Bend Oregon’s Tetherow — Incredible Golf in a City of Dog Lovers

 TETHEROW in Bend, Oregon

One of the Finest Courses You’ll Ever Play If You’re Up to the Challenge

By Dan Poppers

Tetherow in Bend, Oregon, is one of the finest golf courses you’ll ever play as long as you’re up for the challenge — you’ll take on expansive, mounded greens often elevated and roly-poly fairways where flat lies are a premium.

It’s an easy flight to Salt Lake City to catch your connecting flight to Redmond with only a half-hour drive remaining to Tetherow. You’re in Oregon country and it’s beautiful.

Tetherow is secluded yet has everything you want and need. Newly built Tetherow Lodges is a 50-room premium boutique hotel with modern conveniences and amenities offering spectacular panoramic views of the golf course.

Tetherow’s distinctive links-style18-hole championship layout is designed by David McLay Kidd, architect of Bandon Dunes and Castle Course in Scotland. At Tetherow, click your golf-shoe heels together, close your eyes, and when you open them you’ll find yourself on a links course in Scotland, only to realize with the surrounding mountains you’re still at Tetherow in Bend, Oregon.

Tetherow service is second to none. Their motto: Is there anything we can do for you or get you? Tetherow staff follow-through on getting you what you want is proof their motto is sincere.

In Bend, activities and adventures are plentiful; some type of special event is happening virtually everyday. During my stay, the annual Fermentation Beer Festival was taking place in the downtown Old Mill District where 30 distinctive local breweries served beer from their taps, while seven bands played music in various locations. Also the Oregon Senior Games were taking place; I qualified by age but passed on participating this time around!

Dog lovers, you’ll see plenty of your four-legged friends. Dog Fancy magazine named Bend the most dog-friendly city in America, and at the Fermentation Beer Festival clearly man’s and woman’s best friends were everywhere, tails wagging and noses sniffing.

Bend is a charming, small city with zestfulness. A modern mountain town at its finest. Its accelerated population growth in the past few years is evidence of the town’s magnetism.

Tetherow is quickly becoming known as an innovative golf destination. Tetherow has a fleet of GolfBoards — rugged, four-wheel drive, motorized vehicles (not completely unlike a snowboard or skateboard) that allows you to have a new kind of fun, surfing the earth as you move from shot to shot. An alternative to walking or driving a cart, the GolfBoard offers exercise when you want it and relief from exertion when you need it.

Tetherow’s co-owner Chris van der Velde, a tour professional with many wins under his belt, played in the 2014 PGA Pacific NW Senior Championship at Tetherow riding a GolfBoard and, according to Tetherow spokesperson Judy Campbell, it’s the first time the PGA has ever sanctioned the use of a GolfBoard in a PGA tournament anywhere in the world.

Tetherow is golf’s Field of Dreams. Build it and they will come. Again…again…again.