Chambers Bay, a new public course outside Tacoma, Wash., designed by Robert Trent Jones II Golf Course Architects, immediately elicits intense musical tinglings. At different moments the course resonates like a Mozart aria, a Hendrix guitar riff, a Wagner orchestral and a crooning Hank Williams ballad. It moves you with the sheer beauty of its rolling grasslands that pour between wild mounds and empty down toward the shores of Puget Sound. It bolsters you for heroic golf shots that demand you pull out all the stops and swing out of your shoes. And it calms you by keening mournfully like the melodic climbing and plunging of an Irish jig.

All the while, Chambers Bay arouses a toasty longing for other great courses you've played or seen. Holes are not derivative, but simply evocative -- in the same way a purely struck Santana chord is evocative of a violin melody played by Isaac Stern. Citing how this works in another artistic genre, poet and golf course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. compares it to French author Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past," when the author is flooded with childhood memories by the presence of a piece of madeleine cake.

Whether you've been to Bandon, Ore., or not, you almost can't help but compare Chambers Bay to the idyllic linkslands six hours down the coast at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. Certain aspects also echo Jack Nicklaus's brilliant efforts at Old Works, in Montana, which is also a reclamation site. And yet other views conjure Pete Dye's artistry at Whistling Straits.

Yet, the overall character here is Irish, connoting Ballybunion, with holes tunneling between massive sandy ridges. And amusing quirks -- not the least of which is an occasional train rolling past -- speak with the Scottish lilt of Prestwick or North Berwick. These tiny revelations alight fleetingly, without warning, and lend a component of happy reminiscence or surprise to playing the course.

   
Chambers Bay golf course opened June 23, 2007.     
For most of the past century, the Chambers Bay site was home to both a gristmill and a gravel and sand quarry. When the property was abandoned some years ago it appeared as an unsightly gouge in the surrounding Northwestern landscape of forested islands with distant views of the snow-capped Olympic Mountains.

Not only does the Chambers Bay Golf Course tell a triumphant reclamation story about turning a wasteland into a gorgeous asset; it also illustrates how government can actually act in the best interests of its constituents. The visionaries behind the larger Chambers Creek Project -- which includes the golf course, parks and other amenities spread across 930 acres -- are not real estate developers or corporate CEOs. County executives and other public servants concepted this brilliant, walking-only public golf course that locals can play at a great discount.

And in case you thought Chambers Bay might be missing any crucial angle of perfection, throw in that romance of the passing trains (which may at some future point stop at the property), boats plying the blue waters of Puget Sound (one day golfers may also be able to arrive by boat) and even 'ancient' ruins adjacent to the playing surfaces -- in this case, the castle-like ramparts of huge sorting bins left from the land's industrial past.

Lastly, the course was envisioned to host tournaments -- and not just for local sticks but featuring the big boys, playing from nearly 7,600 tough, windy yards, in front of 40,000 fans. If the USGA has truly been hoping to host the U.S. Open in this far flung corner of the country, it needn't waste another minute debating locales.

Upon arrival, you'll drive toward a clubhouse that seems perched on the very precipice of the continent. Just beyond it, 200 vertical feet of earth have been clawed away over the past century, creating a concave topography recently crafted into massive dunes and turbulent runlets of turf, edged with acres of wild waste areas and hectic fescues.

Then you descend, confusing your notion that heaven is a place above us. Below, the overall mood is ripe with mystery as you appreciate the scale and intimacies of a site full of mounds and humps and hummocks, sideslopes and sheer drops, all drifting and tilting westward toward the gleaming waters of Puget Sound. And at the very edge, a lone fir -- the only tree on the property -- marks the transition where sand dunes drop down to the sea.

The golf holes themselves are sublime, each proffering choices and intricacies. Waste areas are as large as some Northeastern states, but the huge fairways compensate and allow players to swing with abandon. The common winds may suggest adoption of a ground game, but you can punch run-ups, attack aerially or invent a hundred other creative ways to play these holes, which may seem different each time you confront them. As Jones Jr. says, "You can play more options at Chambers Bay than at the Chicago Futures market."

There are few tee boxes in the traditional sense just ribbons of fairway set with markers -- which couldn't be more different from the classical runway tees that characterized Jones Jr.'s (and his father's) earliest work. In another departure, Jones Jr. describes the greens as "extensions of the fairways, not separate features." Nor is there much traditional bunkering at Chambers Bay -- another sign that this design firm has been resuscitated by young talent, fresh corporate vision and the enduring architectural poetry of the company's namesake himself.

In fact, Jones Jr. reflects that the Chambers Bay project reminded him of his work on such other links masterpieces as Spanish Bay and Cape Schank. He gives much of the credit here to architect Bruce Charlton, the man behind many great RTJ II Architects' layouts, who was assisted by Jay Blasi, a talented 28-year-old with a very bright future.

According to Jones Jr., the first hole at Chambers Bay offers echoes of the Old Course at St. Andrews. "Nos. 1 and 18 share a joined fairway that's one big, grassy turfland," he says. But Chambers Bay evokes St. Andrews in other ways, as well. "The [communities] own both courses," Jones Jr. continues. "There are walking trails through both, and as a player, your game and character are very much on display -- everyone can see you and watch you play."

On many of the holes at Chambers Bay galleries will gather -- as they do at St. Andrews 's Road Hole and behind the 18th green -- to give witness. Jones Jr. also believes that Chambers Bay will help Tacoma the way the golf courses have helped St. Andrews -- by attracting people and aiding in the town's renaissance.

The brilliance and versatility of the design are both subtle and obvious at different times. Multiple fairways on a number of holes serve up different views and shot values. Rather than prancing around the topography's major feature as many courses do, and instead of teasing to build tension, the opening hole here plays right at Puget Sound.

Further along the front nine, the sixth green and surrounding humps reinforce the course's Irish pedigree. No. 7 presents a sort of neo-classic Cape Hole bending right around a huge waste area and presenting two huge waste mounds in the fairway fronting the green, creating some blind approaches depending upon where your drive lands.

Blasi calls No. 8, "possibly the longest hole in the world without a bunker." The fairway is a 602-yard expanse of grassed mesas tucked between steep sideslopes -- the upper left slope helping balls back to the fairway, the lower right hustling them away forever. The front side ends with the most epic hole on the course -- a terrific par 3 of between 132 and 227 yards with a drop of more than 100 feet and a forced carry over a ravine that looks like something out of Middle Earth; the sculpted, half-punchbowl green floats above a huge waste area and falls off in the back to serve up views of Mount Olympus. Do not look back from the green to the tee if you're prone to vertigo. And keep an eye out for hobbits.

The back side opens with a perfect and perfectly Bandon-esque par 4 that narrows as it climbs uphill toward the green between two massive dunes that close in like the walls of a canyon. Jones Jr. calls the hole, with its manufactured dunes, one of his master works. "It plays into a tunnel," he says, "like an uphill version of Spyglass No. 4. The view is wide open, with the sea in the distance, yet it still feels claustrophobic."

The 12th hole presents the ever-loveable drivable par 4 -- but in this case you'll need to crush a blind shot 300 yards uphill to the largest but craziest green on the course. And the finish is both unusual and strong, with two par-3s and a par 5 coming in the final four holes. No. 15 presents as a 175-yard downhill par 3 with a pot bunker on the left, a huge bowl o' waste area and that lone tree, all set against a Puget Sound background. The punctuation mark, No. 18, departs from the edge of the water beside ancient mining ruins and disappears into the Irish-like distance beyond the curving waste areas where leprechauns surely frolic.

RTJ II Architects risked several innovative techniques in designing Chambers Bay, like leaving deep tire ruts in much of the constructed mounding to hold grass seed and water because those areas of play are not irrigated. Nature will shape and weather these dunes as it sees fit. The sort of post-industrial look can appear very cool or utterly alarming, and only time will tell whether thickening fescues will soften these lines as intended.

The company also designed holes five and six so they can be played as either long or short holes depending upon which of two greens is in play on five (the determining factor for which set of tees you play from on No. 6), thus lending the course additional flexibility. And although it's a walking-only course, Chambers is no walk in the park, with several steep climbs and descents that could lead to slow play -- hence an active caddy program.

No real estate will ever mar the landscape at Chambers Bay, though future plans call for lodgings and may one day include a second golf course. But that's an encore that hasn't yet been played. So hold up your lighter, cheer wildly and get ready for one rousing performance.