The Reserve Vineyards & Golf Club, in Aloha, OR is one of the Portland area’s finest, and unrivaled for its combination of completeness and quality. The Reserve offers two 18-hole courses of championship caliber that rotate biweekly in terms of accessibility to the public. This semi-private club and former host of both the Jeld-Wen Tradition and Umpqua Bank Challenge is comprised of the North and South courses, designed by separate architects. Both sides are equally special yet rather different in style.The South Course at The Reserve plays longer and straighter with many tree lines and loads of sand, while the North Course requires more target golf along its shorter layout through rolling wetlands. No matter which one you play, you will encounter plenty of challenges and points of appreciation. The grounds at The Reserve are beautifully landscaped and impeccably maintained throughout both courses and beyond. Upon entering The Reserve’s long vineyard-lined driveway, and pulling up to the prominent chateau-style clubhouse, the tone is appropriately set for a first-rate golf experience.
The South Course
The South Course at The Reserve, arguably the tougher of the two courses, has a traditional American style with many tree-lined holes. These large trees stand in beds of soil and pine needles, not grass, making recovery shots all the more challenging. The South Course’s layout is relatively flat and straight with some mild undulation and rolling terrain along the rough and near the greens.
What differentiates the design of the South Course is its arsenal of white-sand bunkers. These bunkers help consume a lot of space on the otherwise roomy layouts and are plotted in numbers aside the fairways, in the fairways, and around the greens. One even lies in a green, partitioning the adjoined putting surfaces of Holes 11 & 17. Holes 3 & 5 also share one monstrous green that is separated with a large tier. There’s a moderate amount of water on The South Course at the Reserve, mainly in the form of green-side ponds and narrow canals that run along and across several holes. The greens are tour quality, with true rolls, very fast speeds and fairly manageable breaks.
