Characterised by tight, tree-lined fairways, the course at Fircrest Golf Club is an A.V. Macan design dating back to 1923, the year after the club was founded.
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Characterised by tight, tree-lined fairways, the course at Fircrest Golf Club is an A.V. Macan design dating back to 1923, the year after the club was founded.
Fircrest
Architect Arthur Vernon Macan designed and renovated many courses in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest after he emigrated from Ireland to Victoria in 1912. A lawyer by profession, he was also an accomplished amateur golfer, winning the Pacific Northwest Amateur the year after he settled down with his family in Canada.
Macan designed the course at Fircrest Golf Club in 1923, making full use of a gently undulating, 150-acre wooded site that lies less than five miles from Chambers Bay on Puget Sound. Today, the layout extends to a modest 6,440 yards from the back tees, playing to a par of 71, where both nines start with a par five and end with a testing par four.
The Tacoma Open was a short-lived professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour that took place at Fircrest in 1945 and 1948. Jimmy Hines won the first event, with Byron Nelson (who won a record-setting 18 tournaments that season including 11 consecutively) tied for 9th place, his worst finish of the year, and Ed Oliver won the second edition after a playoff.