Source:  Photograph by Randy Schaetzl, Professor of Geography - Michigan State University

    The most prominent topographical feature in Michigan is not rolling sand dunes, as it is on the great courses of Great Britain. It’s trees. Towering, majestic trees, which frame and dwarf and---in the case of some of the region’s lesser courses--sometimes impede play. These trees have a heft and stolidity about them, a big-shoulderedness that suggests the constitution of a lumberjack. Or a pioneer. Or whatever other iconic American archetype stirs your imagination. Golf in these parts is rugged. Despite the closely mown grass and the pretty flower plantings, you never forget you are in the midst of Nature. From May to September, the area teems with golfers; the rest of the time the courses are basically covered in snow. Thus, there really isn’t a "low" season in northern Michigan. Either you can play or you can’t.

Source:  Photograph by Randy Schaetzl, Professor of Geography - Michigan State University

However, before we conclude that all of Michigan's golf courses are cut through dense forest, be aware that our state offers many great "links" courses.  These type of courses are mirrored after the Scottish courses--windswept, with long heather grass and some dunes.  Since we have all of those, links courses are becoming popular here (see below).

Source:  Photograph by Randy Schaetzl, Professor of Geography - Michigan State University

And when you can play golf in northern Michigan, you feel healthy. The air is not parched, as in the desert. It is not humid or salty, as the seaside. It is not suffused with elitism, as at a stuffy country club. Playing golf in northern Michigan is the athletic equivalent of taking the medicinal waters at a purifying spa.
    Of course, serious golfers---the kind who stow top-100 golf course checklists inside their passport---know about the tantalizing courses in northern Michigan, especially Bay Harbor, Treetops, Arcadia Bluffs, and the older Boyne Highlands; they’ve played these courses or plan to, soon. But golfers who still associate this part of America with hockey and various forms of wurst should also put northern Michigan high on their list of must-plays.

Source:  Photograph by Randy Schaetzl, Professor of Geography - Michigan State University

Just how did this part of America, an area that most people consider synonymous with ice fishing, come to be a bona fide Golf Destination? It started when the area’s bustling ski resorts, figuring they could do something with their "low lands" during the summer other than grow hay, decided to open golf courses. This brilliant and noble idea was originally hatched in the 1950s, but the big boom in northern Michigan golf didn’t occur until about 30 years later, when the Grand Traverse Resort, in Traverse City, opened a 7,065-yard, 146-slope-rated penal colony called The Bear. Its architect, as you have probably deduced, was a fellow named Jack Nicklaus. And though the Bear, which opened in 1985, is now almost universally regarded as a cruel prank, one of Jack’s early-period torture chambers, the course heralded the arrival of big-name course designers to northern Michigan. Fazio, Palmer, Hills, Weiskopf, Player---all have subsequently left their mark on the region�s landscape.

Source: Michigan State University, Department of Geography

Be careful!  This map shows the number of COURSES, not the number of golf HOLES.   Many courses in the golf mecca of northern lower Michigan have 36 to 72 holes per course, while many courses in the "outlying" areas are 9-hole courses.  You see, maps can lie!

    The problem confronting developers now is not how to get golfers to come to the neighborhood, but how to not turn northern Michigan into a sticky, pre-fabricated theme park. Those of us who like this part of the world would like it to remain just as it is: homey, easy, unspoiled.

TOP STATES RANKED BY NUMBER OF PUBLIC GOLF COURSES, as of 1992

The natural place to begin a journey through northern Michigan---and it is a journey; the courses are arrayed in little clusters, with each cluster roughly 30 minutes to an hour from the next---is in Traverse city. Play Gary Player’s Wolverine course, another of the designer’s highly professional attempts at parkland prettiness. Play The Bear. And then head out of town to Bellaire, a village so perfectly quaint you would swear some clever set designer plunked it down in the middle of the Great North Woods solely for its visual appeal. Bellaire has Shanty Creek Golf Course, a ski resort/golf complex with 72 holes set on terrain that is hilly enough to provide fun elevation changes but not so hilly as to require a chairlift. Until recently, the pride of Shanty’s golf courses was The Legend, a sprawling Arnold Palmer track featuring big greens and wide fairways that make even the most hopeless duffer feel like a king. But the jewel in Shanty’s crown is Tom Weiskopf’s Cedar River Golf Club. Like all of Weiskopf’s work, Cedar River is pretty, sensible and, above all, interesting, with the designer’s typical mix of strategically vexing par 5s, visually intimidating par 3s and at least one drivable par 4. Forget about a links feel. This is pure North Woods golf. The forest through which the course meanders is so thick you’d think that even the animals have a hard time getting around. For now, before the inevitable multimillion-dollar homes blight the landscape, Cedar River seems destined to be emblematic of all that is pleasing about northern Michigan golf.
    In addition to its movie-set good looks and 72 holes Bellaire is very close to a body of water called Torch Lake. Proximity to a lake in these parts is not unusual; lakes here are as plentiful as corn fields in Iowa. What’s noteworthy about being near Torch Lake is the Torch Lake was once rated the most beautiful lake in America by National Geographic. (How exactly such a ranking is bestowed remains a dense mystery the proud locals aren’t overly concerned with solving.) So-o-o, after a morning spent digging up the sod at Shanty Creek, an afternoon spent contemplating America’s most beautiful lake is a lovely thing to do.

Thanks to Lori Wisniewski for the golf course map.

This material has been compiled for educational use only, and may not be reproduced without permission.  One copy may be printed for personal use.  Please contact Randall Schaetzl (soils@msu.edu) for more information or permissions.