The Golf Nomad #1 - Laying the Groundwork & July 2023 Weekend Trip
When I was 27, I was chasing a career coaching basketball, working more hours than anyone should ever work, and living off of student loans rather than paychecks. By the time I got out of that career path, I was starting a family and dealing with all of the time commitments that come with it. Working in the NBA for five seasons was a memorable experience, perhaps even one that I would never trade. On the other hand, what if I had just been working normal person hours and earning normal person pay during that period of my life, and using my time and money to play all of the golf that I wanted to play?
Well, my life might look something like Brendan Aumann’s. I met Brendan a few years ago, and quickly learned that he is down for just about any golf trip at any time. He drove up to Petoskey once to meet me on vacation for a round. I had promised him Belvedere but delivered Petoskey-Bay View CC instead, and heard nary a complaint about it.
More importantly, he shares similar views on golf and golf course design as I do, and I trust his judgment. He approached me about using Great Lakes Loops as a vehicle to write about his golf travels and share his pictures, and I agreed that it was a good idea. Pontificating about golf design trends in Michigan is an area of interest for me, but my weakness is that I don’t get to travel nearly as much as I would like for golf each year. It’s something that I think will evolve over time for me, but for now I’d like to periodically share the floor with Brendan to talk about the golf nomad life that passed me by while I was locked in a gym. - Craig
Hello everyone! My name is Brendan, I’m 27 years old & a major golf architecture nerd. I’m sure it’s weird to see something from someone other than Craig, but he’s been kind enough to let me use this platform to detail my golf travels. Like he mentioned, I’m just some guy working normal hours making normal pay spending all my money playing as much golf as humanly possible. Playing new golf courses is truly my life passion & I think any course is worth checking out once.
As of writing I have played 267 different golf courses with 180 of them being in Michigan. Whenever I talk to people about the trips I’ve taken they’re typically a mix of amazed and bewildered, but one thing for certain is they’re eager to hear more. I’ve been fortunate to take some awesome golf trips, but I honestly feel like I’m just getting started. I plan to go into detail on the courses I play as well as the lengths I go to chase a stupid little white ball wherever I find myself. I’ll highlight some great (and not-so-great) courses in and outside of Michigan + whatever else tickles my fancy. Welcome to The Golf Nomad!
The Brendan Scale + What I Like
Before I dive into trips & my opinions I figured I should give some background on how I rate courses & what I like to see in a golf course. As you could guess from the name, I ripped the Brendan Scale off from the Doak Scale a la Tom Doak’s books. I don’t expect to see as many elite golf courses as Tom Doak, but I still scale my ranking fairly high. I’d like to point out that a 4-5 is a golf course I think is good enough to return to, a 6 is a course I hope to play again & is good, an 8 is very good, a 9 is exceptional, and a 10 is flawless. I’ve only played a handful of Top 100 courses thus far, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen a 10 yet. Detailed below:
I am most drawn to courses that highlight natural land movement, interesting green sites, and walkability; which means classic courses are typically my favorite. I’m also among the many who are not afraid to complain about too many trees on golf courses that did not originally have them. I play golf to have fun & love when a hole provides multiple routes to making par rather than being given one spot to hit the ball off the tee. I find some of the most enjoyment in chipping and putting so fun/interesting greens go a long ways for me as well. I plan to highlight more of what I do like about a course vs what I don’t like as I think every course is worth seeing once, but some courses will draw ire out of me.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, enjoy my thoughts, opinions, and irrational distances I’ve covered to play this game we love! I’d love to hear any other thoughts about these courses and I’d expect people to have differing opinions so I’ll always keep an open mind as the discussions are my favorite part of all this. Without further ado, The Golf Nomad #1.
July 2023
It’s safe to say July 2023 was the best golf month of my life; I ended up playing at 37 different courses & 3 The Golfers Journal (TGJ) events. A friend of mine had asked me to be in his wedding in Minnesota so naturally I turned it into a 2 week golf trip that ended up being 28 rounds of golf in 16 days (including the 1.5 days off for wedding/prep). I’m going to save that trip for the future, but wanted to dive into the mini-trip I took the weekend prior to leaving.
Saturday, July 8th 2023 - Round 1 Mt Pleasant Country Club Mount Pleasant, Michigan
Saturday was a very wet day that nobody had any business playing 18 holes of golf on, let alone 36. However, I work a standard 8hr/day desk job & the weekends are for golf regardless of the conditties! At the time I lived & worked in Lansing (have since relocated to SE MI) so the drive was relatively easy, just an hour North. We teed off at 10AM so I didn’t have to be on the road until around 8:30.
Mt Pleasant CC seemed like an awesome spot to join if you lived in the area & wanted a consistent spot to play a solid course. It’s not a course I’d tell anyone to drop everything & play, but it’s also currently $550/yr for CMU students & $1,345/yr for single members to join which is an awesome deal for what it is. Built in 1922, the original designer is unknown, but Jerry Matthews did stop by in the 80s. There are five par 3’s & two par 5’s for a final par of 70 & it tips out around 6300yds. To be completely honest, there are a lot of repetitive holes out there that are easily forgotten, but hole 4 is a borderline drivable dog-leg par 4 & hole 14 is a drivable par 4 so those both stick out in my memory. Five par 3’s is always fun, but I feel MPCC would have been more fun if there was one that was a short wedge shot. From the one-ins the yardages were 163, 170, 209, 183, & 145. Overall, a course I wouldn’t mind to see again someday, but I could live without if I didn’t: 4
(Ed. note: Gallery photos should be viewable in full size, whether on mobile or desktop, by clicking on the photo.)
Saturday, July 8th 2023 - Round 2 PohlCat Golf Course Mount Pleasant, Michigan
After MPCC we boogied over to The PohlCat, which is actually one of my most-played courses. I’ve played it 10 times now, but this day was my 9th round out there & by far the worst I’ve ever played on it. I don’t know why I didn’t head home that day, but it gives me a chance to talk about a golf course I know better than most other ones.
PohlCat was designed by 1982 Masters Runner-Up & Mount Pleasant native Dan Pohl in 1992. I played PohlCat 5 times in 2020 & I paid $49 or less every time, with some being less than $39. Back then, I thought it was great for what it was, but as of writing peak summer rates are up to $125. I haven’t been back since 2023 for this reason alone; if I’m driving North I’ll just keep driving to find better courses at lower rates. I mean shit, you can play Arcadia South for less than that at certain times. If people are paying it, good for them, but here’s why it’s not worth that:
You start off with a gettable par 5 that is honestly one of the better holes on the course, but it’s soon followed by a target-golf par 4 where you have to hit a certain spot of the fairway to have a decent crack at the green. Hole four is a massive fairway dissected by the cart path, truly a sight to behold. You’re lulled a bit by par 4’s in the middle, but hole six is 283 yards from the one-ins and is a fun risk/reward hole on whether to take on the water near the green or just lay back. As you get to the back 9 you don’t see any holes that wow you until seventeen. Lots of tree-lined holes + forced carries including both on the sixteenth with a centerline tree. I usually love a good centerline tree, but it’s so unnecessary on this hole that it drives me nuts. Seventeen is one of my favorite par 3’s, but then you go home on what is probably one of the worst eighteenth holes in the state. It’s like they decided they had to have seventeen where it is & then figured they’d make it work from there, but they definitely did not make it work. You have to either lay back or hit your drive from right to left or you’ll hit the clubhouse/be in the range. If you go too far left you’re dead or blocked out & the cart path cuts directly across the fairway to a rather uphill green. The closing stretch of 16-17-18 feels like 90’s golf at its finest and, while forced carries, target golf, and tree-lined holes may have been what Dan Pohl was used to on tour, it’s not what I want to play in my everyday round. As a whole the par 3’s are good, the par 4’s are mundane, and the par 5’s are pretty standard. I based the Brendan Scale on golf course ranking alone & not value, but you won’t catch me back here anytime soon due to costs inflating well beyond what I think the course is worth. 5
Sunday, July 9th 2023 - Round 1 Noble Hawk Golf Links Kendallville, Indiana
Noble Hawk was two hours from my apartment & I teed off at 7:57AM, which meant I was up at 5AM & on the road by 5:30AM to play a 1997 Tim Dykstra “links” course. While it’s definitely not a links (shocker for NE Indiana, right?), it was a solid course for a guy who Golfpass says has designed two courses. There are two double-greens out there with 2 & 17 as well as 1 & 18 sharing a green. The back nine has three par 3’s & three par 5’s which makes for a fun finish. I paid $55 & felt like that was a fair price + they had free water bottles all over the course, which was a pleasant surprise. It tips out around 6800yds & the one-ins were 6400, but it didn’t feel overly long. You could definitely tell it was a course built in the 90s as there were some funky greens shapes & water protected par on many holes, but unlike some 90s courses the water wasn’t overbearing. In most cases it was up to the player to decide if they wanted to take it on or not, which I enjoyed. Not really any holes that wowed me, but also none I hated; most likely a course I’ll play again down the road when travel aligns. 5
Sunday, July 9th 2023 - Round 2 Rock Hollow Golf Course Peru, Indiana
After I finished my round at Noble Hawk I made the hour and a half commute down to Peru, Indiana to check out Rock Hollow. I usually don’t like using GroupGolfer coupons, but I had heard good things about Rock Hollow & noticed it on there for $30. It seemed like a waste to not buy one & I’m extremely thankful I did because Rock Hollow was a treat. Peru is a town of 11,000 people & they’re over an hour north of Indianapolis so I was pleasantly surprised to find a mostly empty course. I didn’t have to wait for anyone all day & played in <3hrs so that made for an even more delightful experience.
The course was designed by Tim Liddy in 1994, the same man who did the new 9 at Harrison Hills in Attica, Indiana (a future topic). It’s a par 72 that tips out at 7000yds & the one-ins are 6463yds. Sometimes I can get long winded so I’ll sum this up quickly; good golf course that I’d happily play again. I hit all the clubs in my bag & had a blast doing it + the greens were in awesome shape & fun to putt on. There was really fun land movement in some spots, it would have been walkable (rare for ‘97), water wasn’t overbearing, and it cost me $30. If you put this course in metro Detroit it’s $100 at least. Diamond Springs feels like a good comparison course, albeit not quite as good. Holes thirteen and sixteen are borderline drivable & four, eleven, and fourteen are good par 3’s. If you told me this course was built in the 1920-1930’s I would have believed you & I mean that as a compliment. I expect to play this course again someday. 7
Monday, July 10th 2023 Flossmoor Golf Club (36) Flossmoor, Illinois
After 5+ hours of driving on Sunday I was ready for the 1hr commute to Flossmoor on Monday. Chicago is littered with great private tracks (another to be featured soon), but Flossmoor has a reputation for some of the fastest greens in the city. If you read about Chicago courses you’ll see the name Herbert James (H.J.) Tweedie mentioned, but the sad truth is he was too early in the game & many of his courses were completely remodeled by Donald Ross or someone of similar stature decades later. Similar to Tom Bendelow, but on a much smaller scale, he was the first to route some great courses. Flossmoor is actually one of the few clubs to not mess with his routing very much, but as you walk the fairways you don’t feel like you’re playing a course designed in 1899. This is because in 2006 none other than Michigan’s own Ray Hearn came in for a complete bunker renovation in order to provide character.
If I’m being completely honest, the front was relatively flat & none of the holes really wowed me on a level I hoped for. I was able to loop it twice as apart of the TGJ event, but even then not a ton of holes stick out in my mind. This may be in part that the main thing I remember is the greens & how you needed to be below the pin on every single one. I love fast greens, but it was crazy how speedy they keep them out there. They were all the talk before & after the round, absolutely wicked stuff. On top of that the rough was no joke so if you didn’t hit the fairway it was impossible to hold a green. There were no true weak holes & 16, 18, 2, & 4 were my favorites, but I feel like without the fast greens you wouldn’t be left with a ton to discuss. Hearn’s bunkers add memorable pizazz & I’m happy I got to play here, but I understand why Flossmoor isn’t on any “need to play” when in Chicago lists. 6
Tuesday, July 11th 2023 Eagle Eye Golf Club Bath, Michigan
After finishing 36 at Flossmoor it was 3.5 hours home to be at work the following morning. Fortunately for myself, I work in purchasing & a vendor was in town and he wanted to play Eagle Eye Golf Club in Bath, just outside East Lansing. I lived nearby & just like PohlCat this was my 9th round there out of 10 overall & thought this was a great chance to highlight a course I really enjoy.
Eagle Eye opened in 2003 & is the work of Chris Lutzke, a disciple of Pete Dye. You can see Dye’s design influence for sure & I originally thought this was a Dye course until I dove deeper & realized it was not. Who could blame me, the seventeenth hole is a replica of hole seventeen at TPC Sawgrass! There’s not really a hole I dislike, but hole three is probably a lot of people’s least favorite, as you don’t really know what’s being asked off the tee. The par 3’s are very good & are what most people will remember along with nine & eighteen, but a hole I have always loved & most people probably forget is fifteen. There’s water along the right & hole ten left, but it’s a wide fairway to a massively uphill green. For some reason I rarely hit the green, but there’s endless options of short game shots to choose from around this green as it’s all shaved down & on a large hill. Bumping my 3 wood is always a favorite play here. There’s not a ton of land movement and walking isn’t really in the cards, but this course is a ton of fun & that’s what I care about most. The only negative is prices have steadily increased & it looks like they’re up to $160 on weekends now, but it will always be a course I enjoy and recommend others to check out at least once. 8
Like I mentioned, this was my appetizer to the few weekends that followed this up. I can’t wait to dive into that trip & many others, but I figured this would help gauge interest first. I’d welcome any thoughts for if you want less or more information, less or more courses, or if this is a good amount.
Thanks for reading, play fast & don’t be a dick!