The renovation of Glaze Meadow, and the par-4 third hole, has spurred Black Butte Ranch to create several new golf tournaments, including the Central Oregon Amateur. (Provided by Black Butte Ranch)

Black Butte Ranch has never been a stranger to golf tournaments.

But in its first 40 years, the sprawling resort northwest of Sisters with two golf courses has never really hosted its own cornerstone tournament.

If all goes as planned, Black Butte Ranch is hoping that will change this season.

The resort announced recently that it has launched what it calls the Central Oregon Amateur, a 36-hole individual stroke-play tournament scheduled for July that organizers hope will become among the most important amateur tournaments in the region.

The newly created event is part of a rapidly expanding tournament portfolio for Black Butte Ranch that includes four homespun tournaments created in the last year, as well as the 2014 Oregon Open and the annual Central Oregon Shootout.

“We are trying to do four or five signature events for Black Butte Ranch,” says Jeff Fought, Black Butte Ranch’s director of golf. “We are trying to develop them ourselves with our own name on them.”

The Central Oregon Amateur, scheduled for July 11-13 on Black Butte’s Big Meadow and Glaze Meadow courses, could be the jewel of those events.

The tournament is actually the brainchild of Bend resident Stein Swenson, an avid golfer who also founded the Best of Bend Best Ball tournament and the Central Oregon Golf Tour, an annual series of small-scale events played at courses throughout the region.

Swenson approached Black Butte Ranch last year about creating an event that caters to golfers more competitive than average recreational players (though the tournament does offer both gross and net awards in open, senior, super senior and a women’s division).

His idea was to create a tournament that would one day become such a high-level event that it would draw the best players from around the state, from top-notch college players to the highest level of senior golfers.

“It’s a large undertaking and I take it very seriously,” says Swenson, who will serve as the tournament’s director. “For the most part, I want to begin an extremely competitive Central Oregon Amateur championship that eventually becomes really well known and a sought-after opportunity for any level of player.

“The hit-and-giggle guys, they may play in it once. But it may not suit their comfort level and (those golfers) may well bow out afterward. It’s not for everybody.”

Such a tournament is not new to Central Oregon.

Since 1953, Bend Golf and Country Club has hosted the Mirror Pond Invitational, which is also a 36-hole amateur stroke-play event.

In fact, for Fought, the Mirror Pond offers a blueprint for the future of his tournament.

“I look at the Mirror Pond being really as kind of a Central Oregon thing that everybody comes to,” Fought says. “That’s what we want to develop with the Central Oregon Amateur, a high-end classic event that people want to win.”

The push for tournaments is directly related to the 2012 renovation of Glaze Meadow.

The redesign — performed by Jeff Fought’s brother, John, an acclaimed architect based in Arizona — turned an overgrown and short course into a layout inspired by the 1920s and ’30s designs of Donald Ross.

Since reopening, Glaze Meadow has won rave reviews. And tournaments act as a way of getting more of the region’s golfers to play the course, Fought says.

“We want to show off what we have,” Fought adds. “We put a lot of time and love and thought into redoing Glaze Meadow.”

The renovation has opened up Glaze Meadow.

After years of being void of tournament golf other than member games, Glaze Meadow hosted the Oregon Golf Association’s Mid-Amateur Championship in its first year since being reopened.

The Oregon Open, one of the major annual tournaments in the PGA of America’s Pacific Northwest Section, will be played at Glaze this year.

None of that would have been possible before the redesign.

“I would never have hosted any tournament on the old design of Glaze Meadow,” says Brent Whittaker, the OGA’s director of tournament operations. “It was quirky, tight, and struggled with length.

“The redesign is way better. The layout has what you want in a golf course that will host competitions. The overall length is good, but more importantly it has a variety of tough holes and scoring holes.”

With such a course now at his disposal, Fought wants to see it test the best players. His hope is that in turn those players return to their homes and spread the word of Black Butte Ranch’s offerings.

A tournament good enough to get golfers talking is exactly what Swenson is hoping to build.

“I want it to be so full that people are begging to get in,” Swenson says. “I think I have the right venue. I think I have the right geographic location (Central Oregon). I think I have the right time of year when the weather is bound to be good.”

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