Broadmoor Golf Club vs Sahalee Country Club

Sahalee's tournament resume is the deeper of the two by a wide margin: a PGA Championship (1998) and three women's/senior majors (2010 U.S. Senior Open, 2016 and 2024 KPMG Women's PGA Championship) played across its 27 Ted Robinson Sr.-designed holes, since renovated by Rees Jones and Steve Weisser. Broadmoor's tournament history is older and more exhibition-driven -- Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus all played there during the 1945 Seattle $10,000 Open and 1962 Seattle Open -- but it has not hosted a modern major championship. Broadmoor's 18 holes, designed by A.V. Macan in 1924-27, predate Sahalee by more than four decades and reflect an earlier, more classically parkland style of Pacific Northwest course design.

This is where the two clubs diverge most sharply as residential propositions. Broadmoor's 85-acre gated enclave has its own privately owned, non-public streets -- a structure local histories describe as never repeated anywhere else in Seattle -- and roughly 300 homes, many fronting directly onto fairways. Sahalee's gated neighborhood is smaller (roughly 200-250 homes) and staffed 24/7, but sits on otherwise ordinary public streets inside the gates rather than a privately-platted road system. In both cases, this research confirmed that neighborhood residency and golf club membership are separate systems -- neither market requires the other.

Broadmoor sits inside Seattle proper, between the Washington Park Arboretum and Madison Park -- a short drive to downtown Seattle. Sahalee is roughly 20 miles east in Sammamish, on the Eastside tech corridor near Microsoft's Redmond campus, in a more forested, suburban setting. A buyer prioritizing urban proximity and walkable in-city amenities will lean toward Broadmoor; a buyer prioritizing Eastside tech-job proximity and a larger, more forested lot will lean toward Sahalee.

Neither club publishes current initiation fees or dues, and this research did not find a reliable current figure for either -- the only concrete historical data point found was a dated 1990 Seattle Times report of a $142,500 Broadmoor initiation fee, which is 36 years old and should not be treated as current pricing for either club. Buyers should treat cost comparisons between the two as an open question to confirm directly with each club, not something this research can responsibly quantify.