A Summer Golf Mecca Shines Brightly
- Brian McCallen
- Jul 15, 2016
- 9 min read
It’s known as “America’s Summer Golf Capital,” but that moniker does little to capture the intrinsic appeal and woodsy splendor of the many first-rate courses tucked in the hills and valleys of northern Michigan’s glacier-carved, sand-based terrain.
Contrary to popular opinion, the area does not touch the Arctic Circle. It’s a five-hour drive or a short flight from Detroit to Traverse City, the region’s hub. Also, the northern realm of Michigan’s lower peninsula is not a place that receives “nine months of cold weather and three months of winter,” as outlanders would have it. The season is May through mid-October. The summer climate, tempered by cool breezes off Lake Michigan, is ideal for golf. Also, extended daylight in these latitudes allows play until nearly 10 p.m., at the height of summer. Many a golfer has looked up from his final putt to see the aurora borealis throbbing on the northern horizon.
Bay Harbor, Links Nine
As readers of Ernest Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River and his other “Nick Adams” stories will attest, northern Michigan, where the writer spent his boyhood summers at the family cottage on Walloon Lake, is a land of great natural beauty. Golfers can travel guilt-free in these parts, too — off-course attractions for non-golfing family members are plentiful. Best of all, the native cheerfulness is warm and genuine.
Against all odds, this Motor City exurb, the Rodney Dangerfield of destinations (“I don’t get no respect”), has evolved into a golf, food and microbrew hotspot that boasts the most diverse collection of public-access courses in the Midwest. Except where noted, all are located within an hour’s drive of Traverse City. Not bad for a region known previously for its cherry orchards, fudge stores, polka fests and pine-paneled taverns that showcase the art of taxidermy.
WHERE TO PLAY, WHERE TO STAY
BOYNE HIGHLANDS (72 Holes), Harbor Springs
Built in 1968 by Robert Trent Jones for ski industry pioneer Everett Kircher, The Heather was the region’s first top-shelf resort venue and the catalyst that ignited the northern Michigan golf boom. Jones had a big assist from Mother Nature at Boyne. The terrain, marked by glacier-carved ridges and hollows, was perfect for golf. Fairways wind through a thick stand of pines, maples and tamaracks, with several holes wrapped around ponds, wetlands and blueberry bogs. There’s plenty of room to drive the ball, but well-placed bunkers coupled with large, undulating greens make this a “hard par, easy bogey” experience. A rarity among courses, The Heather is capable of giving scratch players fits without tying duffers into knots. On the other hand, with water in play on eight of the first nine holes, players must leapfrog safely from one landing pod to the next. A modern classic combining elements of chess and archery, The Heather has plenty of cred. Walkers welcome. Caddies available. Also recommended at Boyne Highlands is Donald Ross Memorial, a tribute course featuring faithful replicas of Ross-designed holes from Pinehurst No. 2, Oakland Hills, Seminole and other classic layouts by the Scottish master. Surf-the-earth GolfBoards are available on this course.www.boynehighlands.com
BAY HARBOR (27 HOLES), Bay Harbor Situated near the resort town of Petoskey, Boyne’s sister facility is a 27-hole stunner routed along a 2½-mile stretch of Little Traverse Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan. Built 20 years ago, this spectacular course is the proverbial silk purse created from a sow’s ear. Five holes occupy a former shale quarry and cement factory, an industrial eyesore previously blighted with piles of arsenic-laced kiln dust and a pair of smokestacks. The barren site looked like hell with the fires burned out until Arthur Hills arrived to transform this environmental Hades into golf heaven. The multi-theme layout, boasting one of the longest coastlines of any course in America, features clifftop, sand dune, rock quarry and woodland settings. The scenic Links-Quarry combo, with its stirring lake views and stark stone cliffs, is the standout 18. The Preserve nine, completed after a Hills visit to Ireland, has hillocky fairways, cavernous bunkers and peek-a-boo blind shots. The Inn at Bay Harbor, a majestic six-story lakeside inn inspired by San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado, has been significantly upgraded since its debut in 1999. A member of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, the Inn offers superb accommodations, a first-rate spa and preferred golf rates at all Boyne courses. www.bayharborgolf.com
"A lake view from every hole takes the sting out of three-putting."
ARCADIA BLUFFS, Arcadia A windswept links located southwest of Traverse city, Arcadia Bluffs, ranked by most pundits as the state’s best public-access course, presents one of the Midwest’s most memorable tests of golf. Designed by swing guru Rick Smith and Warren Henderson, the 7,300-yard layout was built on a steep 245-acre site tilted to bluffs 180 feet above Lake Michigan. Fields of overgrown fescues delineate the fairways, which are pockmarked with deep, sod-walled bunkers. The large greens are very undulating and define the “buried elephant” look. A lake view from every hole takes the sting out of three-putting. Unusually, there are five par 3s and five par 5s in the mix. The outside deck of the clubhouse, oriented to the lake, is a ground zero at sunset during the summer. The Lodge offers 15 well-appointed guest rooms on the second floor of the clubhouse. Four-bedroom cottages are also available. www.arcadiabluffs.com
SHANTY CREEK (72 holes), Bellaire
This family-oriented resort is anchored by The Legend, a stellar Arnold Palmer design opened in 1985. There are thrills galore on this roller-coaster ride through the woods high above beautiful Lake Bellaire. The par-5 first hole plummets 175 feet from tee to green, while the par-5 seventh, home to a family of black bears, doglegs through the trees and is fraught with danger, with two water crossings required. Palmer usually builds broad fairways that invite a grip-it-and-rip-it approach, but with its slim landing areas and small greens, prudent play, not brute power, is rewarded on The Legend. The resort’s second must-play is Cedar River, a solid 6,989-yard layout carved from a second-growth forest by Tom Weiskopf. Several holes skirt the banks of the Cedar River; others wander through a glacially formed valley. The layout, unlike Terrible Tom’s reputation on the PGA Tour, is subtle, understated. “I was controversial enough as a player,” Weiskopf said when the course opened in 1999. “I don’t want to be controversial as a designer.” Hotel rooms, condos and rental homes are available in Shanty Creek’s three villages — Summit, Cedar River and Schuss. www.shantycreek.com
Belvedere Golf Club
BELVEDERE GOLF CLUB, Charlevoix Courses with more bells and whistles have been built since its debut in 1925, but none have aged as gracefully as Belvedere, a storied club where Tom Watson spent his summers as a boy. Situated in the charming lakeside town of Charlevoix, the club turned semi-private 20 years ago and now promotes golf packages with local inns and condo resorts. A classic parkland spread laid out by William Watson, the man behind the Olympic Club in San Francisco, Belvedere, host of the Michigan Amateur a record 40 times, is a traditionalist’s delight. Generous fairways. Small, sloping greens. No gingerbread or frou-frou. Caddies available.
FOREST DUNES, Roscommon
Well worth the 75-minute detour east of Traverse City is Forest Dunes, a singular retreat buffered by 400,000 acres in Huron National Forest. The club’s Tom Weiskopf-designed course, opened in 2002, is etched across land originally cleared for farming in the 1930s. (The crops failed due to the site’s infertile sand base.) Weiskopf redistributed the sand to fabricate rolling “dunes” and other seaside links features. Framed by bracken, wildflowers and tall red pines, this firm, fast course is a strategic gem. The final three holes, faced into the prevailing breeze, are outstanding. The 16th is a long par 3 that plays across a sandy wasteland to a green with an elephantine hump at its entrance. The 17th is a dandy short par 4 that parallels an old landing strip used by bootleggers to import Canadian whiskey during Prohibition. The 18th, a risk-reward par 5 bounded by a tawny sand bunker, plays to a slippery crowned green perched above AuSable Lake. Match all square? Weiskopf built a 117-yard “Bye Hole” that plays across the lake to a green with a bunker in its center. Unveiled last month at Forest Dunes is The Loop, a reversible 18-hole course featuring two distinct layouts using the same 18 greens but playing clockwise one day (Black routing) and counterclockwise the next (Red routing). Designed by Tom Doak and inspired by the Old Course at St. Andrews, The Loop, surfaced in fine fescues, is ingenious — and fun. Because it is traffic-sensitive, this walker’s-only course — caddies available — is open to on-site guests only this summer. Lodging options at Forest Dunes range from guest rooms in Lake AuSable Lodge to cottages and villas.
GAME IMPROVEMENT
The new Rick Smith Golf Academy at Forest Dunes offers a variety of golf instruction programs and schools, including its popular Premier Session with full swing instruction by Smith and his long-time associate, Henry Young. The program is limited to four students and includes 3½ hours of instruction with personalized video analysis. These sessions feature a 2-to-1 student-to-teacher
ratio. www.ricksmith.com
EXTRA-SPECIAL
THE KINGSLEY CLUB, Kingsley Situated at the terminus of an unmarked dirt road 15 minutes from Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, the Kingsley Club, etched across a rugged 320-acre parcel scraped by retreating glaciers, is a must-play for those who relish a wild, wooly challenge. Designed by Mike DeVries, an Alister Mackenzie devotee, this bodacious layout, staked out by massive, fescue-fringed bunkers, rambles across billowing hills, the holes melded to sandy ridges, knobs and bowls. Exposed to breezes off Little Traverse Bay, this strategic knockout resembles a British heathland course on steroids. DeVries moved a scant 30,000 cubic yards of dirt during construction, proof that he successfully harnessed the terrain’s existing contours. It’s a little funky in places — blind shots, crazy slopes, vertigo-inducing greens — but the designer produced a playable work of landscape art, and he did it with panache. At nearly every hole, there is an opportunity to use ground contours to get the ball close to the hole. For imaginative players with good touch, the Kingsley Club is an answered prayer dropped into the north woods. The Kingsley Club is private but permits limited non-member play. www.kingsleyclub.com
SIGHTSEEING
There are two must-see townships in northern Michigan. Harbor Springs, a venerable resort town and the former retreat of Al Capone and his Purple Gang, has lovely shops, fashionable cafes and very impressive lakeside homes. Petsokey, one of Hemingway’s favorite haunts, is known for its historic Gaslight District. The town’s specialty shops and gift emporiums carry jewelry made from “Petoskey stones” — unique hexagonal-patterned petrified coral found along the lakeshore.
ADVENTURES
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore This 71,000-acre park contains the world’s largest moving freshwater dunes — they migrate a few inches each year — as well as more than 30 miles of beaches along Lake Michigan. Comb the beaches for “Petoskey stones” (petrified coral in hexagonal shapes), hike marked trails, visit the Coast Guard’s Historic Maritime Museum, or take the 7.4-mile Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, which winds through vast dunes overlooking Lake Michigan and the Manitou Islands.
Fishing
Northern Michigan offers world-class fly fishing, notably on the AuSable, Black, Manistee, Pigeon and Sturgeon rivers. For trophy-size lake trout, brown trout, Coho salmon, Chinook salmon and whitefish, check with regional outfitters to set up full- or half-day fishing charters on Grand Traverse Bay or Lake Michigan.
Traverse Bay
Wine Tasting Tours
While known for its craft beers, northern Michigan is an excellent wine-producing region. Fresh breezes off Little Traverse Bay create ideal conditions for the cultivation of grapes on the Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas high above Grand Traverse Bay. Wine tours are a nice way to explore the area while sampling locally produced wines. Stick with the white varietals. Local tour operators can arrange a limo tour of the Traverse City wine country, which counts over 40 wineries. www.traversecity.com
RESTAURANTS
The Rowe Inn
The tiny hamlet of Ellsworth is a speck on the map, but it has loomed large for foodies since 1972. That’s when The Rowe Inn opened as a casual, woodsy version of a French country inn, using fresh local ingredients and French techniques to turn out regional cuisine in a class of its own. Michigan morels available in season. Chalkboard menu. Superb wine list. www.roweinn.com
Vintage Chophouse – Wine Bar
The signature dining room at the Inn at Bay Harbor conjures the warmth of an all-American steakhouse and the charm of an upscale lounge. The Cowboy Ribeye, served with Smoked Bleu Cheese Gratin, Braised Greens and Molasses Onions, is exceptional, as is the Detroit Dirty Martini (with pickle brine and pickle slice).
Petoskey Brewing
This microbrewery, established in 1898 and revived in 2012, serves an eclectic array of beers and ales, from a Hopsessed Double I.P.A. to a Cranium Crush Waffle Cone Raspberry Cream Ale (actual waffle cones are added in the mash). Menu choices range from nachos and wings to smashed burgers and gourmet sandwiches. www.petoskeybrewing.com
Stafford’s Pier Restaurant
Recently renovated, this waterfront dining spot in Harbor Springs, built on original pilings in the 1930s, has three different indoor dining rooms plus Dudley’s Deck, the most popular al fresco dining spot in northern Michigan. The menu has area favorites like sautéed walleye, flash-fried perch and oak-planked whitefish. www.staffords.com
Don’s Drive-In
This Traverse City institution is a 1958 doo-wop throwback popular with locals and tourists alike. The shakes — order a black-and-white — cannot be drawn through a straw. Use a long-handled spoon. You’ll be humming oldies in no time. 231. 938.1860
