2026 USHO

From New Zealand to Gearhart, Oregon

Six days, four golf courses and the 2026 United States Hickory Open

There are easier ways to prepare for a golf tournament than flying halfway around the world, discovering that 166 miles is considerably farther than 166 kilometres, and spending the best part of a week trying to understand what a Poa annua green is about to do to your golf ball. But then again, the United States Hickory Open was never really going to be an ordinary golf trip.

Gearhart Golf Course, 2026 USHO venue

I had travelled from New Zealand to Oregon for the 2026 United States Hickory Open at Gearhart Golf Links, but rather than arrive immediately before the tournament I gave myself a couple of extra days. Partly, this was about getting the body clock pointing vaguely in the right direction.

More importantly, it was about golf.

American coastal conditions were going to be different from those at home and the putting surfaces in particular required some adjustment. Poa annua was going to feature heavily during the week, and I wanted to discover its peculiarities before the championship started rather than on the first green of the USHO.

That decision turned what might have been a simple tournament visit into something rather better: a six day golfing journey through four very different Pacific Northwest courses, culminating in one of the strongest US Hickory Open fields assembled.

There were some good rounds. There were some less distinguished holes. There was one particularly memorable ten.

And somewhere along the way there were deer, rain, a 332 mile round trip to Washington State, 100 year old golf clubs, a great deal of new friendship and an education in just how well hickory golf fits the ground game of the American Northwest.

Day One, Learning the American ground game at Manzanita

My first stop was Manzanita Links, about 25 miles south of Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast.

Calling it a links is slightly deceptive to the first time visitor because, although built partly on ancient sand dune country and only a few blocks from the Pacific, much of the immediate playing experience is intimate and tree lined. It feels in places more like golf carved into a coastal forest, which it effectively is.

The course was designed and built by Ted Erickson and opened in 1987. It is a compact nine-hole, par 32 layout of just over 2,100 yards, but there is enough movement in the ground, trees, water and elevation change to ensure that short does not necessarily mean simple. The fifth, for example, plays from an elevated tee with a drop of around 60 feet.

It was exactly what I wanted for the first day. A small golf course. No great expectations. A chance to stretch the legs and rediscover a golf swing after crossing the Pacific.

The setting was classic coastal Oregon: ever-present trees, greenery in every direction and fairways with plenty of what might politely be described as texture….

The greens were another matter. My instinct was to attack them. That proved to be the first mistake of the week. Balls landing on the front edge that I expected to settle instead released through or ran away. Putts that appeared to have one break developed another. The subtleties of the Poa surface were very different to what I was accustomed to in New Zealand.

Manzanita, despite its modest scale, had delivered the first lesson of the trip, landing the ball on the green and finishing on the green are not necessarily the same thing. That lesson would become increasingly relevant as the week unfolded.

The drive back north towards Gearhart supplied a different sort of Oregon experience. Mule deer wandered alongside the road with apparently complete faith that vehicles travelling at highway speed would accommodate them. At 60 miles per hour and only metres apart, I was less relaxed about the arrangement than they appeared to be. 

Manzanita Golf Club

Day Two, 166 miles is not 166 kilometres

The next morning brought an invitational round at Chambers Bay, across the state line in Washington.

I looked at the map….. 166, no problem. Unfortunately, my New Zealand brain had automatically converted that into kilometres. It hadn't occurred to me until rather late in proceedings that the number actually meant 166 miles.

What I had mentally scheduled as a comfortable two hour amble north became something closer to a 3½-hour high speed negotiation with the American interstate system.

I made the tee…. just, and it was worth every mile.

Chambers Bay is one of those golf courses that makes an immediate visual statement. Built on the site of a former sand and gravel mine beside Puget Sound, the Robert Trent Jones Jr. design required the movement of more than a million cubic yards of sand to transform an industrial landscape into a vast, rolling golf course. The water, islands of Puget Sound, and the distant Olympic Mountains form part of the backdrop.

The contours of Chambers Bay

Green fairways cut great swathes through sandy wasteland. There are huge changes in elevation. Railway lines run beside the water. It feels enormous.

Yet for all its scale, Chambers Bay's challenge is often in the detail.

It entered golf history in 2015 when it became the first course in the Pacific Northwest to host the U.S. Open. The championship became famous, and controversial, for its greens.

In 2015 they were predominantly fine fescue with some colonial bentgrass, with Poa annua progressively invading the surfaces. After the Open, Chambers Bay ultimately chose to stop fighting the local climate. So, having travelled from New Zealand specifically trying to educate myself about Poa, I had inadvertently selected one of the most famous Poa stories in American championship golf.

My round was equally educational. For 13 holes I played some very good golf. The other five demonstrated that Chambers Bay becomes extremely expensive if ambition gets ahead of execution. I finished with 93.

There were enough good shots in there to leave satisfied, but also enough evidence that on a course of that scale, biting off slightly more than you can chew has consequences. Once again, the greens caught me. It wasn't simply the obvious break. It was the small movement close to the cup, the final fall off that changed a putt in its last few feet.

Chambers Bay Golf Course, Washington State

Day Three, The Highlands and first sight of Gearhart

Rain arrived the following morning, which on the Oregon coast hardly constitutes breaking news.

It did, however, provide the chance to play another charming nine hole course: The Highlands at Gearhart.

The Highlands opened in 1988 and was designed by George Marshall. It is a par 31 executive course measuring around 1,800 yards from the back tees, with five par threes and four par fours. Shore pines, rolling terrain and the surrounding residential development create narrow playing corridors that place a premium on accuracy rather than length.

It was a completely different golf experience from Chambers Bay. Where Chambers Bay spreads itself across a huge landscape, Highlands feels wonderfully compressed. Houses sit close to the fairways. The playing corridors are tight.

And then there are the greens.

Small, almost postage stamps in places, and technically interesting, but importantly for my growing confidence, they would actually accept a golf ball.

For the first time that week I felt I could attack a flag without wondering whether a reasonably struck approach would leave the putting surface through the back.

It was an enjoyable little course and another useful part of the preparation.

Highlands Golf Course

But the real business came later that afternoon.

With the light beginning to disappear, I finally stepped onto Gearhart Golf Links for nine holes and immediately understood why it had been selected for a United States Hickory Open.

Gearhart,  where old clubs make sense

There are courses on which people play hickory golf. Then there are courses that explain why hickory golf existed in the first place. Gearhart belongs in the second group.

Its history reaches back to the earliest days of golf in the American West. By 1892 golf was an established activity for guests at Hotel Gearhart, and seven holes from that early nine hole course survive within today's layout. The second nine followed in 1913. Gearhart lays claim to being the oldest golf course in continuous operation west of the Mississippi River

Over the decades, a number of hands influenced the course, most notably H. Chandler Egan, one of the significant figures in early American golf architecture and later involved in the preparation of Pebble Beach for the 1929 U.S. Amateur. The USHO program had an enlightening profile of Egans playing history.

Gearhart today is approximately half a mile from the Pacific rather than sitting directly on the water. You don't play beside crashing surf. Instead, you feel the ocean through the wind, the sandy soil, the fescue and the firmness beneath your feet.

And that is important.

For many years trees gradually changed the character of the course. Beginning in 2013, hundreds of ageing shore pines were removed in an extensive restoration project designed to recover the site's earlier links character. The parallels, and timing, with the Christchurch Golf Club, on the other side of the Pacific, are uncanny.

Golf Digest now describes Gearhart as one of America's notable links style experiences: firm ground, wind, rumpled fairways and short grass around the greens encouraging golfers to manufacture shots rather than simply fly everything to the flag.

With a hickory club in your hands, that philosophy becomes even more obvious. My first nine holes introduced the essentials.

·       Poa greens.

·       Fescue rough.

·       Strategically positioned bunkers.

·       Subtle, and occasionally evil, greens contours.

And above all, the need to decide not simply where the ball should finish, but where it needed to land to eventually get there. That distinction is fundamental to hickory golf. 

No 1 Green at Gearhart

Day Four, Driver out, driving iron in

A full 18 hole practice round the next day brought the Gearhart strategy into sharper focus.

The driver went back into the bag. The driving iron came out. Gearhart is not overwhelmingly long but its defence is positional.

The successful tee shot is frequently not the longest one. It is the ball that finishes on the correct part of a fairway and gives the right angle into a green.

With hickory equipment, that becomes a particularly enjoyable puzzle. A brassie might provide more distance, but if it brings rough, a bunker or a difficult approach angle into play, what have you actually gained? The driving iron became the better friend.

Then came the 13th.

A well delivered tee shot on the par five put me in a perfectly acceptable position. The second shot was a simple enough decision. Or so I thought,  Spoon or 2 iron? Brawn before brains took over. The ball caught the slope and rolled away from the fairway into the rough. It buried itself. What followed was less golf shot and more a grass clearing exercise. Buried in deep fescue, it took 3 shots just to make contact with the ball. Maybe an unplayable lie would have been the right decision?

By the time the hole had finished with me I had recorded 10, a Moose. How appropriate, considering the location where Moose and Elk range free across the fairways.

I walked off Gearhart with a 95, but significantly better informed than when I had walked onto it. The tournament could begin.

A USHO field with serious depth

And what a field it was.

The 2026 United States Hickory Open brought together 112 players, with competitors arriving from Australia, New Zealand and Canada along with players from 22 U.S. states. The numbers only tell part of the story.

Part of the team

There were 12 professionals in the field, more than 20 players carrying modern handicap indexes below 10 and seven with plus handicaps. Seven former USHO champions were present, collectively responsible for at least a dozen previous victories.

This was not simply a gathering of enthusiasts with old golf clubs. At the top end it was seriously competitive golf. The USHO itself is a 36 hole stroke play championship, with Open, Senior, Super Senior and Ladies divisions.

Day Five, Tournament golf is different

My first competitive round paired me with three other Seniors. All three beat me off the stick. That alone said something about the standard of the field. I didn't play badly. Indeed, I was reasonably pleased with much of the ball striking. I could get the ball to the greens. The difficulty remained converting those opportunities once I arrived.

Putts threatened the hole. They approached it. They looked at it. Very few showed any particular interest in falling into it.

Another tap in from the edge of the cup.

Gearhart's greens had once again won the argument. I signed for 92.

It was not a score that was going to trouble the leaders, but in the context of the course, the field and my first competitive round in those conditions, I remained satisfied.

There was another round to go.

Day Six,  and then the golfing gods intervened

The final round began in light drizzle. I changed the mindset. Less aggression. More position. Accept bogey if necessary and wait for opportunities rather than manufacturing them.

The opening sequence suggested the plan might actually work: Bogey. Par. Par. Par.

There is, of course, no better invitation for the golfing gods to intervene than a golfer beginning to believe he has worked something out. The next tee required restraint. I played a conservative mid-iron. Good result. The approach called for a mashie over the corner of the lake.

I committed to it and struck it well. There was only one small problem. I had calculated the shot for the golf course I had been playing for the previous few days. I had not sufficiently calculated the effect of the drizzle. The ball came down at the edge of the lake in the rushes. We searched. And searched. In the immediate vicinity we found approximately ten golf balls.

None of them were mine.

The resulting quadruple bogey had an effect beyond one hole. The rhythm disappeared for several more before I managed to settle back into the round. Then, on the final par five, a double added the last bit of damage. The card once again read 92.

Two identical tournament rounds but two completely different stories. It left me tied for 16th in the Senior Division, a result I was comfortable taking home given both the quality of the field and the amount I had learned during the week. It also reinforced something about American hickory golf. The standard is high, very high.

There is depth throughout the field, particularly among players who compete regularly on the American hickory circuit. Old equipment doesn't mean casual competition. These players understand their clubs, their trajectories and, crucially at Gearhart, how to use the ground. It was easy to see who had home ground advantage.

Our final Foursome, Carl Leboa, Peter van Eekelen, Martin Pool, Erick Keating

Raffel wins it with a birdie

At the sharp end of the championship, the Open title came down to sudden death. Amateur Grant Raffel, now based in Maine, and West Virginia professional Matt Hoffman finished level after 36 holes. One playoff hole was all Raffel required. He made birdie. Hoffman couldn't match it having gone with his driver off the tee and putting into deep rough.

Raffel became the 2026 United States Hickory Open Champion with an official two round total of 152. also winning the Amateurs Cup. Portland's Jeremy Moe finished third.

In the Ladies Championship, former World Hickory Open Women's Champion Sue Tracy of Idaho took the title with 176, edging Kathleen Turner, with 2021 USHO champion Chelsea Guenette third.

The Senior Championship was won by Oregon's Mark Keating, who I played the first round with, also with a two round total of 152, while Ed Horvat the leading Super Seniors and won the division with 159.

The scores demonstrate the level at which the best hickory golf is now played. The equipment may date from a century ago. The competition certainly doesn't.

Why Gearhart worked

The greater success of the week, however, was the marriage between tournament and golf course. Gearhart rewards precisely the type of golf hickory equipment was created to play.

Fly a niblick directly to the flag on a firm green and the first bounce can quickly turn confidence into a shot from behind the putting surface. But bring an approach cleek in lower? Run a jigger through an opening?

Suddenly the golf course begins cooperating. There is very little margin for error, but there are multiple ways to solve the same problem. That is good golf architecture. And, it is wonderful hickory golf.

More than the scorecard

As strong as the competition was, the enduring impression from Gearhart wasn't a number on a scorecard. It was the people.

The Northwest Hickory Players, the USHO Tournament Committee and the Gearhart staff created an exceptionally welcoming event, something particularly noticeable when you have travelled from the other side of the Pacific to participate. But most valuable were the conversations, the new friendships.

For me, the conversation increasingly involved New Zealand. I had the opportunity during the week to address the players and partners about the New Zealand Hickory Open and extend an invitation to come south in January 2027. The reception was excellent.

There is genuine interest from North American players in experiencing hickory golf in New Zealand, and I am confident that several of the people I met at Gearhart will make the journey Downunder.

Hickory golf remains a relatively small part of the wider game, but internationally it is becoming increasingly connected. The Asia Pacific grows from strength to strength with Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, and Korea hosting tournaments. With North America and Europe being the existing powerhouse of the game the reality for genuine international competition is an opportunity that just needs to be explored.

Different countries and slightly different traditions, but the same old clubs and remarkably similar people carrying them.

Next stop, “The Granddaddy”

The USHO now turns almost completely across the American continent.

In 2027 the championship heads to Pine Lakes Country Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the 20th United States Hickory Open.

Again, the choice of venue could hardly be more appropriate.

Pine Lakes was Myrtle Beach's first golf course, opening in 1927 as Ocean Forest Country Club. Known today as “The Granddaddy,” it will celebrate its centenary as the USHO arrives.

The architect was Robert White, a native of St Andrews who became the first president of the PGA of America and later a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

The present par-70 course sits less than half a mile from the Atlantic, with the more undulating back nine retaining much of White's original design character.  Its history goes well beyond golf. The great white clubhouse is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Pine Lakes, Myrtle Beach 2027 USHO venue

So there is a pleasing alignment ahead. A golf course celebrating 100 years. The 20th United States Hickory Open. And a championship contested with clubs from roughly the same era in which Pine Lakes was created.

The long way was worth taking

When I look back on Gearhart, I don't immediately think about finishing tied 16th. I remember Manzanita and the first realisation that American Poa greens were going to require some work. I remember discovering the difference between miles and kilometres on the way to Chambers Bay. I remember standing above Puget Sound on one of America's great modern championship courses.

I remember rain at Highlands. I remember putting the driver away at Gearhart and trusting the driving iron. I remember the ten on the 13th during practice,  unfortunately rather clearly.

I remember beginning the final round bogey, par, par, par and briefly believing I had mastered the place. I remember ten golf balls in the rushes, none belonging to me.

And I remember 112 hickory golfers from around the world gathering on one of America's oldest golf courses and playing a form of the game that somehow felt completely at home there.

That is the attraction of hickory golf. It isn't simply about old clubs. It is about rediscovering different shots, different courses and a slightly different relationship with the ground beneath the ball. Gearhart gave us all of that. The USHO supplied the competition. The American hickory community supplied the welcome.

And somewhere between Oregon, Washington and New Zealand, another few international golfing friendships were established. Next January, some of those friendships will hopefully continue at Christchurch.

After that?

There is a 100 year old golf course in South Carolina waiting.

I know a few of us are already looking at the map……and this time, I'll check whether the distances are in miles.

Peter van Eekelen