Brasada Canyons Golf Course

Brasada Canyons Golf Course sits on a former working cattle ranch at more than 3,000 feet elevation on the slopes of Powell Butte, offering commanding views of Oregon's Cascade Range while presenting a formidable test across 7,295 yards of dramatic high-desert terrain. Designed by Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy and opened in 2007, the layout features nearly 800 feet of elevation change as it runs along ridgelines and across deep canyons, with bent-grass greens and bluegrass fairways contrasting with the surrounding sagebrush landscape.

Brasada Canyons Golf Course is an 18-hole championship layout at Brasada Ranch in Powell Butte, Oregon, designed by Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy and opened in 2007. Playing to 7,295 yards from the championship tees, it is the longest golf course in Central Oregon — an appropriate distinction for a course that winds through and across the canyon terrain of the Crooked River valley basin in Crook County, using the dramatic topographic relief of the landscape to create a playing experience that feels genuinely of its place. Jacobsen, an Oregon native and PGA Tour veteran who had competed in more than 500 Tour events, brought to Brasada Canyons the perspective of a player who understood how design features translate to real playing experience at a competitive level.

Peter Jacobsen's familiarity with Central Oregon golf — he grew up in Portland, competed on the PGA Tour for decades, and was intimately connected to the Pacific Northwest golf scene — informed his approach at Brasada. Working with Jim Hardy, the noted golf instructor and design partner, Jacobsen created a course that uses the canyon ridgelines and draws for visual drama while routing holes along the high points and through the natural corridors in ways that maximize the panoramic views across the Cascade Range and the high desert plateau. The course's position at Brasada Ranch, which enjoys over 300 days of sunshine annually due to the Cascade rain shadow, gives it a playing climate markedly different from the wet conditions of the Willamette Valley.

The canyon terrain at Brasada creates vertical variety across the round that is unusual in Central Oregon golf, where many courses occupy relatively flat high-desert terrain. The course winds along the edges of natural canyon formations, with tee boxes positioned at elevations that give sweeping views of the surrounding landscape before holes descend into the canyon corridors or play across exposed ridgeline terrain. This topographic drama is the defining characteristic of the Brasada experience, distinguishing it from the more open desert courses that characterize other Central Oregon venues.

Brasada Ranch, the resort community surrounding the course, encompasses lodging, a spa, recreational amenities, and residential properties developed around the Jacobsen/Hardy design. The resort's positioning in Powell Butte — east of Bend on the Cascade plateau — gives it access to the Central Oregon outdoor recreation ecosystem while maintaining a setting more remote and dramatic than the courses closer to Bend and Redmond. Golf Advisor and other rating services have consistently recognized Brasada Canyons in their Oregon course rankings, reflecting the quality that Jacobsen and Hardy built into the canyon terrain.