-impact model, we preserved the area as a natural habitat for the wildlife that has called these hills home for centuries—deer, birds of prey, jack rabbits, and squirrels are spotted every day. Brasada Canyons boasts only one water hazard, and our internet-controlled irrigation system ensures that we conserve as many natural resources as possible. At Brasada Canyons golf course, your incredible golf game winds through spectacular high desert scenery—incredibly impressive and entirely natural, as it has always been.