The Golf Nomad #2 - Michigan Upper Peninsula August 2022
When you think of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, golf probably isn’t the first thing that comes to your mind. There are more golf courses than you’d think, many of which are rustic & survive off local play. On this trip, however, I stuck to the big hitters as I was dying to play Greywalls & some of the surrounding courses. The land up there is unlike anything in the Lower Peninsula & provides a fun change of pace. I’ve only played eight courses in Yooper Land & this trip contains five of them. While most people go up there chasing waterfalls, I went up there chasing birdies!
Thursday, August 25th 2022
Timberstone Golf Course (36)
Iron Mountain, Michigan
I did this trip with one other friend & we decided to start West and work our way back East. We both worked on Wednesday (him in Grand Rapids, myself in Lansing) & made the 6 hour journey to Escanaba after we were done. We made it up there just before midnight & only had a 1 hour drive left before our 8:30 tee time the following morning. In a normal scenario we would’ve played 18 and went somewhere else for the afternoon, but we had a stay & play deal that included 36 holes of golf so we spent the day & looped the course twice.
Timberstone is a 1997 Jerry Matthews design & you can tell. The forced carries & narrow holes are recognizable, but the elevation change does help you forget at times. The course is fun and has tons of land movement as it’s also a ski resort, but there is not much width (145 slope from one-ins, 150 from tips) & it can provide for a very long day if you’re not hitting your driver well. Unfortunately for me, that was the case on this day & I have a strong memory of looking for balls & hitting punch shots. Many holes feel target golf-adjacent, but Holes 6, 7, & 9 are especially bad. Holes 5 and 6 each feature water down the entire left side & feel very repetitive/uninspiring, but 5 is at least a par 5 where you can hit a hero shot to get there in two. A lot of the par 4’s and 5’s blend together in my head, but the par 3’s were memorable & 17 feels like the signature hole. It’s a massively downhill par 3 that has six tees ranging from 103-215 yards & plays quite a bit less depending on how far back you are. Pace was brutally slow out here & after one round I didn’t feel overly compelled to play another which helped me decide what to rank this one. 4
Side note: Aurora, Wisconsin is barely a town, but the T&T Steakhouse just across the border was a great spot to sit down & drink a Spotted Cow after the day was done.
Friday, August 26th 2022 - Round 1
Sage Run Golf Club
Bark River, Michigan
We stayed at Timberstone Thursday night & had an easy hour commute to Sage Run the following morning. It became more clear on this day that pace is an issue in this part of the state, but it is called the Island Resort & Casino so I guess everything moves at island pace. It took us just north of five hours to play our round & left us rushing to get to Sweetgrass, but that didn’t stop me from loving Sage Run.
Designed by Michigan-based architect Paul Albanese in 2018, Sage Run was opened to complement Sweetgrass Golf Club + provide a different aesthetic than what Sweetgrass offers, and Albanese nailed it. There’s tons of natural sage grass (hence the name) & other flora in abundance and you can tell that, other than clearing trees, they did not move much land. What sticks out most in my mind was how Albanese routed the course through some spectacular uphill holes where most people would have them play downhill. I’m a sucker for downhill holes, but the change of pace was welcomed & he built some extraordinary uphill holes in 5, 8, and 16. 5 is an insanely uphill par 3 (you can barely see the oversized flag way left) and both 8 and 16 are each short par 4’s that provide a multitude of options off the tee. Hole 8 plays 255-295 from the longest three boxes & you can either go over the hazard/tree straight towards the green or bail out right with a shorter club. Hole 16 plays from 298-348 and is also severely uphill, but has more room up top than you’d think from the tee. 14, 3, and 15 were three other holes that stuck out in my mind, but did not play uphill. I really wish I lived closer than 7 hours from Sage Run because I’d love to play this course frequently. 8
Friday, August 26th 2022 - Round 2
Sweetgrass Golf Club
Harris, Michigan
Although both are owned by Island Resort & Casino, Sage Run & Sweetgrass are about ten minutes apart. I booked our rounds five and a half hours apart, but that was still almost not enough time due to the pace at Sage Run. I quite literally raced a train to get there on time, only beating it by a matter of seconds. While I wouldn’t recommend racing trains, we barely teed off ahead of a massive outing of twenty-four guys & it gave a lasting memory that a golf course never could so it was definitely worth it.
Sweetgrass was the original design at Island Resort & Casino, opening ten years prior to Sage Run in 2008. Similar to many smaller-scale resort golf destinations, Sweetgrass shares the same architect as Sage Run in Paul Albanese. I know Coore/Crenshaw & Doak were already well into their careers by 2008, but I feel like these two courses help show how far golf architecture had come in only ten years as the minimalism movement was nearing full swing. While Sweetgrass didn’t feel unnatural, you could definitely tell they moved more land to build that course than Sage Run. Water is in play on seven or eight holes, whereas at Sage Run it was zero. A majority of the greens are elevated above the fairways at Sweetgrass, whereas at Sage Run they felt like the natural terrain. I still enjoyed Sweetgrass & holes 14, 12, and 1 were my favorites. Like Timberstone, holes 9 and 18 played to a double green, but unlike Timberstone there’s a lovely water tower & hotel in the background. I liked Sweetgrass, but if you gave me ten rounds between the two courses I’m playing at least eight of them at Sage Run. 6
I’d like to point out the resort is owned by the Hannahville Indian Community, a Potawatomi tribe who allowed the building of these courses. Per the scorecards, sweetgrass & sage are two of four traditional Potawatomi medicines with the other two being cedar & tobacco. Sweetgrass was the first plant to grow on mother earth & burning sage is used to drive out evil spirits & keep negative thoughts and feelings away. Really cool namesakes that will continue on as Paul Albanese is currently building the 9-hole Cedar course. Job well done to them all.
Saturday, August 27th 2022
Marquette Golf Club - Greywalls (36)
Marquette, Michigan
After finishing up at Sweetgrass we stayed onsite & drove an hour and a half North in the morning to Marquette Golf Club to play Greywalls. As I went up to pay for the round I noticed some giant scoreboards & asked if the club championship had been played recently. Turns out it had not been held recently, but rather was being held that day. When I booked the tee time I noticed almost no others available & figured the course was sold out, but it turns out we were actually just one of few who got to tee off before the club championship. We were told they hadn’t booked tee times for the afternoon, but that we could surely go off again after they had teed off so that’s what we did. I would have loved to see the Langford & Moreau Heritage course, but damn, Greywalls was captivating and enthralling (plus the replay rate was $50).
There are some courses I play where I forget to take many photographs, but Greywalls was not one of those courses. I couldn’t put my phone away as I was mesmerized by almost every hole I was seeing. When you step up to 1 tee you realize you’re in for something you’ve never experienced before, and the stretch of 4-5-6-7 makes you wonder how the hell Mike DeVries managed to build this course while being thankful that he did at the same time. If you’ve played Tobacco Road or Tot Hill Farm you may invoke some of the same feelings you had out there as it truly feels like something Strantz would have built. It’s a mix of amazement and bewilderment, but you have a smile on your face on every hole you see. Hole 6 is one of the craziest par 3’s I’ve ever played and 5 right before it is blind and driveable with one of the craziest green sites I’ve ever seen. Hole 15 is a bunkerless par 3 to a massive green that plays 200 yards from the one-ins and hole 9 is kind of funky, but for the most part this is an extreme piece of land with extremely good golf holes. The par 3’s and 5’s are all enjoyable & allow for birdies or double bogeys quite easily. I had to debate about my ranking for a while because I wasn’t sure if I could play Greywalls every day, but after thinking about how the routing is as walkable as it could be, how good the holes are for how extreme the land is + how much fun I had the entire time, I had to give it some respect. Per the usual, bravo Mike DeVries, this 2005 masterpiece should stand the test of time for years to come & I implore you to go see it at least once sooner rather than later. 9
Sunday, August 28th 2022
Wild Bluff Golf Course
Brimley, Michigan
After an awesome day at Greywalls we finished up around 7PM, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed on our way East to Wild Bluff Golf Course in Brimley at Bay Mills Resort & Casino. It was about two and a half hours, but my passenger never would have known it as he slept the whole way there. Safe to say we were ready for bed & weren’t there to gamble, unfortunately for the casino. This was the only round we played in the Eastern U.P. but it still felt a lot like the others.
Wild Bluff was designed by Mike Husby in 1998, a man who has 6 courses to his name, all being in Michigan. The Loon is his most well-known course, but I’ve played his other U.P. design, Indian Lake, & enjoyed that one also. Wild Bluff was fairly tame for the name, but overall a solid course to play. I felt like the best holes came late with the dramatically steep par 3 15th & nearly as steep par 4 18th. Some holes get pretty tight, but there’s little water on the course so width is the main defense. There were tons of wildflowers to hit over which were aesthetically pleasing, but the golf holes themselves were fairly mundane. The 1st hole makes you either lay back or hit a massive cut right from the start, but it’s fairly short. I thought the par 3’s were the strongest part of the course, nice shorter yardages for a casino/resort course to help keep things moving. The course is located just off the most Eastern part of Lake Superior so it would be nice to have some holes along the water, but the best you get is a peak on 9 and the view on 18. Someday I’ll go play Crimson Ridge in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario & stop in again, but I can’t say I’ll be in a rush. 5
Thanks again for taking the time to read, it’s much appreciated! I have many of these on deck & am looking forward to pumping more of them out.
Play fast & don’t be a dick!