Bruce Wattenburger has a dream to one day see Juniper Golf Course host the best amateur golfers in the country.

“In the back of my mind, to be able to hold a national event I think would be a feather in our cap,” says Wattenburger, who has been the head professional at Redmond’s municipal golf course since 1983, by far the longest-tenured golf pro in Central Oregon.

That dream will have to wait.

However Juniper will have an opportunity this coming August to host the best golfers in the state when the Oregon Golf Association brings the 62nd Oregon Men’s Stroke Play Championship to the course, a significant step toward Wattenburger’s goal.

In a year in which the Central Oregon schedule appears to be typically heavy with regionally significant events, the Oregon Stroke Play stands out as the highest-profile event on the area’s 2014 golf calendar.

And for a change it is Juniper, not Sunriver Resort, that will serve as host of the region’s headliner tournament.

This is no accident.

Juniper has been more aggressive in recent years in securing larger-scale events at its course in an effort to test its par-72, 7,186-yard design against top-level golfers.

The idea is to enhance Juniper’s status as a top-notch facility, Wattenburger says.

“I think that it’s important to stay in the rotation (as host of high-profile events) to some degree to maintain our reputation as a tournament course,” Wattenburger says.

A relatively frequent host of a U.S. Amateur Championship qualifier and the Oregon Open Invitational, among the most notable events in the PGA of America’s Pacific Northwest Section, Juniper is familiar to the region’s talented golfers.

In a sense, the OGA gave Juniper its endorsement by agreeing to allow the Redmond course to host the Oregon Men’s Stroke Play.

Like the Oregon Amateur Championship, the Stroke Play field will be loaded with the state’s top amateur golfers, including the best college players (Bend pro Andrew Vijarro, then a freshman at the University of Oregon, won the tournament in 2008).

In that way, the 54-hole Stroke Play Championship is on par in importance to the Oregon Amateur, a weeklong match-play affair.

What makes Juniper an attractive enough venue to hold such a championship?

“There are so many ways to play the golf course that it doesn’t favor one style of player over the other,” says Brent Whittaker, the OGA’s director of tournament operations. “From the back tees it can play long, but because the desert comes so close to the fairways, it demands accuracy over length. The greens are contoured in a way that changing the hole location will dramatically change the way you play the hole.

“It is a good test of golf,” Whittaker adds. “We have held a lot of U.S. Amateur qualifiers there, and every time it has led to some exciting finishes.”

The Oregon Men’s Stroke Play is not the only significant golf tournament on the 2014 Central Oregon golf docket, of course.

Brasada Canyons Golf Club — which in recent years has upped its profile as a championship venue — is scheduled in June to host the Pacific Northwest Golf Association’s Senior and Super Senior Men’s Amateur. That will draw the highest-skilled amateurs age 50 and older to the Powell Butte resort course.

Also in June, Black Butte Ranch’s Glaze Meadow course will host the Oregon Open, which each year rotates between myriad Central Oregon courses. That will give many of the golfers in the field their first look in a competitive setting at the renovated course since it was reopened in 2012.

One notable absence on the 2014 calendar is a tournament of any real national significance.

Such tournaments have always been the domain of Sunriver Resort and its Crosswater Club.

The resort hosted the 2013 PGA Professional National Championship, a four-day tournament that was broadcast live on the Golf Channel. And from 2007 through 2010, Crosswater hosted the Jeld-Wen Tradition, a major championship on the 50-and-over Champions Tour.

This year, Sunriver will again host the American Junior Golf Association’s Sunriver Junior Open at the Meadows course in August and the PNGA’s Men’s and Women’s Senior Team Championships in September. But there will be no formal visits in 2014 from national organizations such as the PGA of America, the PGA Tour or the United States Golf Association, all of which have held championships in Sunriver’s past.

“We won’t be in the national spotlight this year,” says Josh Willis, the club manager at Crosswater Club who oversees all four of Sunriver Resort’s golf courses. “Hopefully by 2015 we’ll be back.”

As for Wattenburger’s goal to host a USGA championship at Juniper, well, that is still years off if it happens at all.

But if he has learned anything from Sunriver’s ability to secure national tournaments, it is that Central Oregon can make for an attractive location for the right kind of event.

“Some of the minor national championships are certainly doable, as evidenced by what they’ve been able to do at Sunriver for some of the professional events,” Wattenburger says. “We can get bodies into Central Oregon. We do have an airport. We do have enough rooms for the contestants and their families.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7868, zhall@bendbulletin.com.