Loop Links, no. 22
New projects!
We have new renovations, new short courses, and new public golf to discuss this week! Much better than discussing courses closing, or digging up info on past courses that no longer exist.
The Hitman
Ray Hearn recently posted this aerial on his Instagram account, along with the following caption:
“Honored to work with the Inverness CC in Chelsea, Michigan in creating a long range master plan for this historic gem founded in 1926.”
I have featured Inverness before, quipping that I wondered how a 9-holer in Chelsea could exist as a private course, and that maybe it was due to name confusion with the 18-holer in Toledo. Judging by the 1937 aerial, the bunker left-bunker right and horseshoe bunker designs don’t look all that inspiring. On the other hand, the corridors look fantastic compared to the modern course.
Per the Inverness website, the club was founded in 1926 by Doug Fraser, and claims to be one of the oldest courses in Michigan. With a 1926 date, I would say that is far from existing in the oldest tier. Many Detroit clubs pre-date the 1920’s, and multiple clubs around the state claim to have originated as early as the 1890’s.
Continuing: “At the time of its founding, the North Lake area was considered a country getaway for folks from the Detroit metropolitan area. Today, we are proud of the fact that our little community remains a nice place to get away from the busy world around us.”
I don’t know what the land is like, but with any course that age, the potential for quirk is always high, so I’m curious to see what Hearn does with the property. You could extrapolate that curiosity to anything Hearn is working on in general. I find the Hitman, a nickname not so affectionately bestowed on him by Andy Johnson of the Fried Egg, to be a fascinating and confusing presence in the current landscape of golf course design.
On the one hand, I like the work he is doing at Washtenaw Golf Club. He has been expanding and squaring off what are some of my favorite greens in the area, while removing and trimming back trees to allow for more recovery shots and better views of the property.
Then there is Doon Brae at Boyne Highlands, Hearn’s short course design that features a number of template hole designs. I have no idea if he’s able to effectively pull them off, but I do admire the intention regardless. Hearn has signaled before that he has an interest in and is influenced by the history of golf course architecture. You might even go so far as to say he is a student of the game. I recently found one of his projects from 2017, where he overlaid the original Donald Ross plans for Rackham GC on top of the existing satellite imagery. This is very cool work. To me, anyways.
On the other hand, Hearn’s original designs and new builds have always been nearly indistinguishable from other 90’s and early 00’s work by Jerry Matthews (which makes sense - he was an associate for Matthews) and Arthur Hills. It’s often work that is not bad, but over reliant on water hazards, containment mounding, and funky hole designs that are often a byproduct of questionable routing.
His newest work at The Cardinal is this entire conflict in one course. He singles out the Old Course at Sunningdale as a major inspiration for the course, which is intriguing. Yet I fail to find anything, even with the most liberal of interpretations, that reminds me of Sunningdale. Can anyone point out a single water hazard or church pew bunker at Sunningdale? It would be like saying Arcadia Bluffs is modeled after St. Andrews.
So once again, I will be keeping an eye on this Inverness project, and adding another data point to the Ray Hearn file. Someday I will figure him out.
Doon Brae Status
Speaking of Hearn and Doon Brae, I just wrapped up a short stay at Boyne Highlands*, and wandered over for a peek at the progress of the course. I had read a PR statement from Boyne on the status, and received the exact same message from them on twitter in response to someone asking me about Doon Brae.
From what I have seen, the course construction was completed in the late summer of fall of 2023, and reports have said the course was basically playable at the end of the season. Having seen the grounds now, I can only guess that the course had to be reseeded this summer, reportedly after several complete washouts. Some areas look better than others - the greens looked decent from afar on the chair lift - but other areas look like they won’t be playable this season. The large putting green/putting course in particular, located nearest to the main lodge, was a mix of new grass and weeds. It wouldn’t surprise me if that wasn’t even ready by the beginning of the 2025 season.
I agree with the approach of not opening it unless it’s ready, and count me in as someone who is curious to see how it plays. But I’m also slightly skeptical about where the course exists. A golf course on the actual ski slope seems like a recipe, in my amateur analysis, for repeated washouts and damage to the holes.
With that said, I am hopeful for the course to work out, especially if it livens up the atmosphere around the lodge. Boyne is clearly trying hard to offer a wide variety of activities and make it a fun place to hang out during the summer. But at the moment, for being the height of summer Up North in July, it’s sort of a sad, dead vibe on property. I have a ton of nostalgia for Boyne from ski trips in my childhood, so I would be happy to see a turnaround for this particular section of the property.
*I don’t feel like piling on, but the lodging at Boyne is a scary situation. Despite the plethora of summertime activities at the resort, it feels like an outdated, beat up ski lodge. I would say from an overall resort perspective, looking at both the lodging and the golf, Boyne might be in the same tier as Treetops. And despite Treetops getting a little high on their own supply lately, they still blow Boyne out of the water from a value perspective.
New Public Golf!
Nine new holes of public golf are coming to the UP as part of a $19 million update at Island Resort and Casino. It is big enough news that both Forbes and MLive reported on it (although the MLive article appears to be entirely poached from the Forbes article). It also furthers my theory that the only new public golf being built these days is either resort golf, funded by a casino, or, as in this case, both.
In addition to the news articles, the concept drawings for the plan were shared by the project architects, Paul Albanese and Chris Lutzke. The location for the course appears to be next to Sage Run, just on the West side of the property.
Albanese and Lutzke, who got their starts under Jerry Matthews and Pete Dye, respectively, were also behind the Sage Run and Sweetgrass designs, the two other 18-hole courses that are part of the Island Resort and Casino. Albanese partnered with Matthews on another UP course, Timberstone, while Lutzke teamed up with Dye on the Eagle Eye course in Lansing, perhaps each of their most well-known work outside of the Island Resort properties.
This announcement continues a busy period for the duo, as they have recently worked on the 7th and 8th holes at Lake Forest in Ann Arbor, as well as a bunker project at Lakelands G & CC in Brighton (spearheaded by Mike DeVries, I’m told). Recent work also includes a bunker redesign and restoration at Grosse Ile CC, and what was previously one of the newest collection of public golf holes in the state, the Silver Nine at Sasketoon, added in 2020 in collaboration with the late Jerry Matthews.
These highlights of the Island Resort plan stuck out to me:
“We are taking some great concepts from the golden age of course architecture in the early 1900’s,” said Albanese. “The course will feature some of the game’s most popular green templates like the Punchbowl, Double Plateau, and even a Juniper hole like the famous 6th hole at Augusta National. Many Midwesterners have not experienced this kind of architecture, so we wanted to give them a flavor of what it would be like to play overseas or from that era.”
Per Forbes: “Also in the plans are church pew bunkers, like those at Oakmont outside Pittsburgh, and a short par 4 inspired by the 10th hole at Riviera in Los Angeles. While a timetable hasn’t been announced, the new course likely won’t open before 2026.”
My initial thoughts are excitement at seeing someone other than Ray Hearn get a shot at creating some new public golf in the state. My enthusiasm is somewhat tempered, however, by those descriptions of the new 9. As could be said about the Doon Brae idea, I am a big fan of template greens and seeing them incorporated in public designs. But template greens are big and bold, and need a site to match them. They can’t be done in a watered-down, moderate fashion. And copying other courses like Augusta, Oakmont, and Riviera is a recipe for a course that is disjointed and lacks character.
Similar to the Doon Brae project, I hope for my initial skepticism to be proven wrong. I really want to get up to Island Resort and see both Sweetgrass and Sage Run, and it would be nice to have a unique third option to add to the mix.