Thursday, August 20, 2026

GOLF: MICHIGAN

My 10 Favorite Public Courses in Michigan by David Desmith, LINKS Magazine

Northern Michigan Public Golf Courses
  • Even during the slowdown of new construction in the last decade, the mainland of Northern Michigan added quality courses. The regional breakthrough from mere quantity to real quality began in 1998 when the Arthur Hills-designed 27-hole Bay Harbor Golf Club opened up on a bluff overlooking Little Traverse Bay. The state’s west coast along Lake Michigan has seen a trio of fascinating new layouts: the Nicklaus-designed Harbor Shores Golf Club, part of urban redevelopment in Benton Harbor; Arcadia Bluffs by Rick Smith in 2000 along wild dunes works; and most recently the retro-Raynor Arcadia Bluffs South by Dana Fry and Jason Straka on dead-flat farmland. Inland, on the east side of the state, three courses at Forest Dunes Golf Club have made a major impact in the last two decades: the initial Forest Dunes layout by Weiskopf in 2002, followed by the path-breaking (because reversible) layouts by Doak, Forest Dunes Loop Black (clockwise) and Forest Dunes Loop Red (counterclockwise). If that doesn’t set a new direction for public golf, nothing will.
Upper Peninsula:
"Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has some of the best value and variety of courses you will find in the entire country. I remain spellbound by Greywalls. Sage Valley is fantastic. You’ll want to play Sweetgrass twice. Then there’s Timberstone — forest golf." - Zak at Golf.com

ACME
Grand Traverse Resort & Spa, 100 Grand Traverse Village Blvd., Box 404 Acme, MI 49610-0404
  • The Bear: Designed by Jack Nicklaus in 1985
  • The Wolverine: Designed by Gary Player
  • Lots of water

ANN ARBOR
University of Michigan Golf Course, 500 E Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
  • Alexander Mackenzie designed
  • Non-affiliated guests can play
  • Played here in October 2025 and loved it
ARCADIA
Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club, 14710 Northwood Hwy, Arcadia, MI 49613
  • Best public golf course in Michigan
  • Top teacher Rick Smith and design associate Warren Henderson teamed in 1998 to craft this headlands course that peers down at Lake Michigan early and often, inevitably in spectacular fashion. With breezes off the lake, tawny fescues, and tall sand dunes, the Bluffs course professes a linksy feel without being quite as bouncy as a true links, but at least the wide fairways and large greens make for extra playability in the wind. Dana Fry and Jason Straka conjured up a new course here in 2019 called the South. The retro homage to the Macdonald/Raynor style makes for a rewarding round, but if it’s overwhelming lake scenery you came for, the Bluffs is where you want to be. 
  • #4 - Top 10 Lakeside Courses You Can Play, LINKS Magazine
  • Highly recommended by Mr. Lee
  • Top 2026 Green Fee: $285 Bluffs. $185 South
AUGUSTA
Stoatin Brae Golf Club, 15579 E Augusta Dr, Augusta, MI 49012
  • Located 90 miles west of Red Roof Inn Ann Arbor, 98 miles from Cappy's home
  • There are six courses in the resort
  • Recommended by Mr. Lee
  • Links-style course
  • 2025 Green Fee: $125

CHARLEVOIX
Belvedere Golf Club, 5731 Marion Center Road, Charlevoix, MI 49720

  • Hosts the US Hickory Open and the Hickory Grail in 2023
  • Very historic course with caddies
  • "This semi-private treasure in Charlevoix, Michigan, provides something rare for American golfers: regular access to one of the finest examples of a Golden Age architect’s work" - The Fried Egg
  • Top 2025 Green Fee: $150
  • Located 50 miles north of Traverse City
GAYLORD
Treetops, 3962 Wilkinson Road, Suite Ln, Gaylord, MI 49735
  • Himalayas: The Himalayas is a great place to work on your putting skills. Our grounds team sets a different course each day. You can putt for free when it’s not reserved, or book a private session for your group.
  • Signature: With sloping mounds and narrow fairways, the Rick Smith-designed Signature course will keep golfers of all skill levels on their toes.
  • Tradition: Gentle elevation changes, wide fairways, and four tee box options make Tradition the most player-friendly course at Treetops. Start here and build your confidence.
  • Threetops: Threetops is widely considered the top par-3 course in the country. Choose Threetops for a fun nine-hole warm-up round or a quickie game before you head home.
  • Treetops Golf Academy: Offers 1, 2 and 3-day workshops and 9-hole playing lesson
  • Fly Fishing: Consider including fly fishing with Old AuSable Fly Shop
GRAND RAPIDS
This is Mike DeVries country. Here you’ll find three of his little-known, but hugely enjoyable, courses—The Mines about 10 minutes from downtown; Pilgrim’s Run half an hour north; and Diamond Springs a similar distance southwest of the city. Each demonstrates DeVries’s ability to create intriguing golf without moving a great deal of dirt and to which you want to return often. Other options outside the “Furniture City” are Ray Hearn’s impressive Quail Ridge, Mike Hurdzan’s tremendous Meadows course at Grand Valley State University, and, half an hour to the west near the Lake Michigan town of Grand Haven, Jack Nicklaus’s American Dunes which opened in May 2021 and is owned and operated by the Folds of Honor Foundation.
  • https://linksmagazine.com/6-mostly-undiscovered-u-s-golf-destinations
The Mines Golf Club, 330 Covell Ave SW Suite A, Grand Rapids, MI 49534
Pair with Diamond Springs

GRASS LAKE
Calderone Golf Club, 4490 Willis Rd, Grass Lake, MI 49240
  • 29 miles west of Red Roof Inn Ann Arbor
  • Recommended by Mr. Lee at Ann Arbor
  • Top 2025 Green Fee: $65
  • A links-style course built in 2000


HAMILTON
Diamond Springs Golf Course, 3400 34th St, Hamilton, MI 49419
  • Near Grand Rapids, 100 miles north of Notre Dame
  • Michigan is a top-tier golf state—we could probably pick any number of reasonably priced gems. We’ll go with Diamond Springs, a true hidden wonder just south of Grand Rapids. The course has generous fairways that are regularly mowed slightly higher than normal to make them more plush. Diamond Springs is tucked away into the trees but doesn’t come off as claustrophobic, giving the feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere. One of the great value plays in Michigan. 
  • 2 Eggs on The Fried Egg
  • Top 2026 Green Fee:$80
  • Pair with The Mines
HARBOR SPRINGS
Doon is the Scottish word for “down” and brae means “hillside.” It’s fitting, as the new par-3 course at The Highlands Resort—the 11th across the Boyne Golf properties in Northern Michigan—is situated on a ski slope on the backside of the main lodge. Scheduled to open in summer 2024, the course has several stacked wall bunkers, template greens inspired by famous putting surfaces from the British Isles, and only one tee marker on each hole to allow guests to (generally) play from where they desire. “There’s a lot of excitement about short courses,” says Bernie Friedrich, Director of Golf Course Renovations and Development at Boyne Resorts. “We want to keep people excited about golf and wanting to play. If playing 18 or 36 holes is not enough on any day, this gives golfers another option.”

Harbor Point Golf Club, 8475 S. Lake Shore Drive, P.O. Box 438, Harbor Springs, MI 49740 
  • Oldest golf club in Michigan
  • Semi-private
HARTLAND
Dunham Hills Golf Club, 13561 Dunham Road, Hartland, MI 48353
  • 40 miles north of Red Roof Inn Ann Arbor
  • Mike Devries is working on this
  • Top 2025 Walking Green Fee: $55
  • Discussed on the Designing Golf podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cunLntKJcC0&t=2s


The Highlands at Harbor Springs, 600 Highland Rd, Harbor Springs, MI 49740
  • Playing through tight, conifer tree-lined corridors, The Heather—a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, circa 1966—serves as a golfing time capsule at The Highlands in Harbour Springs, Mich. The 7,143-yard layout is characterized by heavily bunkered green complexes and expansive water hazards that penalize wayward shots on more than half of the par threes and par fives. It’s a course that is equal parts idyllic and demanding, and it effectively encapsulates the distinctive style of mid-century course architecture.
  • By contrast, the eponymous Arthur Hills course, designed in 1995, is a snapshot in time when course design ideologies were beginning to shift. An emphasis on difficulty, which characterized much of the 1980s, was slowly giving way to the recognition that resort courses needed to better reflect the ability levels and the expectations of the golfers who would be playing them. With that in mind, Hills constructed wide fairways dotted by a modest amount of bunkers; however, many of the holes get tighter as players approach the greens. The greens themselves feature bold contours, which ratchets up the difficulty, and several of those greens are elevated—further evidence that “defense against par” was still top of mind.
  • In northern Michigan at Harbor Springs, The Highlands resort is adding The Back Yaird (Scottish for “yard”), a 1.5-acre Himalayan-style putting course offering 27 holes, and Doon Brae (roughly translated to mean “down a hillside”), a 9-hole par-3 course complete with sod-faced bunkers and lights in the evening, in 2025. The main lodge is covered in ivy and styled after a country estate in England—consider having a hot cup of tea. The Heather Highlands Inn offers condo-style units containing separate bedrooms and lofts, just right for family fun and located near the first hole of The Heather course, designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in 1966. Spoiled for choice, other available courses include Arthur Hills, Donald Ross Memorial, and The Moor
 
LEWISTON
Garland Lodge & Golf Resort, 4700 North Red Oak Road, Lewiston, MI 49756
  • Four golf courses at reasonable prices
  • 30 minutes from Gaylord
MACKINAC ISLAND
The Jewel Golf Course, 1 Grand Ave, Mackinac Island, MI 49757
  • The Jewel is a unique course on Mackinac Island, with two distinct nines that comprise a par-67 course with a single par-five hole. The original Grand nine, built in 1901, is located across from the Grand Hotel and offers views of the Straits of Mackinac, while the Woods nine that opened in 1994 weaves through the interior of the island. Golfers are treated to a leisurely, 1.5-mile horse-drawn carriage ride between the nines, with guests’ fees that reach $200 during peak season.

MANISTEE
Manistee Golf and Country Club, 500 Cherry Rd, Manistee, MI 49660
  • Right on the shore of Lake Michigan
  • Mike Fatke, Manistee Golf and Country Club’s longtime course superintendent, took impeccable care of the course he loved and could often be found, late in the day, playing the back nine with his hickories
MARQUETTE
Marquette Golf Club (Greywalls), 1075 Grove Street Marquette, MI 49855
  • At Greywalls, Mike DeVries took an extreme site, wooded and littered with granite rock outcroppings, and built one of the country’s most memorable golf courses - The Fried Egg
PIERSON
Pilgrims Run Golf Club, 11401 Newcosta Ave, Pierson, MI 49339
  • "A golf course designed by committee that wonderfully weaves its way through a Michigan forest." - The Fried Egg

ROSCOMMON
Forest Dunes, 6376 Forest Dunes Dr, Roscommon, MI 48653
  • 7 hours from home
  • 5 hours from Notre Dame
  • The 1,320-acre Michigan resort bordering the Huron National Forest opened its first course, designed by Weiskopf, in 2002. After taking over in 2011, new owner Lew Thompson opened the course to the public, built a clubhouse, added lodging, and hired Tom Doak to design a reversible course called The Loop which opened in 2016 (Riley Johns and Keith Rhebb’s 10-hole Bootlegger was added in 2020). Weiskopf’s course remains the centerpiece of the resort, however, and is a terrific mix of forest/wetlands on the front and rolling duneland with exposed sand on the back.
  • Four Courses:
    1. Forest Dunes
      • Tom Weiskopf design
    2. The Loop
      • You can play this course both ways.
      • While the original course at Forest Dunes Golf Club in northern Michigan has four greens surrounding a lake behind the main clubhouse (including a par-three 19th hole), the newer reversible course from Tom Doak has no water, sitting amid state forest land with trouble abounding in the form of native areas and wasteland formed by glacial sand deposits.
      • The Loop maybe Andy Johnson's most favourite public course in America
    3. The Bootlegger
      • The 10-hole short course features distances between 50 and 140 yards.
    4. Hilltop
      • Two-acre putting course designed by Tom Doak
      • Located near the practice facility at this northern Michigan golf resort, The HillTop encompasses almost two acres, with an 18-hole putting course routed throughout the undulating terrain. The amenity was a feature of the original Forest Dunes development, but laid dormant for around nine years before it was brought back during the 2018 season. That was two years after the opening of The Loop, the reversible layout from Doak that effectively gave the property three distinct courses.
  • Maximum 2026 Green Fee: $215

THREE OAKS
Welter's Folly, Journeyman Distillery, 109 Generations Dr, Three Oaks, MI 49128
  • Located 40 minutes from Notre Dame

YPSILANTI
Washtenaw Golf Club, 2955 Packard St, Ypsilanti, MI 48197
  • Recommended by many in Ann Arbor
  • Opened in 1899
  • 5 miles east of Red Roof Inn Ann Arbor
  • 2025 Green Fee: $70

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