BRIGHTON HOWELL
Shepherd’s Hollow Golf Club isn’t Michi-
gan’s newest course, but it certainly isn’t
far off. The 2000 opening of this 27-hole
Arthur Hills design between Flint and
Detroit checks a lot of boxes for that area’s
player. Shepherd’s Hollow can play as long
as 7,236 yards, and at times it is going to
feel longer. Wide fairways are frequently
bordered by steep drop-offs. The greens
here are anchored by mostly mounded or
treed backdrops.
Shave 1,000 yards off the back tees, and
that’s what even the best players are left
facing at Lakelands Golf & Country Club.
Why such a drastic difference? Lakelands
will be celebrating its 100th anniversary
in 2022, so the design strategy here was
dramatically different from later in the
century. All but three holes were laid out
in a straight line from tee box to green.
GAYLORD
Treetops Resort packs them in during the
winter and summer, thanks to its skiing and
golf. With the latter, the property is actu-
ally four 18-hole courses and a nine-hole
par 3, affectionately named “Threetops.”
The Heather at Boyne Highlands (left) was named the 2019 National Course of the Year by the National Golf Course Owners Association. The greens at Shepherds
Howell (right) are anchored by mounded or treed backdrops.
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“In the ‘80s, you had Jack Nicklaus,
Arnold Palmer and Robert Trent Jones.
They did it all at once and it opened the
flood gates,” said Kevin Frisch, the golf
public relations director for Pure Mich-
igan. “Everybody started coming up and
building golf courses.”
The reason was clear. A previously
untapped landscape not only provided
space for the projects, but also an environ-
ment ripe for the game and full of locals
and visitors hungry for more options.
At one point, according to Frisch, Mich-
igan led the nation in most new courses
per year. That led to some natural can-
nibalization, as a reported 200 courses
closed between 2000 and 2017. What was
left for the most part was the new Michi-
gan golf, one more prepared for your time
and money than ever before.
There are two brand new high-profile
tracks for 2019: Sage Run Golf Club in the
Upper Peninsula and the South Course
at Arcadia Bluffs on the shores of Lake
Michigan. The Loop at Forest Dunes,
opened in 2018, is also the world’s only
fully reversible course.
Those three and plenty more are all tak-
ing advantage of Michigan’s golf identity.
“Golf is thriving. It’s made a comeback,”
Frisch said. “You can play with quantity
and quality. [During the summer] you can
tee it up at 6:30 a.m. and play until 9:30 at
night. That’s something that people just
rave about.”
We took a look at 10 courses around the
state, divvied up by the five primary regions.