The Reserve Vineyards and Golf Club

The Reserve Vineyards and Golf Club is about 20 minutes from Portland in Aloha, OR. They have two nice 18-hole courses. The north course is reserved for members from the 1st to the 15th of every month, and the south course is members only from the 16th to the end of every month. There are separate practice greens for each course with plenty of room to get the speed of the greens dialed in. Make sure to get there early – range balls are included with your round and you’re hitting off of grass tees. The carts are electric and equipped with GPS and they geo-fence the course so you can’t take the carts anywhere they don’t want them going. Both courses are easily walkable, but we took carts on both since it was our first time playing there – It’s nice to be able to drive ahead and take a look at what you’re getting into on each hole.

I was lucky enough to play both courses in a 4-day period. I had booked our time on the north course for June 23rd a couple of weeks ahead. As I was looking to see if there was better tee time I could switch to, I saw an opening on the south course for the 20th. I assumed that they opened up the tee times if the members hadn’t taken them all, but I was wrong. I received an email from the club pro on the 17th letting me know that there was an error with their tee sheet and he asked if we would move to the north course instead. I wrote him back and let him know that this was my annual golf trip with my college roommate and I couldn’t find any other tee times around at a course we would want to play on such short notice, and that we already had a time on the north course 3 days later. Learning this, the pro reached out to the members we had been mistakenly paired with and let them know our situation. The members agreed to let us play with them and our trip was saved (Thank you Cody!).

Now, on to the courses themselves. The south course is heavily bunkered. There's over 80 bunkers on the course (there used to be around 140 but they removed some and combined others into larger bunkers). I was determined to stay out of the sand as much as possible, and was successful until the 18th hole. It’s a course you can score on if you keep your ball out of trouble. The only water in play I recall was on the 10th, 11th, and 17th holes. If you look at the aerial flyover on the course website it looks like the holes are all right next to each other and you’d see lots of other golfers on other holes, but it didn’t feel like that at all. Each hole felt like its own independent experience even though there aren’t an abundance of trees. The course was in great shape, the greens were fast and true, and the one bunker I was in had plenty of sand and was pebble free. I really enjoyed the south course (always helps when you shoot a good score) and after the round I called my wife and told her we needed to move down to Oregon so I could try and join the club.

The north course is entirely different from the south course. While the south course has loads of bunkers, the north course is more tree lined and there seemed to be water everywhere. One thing I really liked was that they trim the branches on roughly the bottom eight feet of the trees, so even if you hit one (or several in my case) into the trees, you’ll generally find your ball and still have some kind of shot. While water isn’t on every hole, it feels like it is. Once you’ve hit a couple into the water (I did) the water feels menacing through the whole course. I didn’t enjoy this course as much as the south course, even though it is really nice. I’m pretty sure that’s just because of the scores I was forced to write down. This course was also in wonderful condition and lots of fun when you’re hitting good shots. I’ll definitely be back to take on this course again.

This was a really fun place to play. If you get a chance to try both courses here, don’t pass it up. On a side note, The Reserve Vineyards and Golf Club must be a wonderful place to work. Every single employee we encountered wasn’t just nice, they seemed genuinely happy to be there. The two rounds we played here were really enjoyable and I can’t wait to get back down to Oregon to try these courses again.