Reopened Lake Oswego Public Golf Course off to a solid start

Published 10:37 pm Saturday, July 12, 2025

By Miles Vance

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Golfers enjoy the newly opened Lake Oswego Public Golf Course on Saturday, July 12. (Staff Photo: Miles Vance)

LO is ready to tee it up.

And now, for the first time in more than three years, Lake Oswego residents can tee it up at Lake Oswego Public Golf Course.

Formerly an 18-hole, par-3 course measuring approximately 2,700 yards with a par of 54, LOPGC underwent an extensive makeover since closing its doors near the end of 2021.

Now part of the Lake Oswego Recreation and Aquatics Center – located adjacent to Lakeridge High School at 17525 Stafford Road (503-675-2549) – the new golf course is a nine-hole executive course measuring 1,599 yards with a par of 30.

Designed by Pacific Northwest golf architect Dan Hixson, the new LOPGC features six par-3s and three par-4s with the longest of those – the fifth hole – checking in at 302 yards. The 25-acre facility also includes: two sets of OGA-rated tees; a driving range featuring 16 anti-shock turf bays (13 of them covered and heated); a putting green and a sand bunker practice area.

Open since April 27, LOPGC has already made an impact on the local golf community.

“It is as busy as we were expecting,” said Joon Yang, Golf Coordinator at Lake Oswego Public Golf Course. “People have been waiting three years for it to reopen, so yeah, any nice weather day, we have been very busy.”

Yang said there are still additional program offerings associated with the golf course to be added, but he said the course itself is essentially complete.

“For the facility itself, we’re pretty much 100% to go now,” Yang said. “For other aspects, we are adding additional stuff like programs, camps and lessons, but we didn’t want to start with too much at once, because we didn’t know … how busy it was going to be. Now, when we get a chance, we’ll start adding on more stuff so there’s more programs and private lessons and stuff to come.”

Hixson’s design, Yang said, makes the new LOPGC unique, and means that just because it’s an “executive course,” doesn’t mean it’s easy.

“His signature design is that the greens and the fairways are not all flat,” Yang said. “You’re not going to have just a flat lie, even if you hit the fairway, so they’re going to have a little bit of character to it.”

Yang said that reactions to the new course have been uniformly positive. Here’s what a handful of recent players had to say about the new LOPGC.

  • Aaron Gorin, West Linn: “The course is great. They did a great job. I played it before they did the remodel and this is light years better. The practice facility is really nice (and) the range itself is really beautiful.”
  • Scott Clifford, Portland: “The practice facility is really nice. There’s a whole chipping and putting area with a practice sand trap area.”
  • Cade Waller, Lake Oswego. “It’s way cooler. It’s pretty hard, though.”
  • Regan Thomas Henshaw, Lake Oswego: “It’s good. I think it’s brilliant. The new architecture is very good. It’s tough and tight. It kind of makes you not get away with your bad shots.”
  • Maxwell Elliott, Lake Oswego: “I just like how it’s more put together than the old one. The old one was a bit run down, but this one’s nice and new and good to play on.”
  • Ethan Elliott, Lake Oswego: “The architecture and the hole placements are a lot better. It’s very walkable, but it’s challenging, too. You can definitely use all the clubs in the bag, which is nice. It’s kind of narrow, so it actually tests your golfing ability.”

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