Michigan Golf Trip Advice

[Roger Wolfe]

Roger,

How many days / rounds will you try and play?

from above...

"Fly in Wed AM, play 18 Wed, 36 Thu, 36 Fri, 36 Sat, fly home Sunday AM."

What is better... Forest Dunes or Bay Harbor?

[George Freeman]

What is better... Forest Dunes or Bay Harbor?

Views are better at Bay Harbor and it probably has more dramatic holes in general, but IMO Forest Dunes is a better course.  Both courses should have pretty good pictorials on their websites.  If you do play BH, definitely go with the Links/Quarry nines.

[Ronald Montesano]

Roger,
I want you to know that Ed is incorrect.  Arcadia Bluffs is not for non-archie junkies.  It has many excellent holes and, like all lakeside courses, is susceptible to winds and hubris-laden golfers who play the wrong tees.  It is Irish to the core in its use of hollows and dells.

We played Arcadia, Crystal Mountain, Tullymore, Bay Harbor, Boyne Ross, Boyne Hills, Cedar River Palmer, Cedar River Weiskopf, Treetops Threetops and Treetops Fazio in 2006.  I would put Bay Harbor, Tullymore and Arcadia on your list, with Treetops Fazio on the perimeter.  The rest can be skipped.  They are quality courses, but I made that list before I got hooked on GCA.  I would put Kingsley and Crystal as dream courses and certainly try to hit two Doak courses along the way.

[Niall Hay]

What is better... Forest Dunes or Bay Harbor?

Forest Dunes is a better course. 

Forest Dunes is awesome. We knew that Crystal and Kingsley would be good, Forest Dunes shocked us with how good it was.

[Ben Kodadek]

Jason.

As for Treetops, of the three (not counting the newer Smith) I would play the Smith twice.  I felt that the Fazio and the Trent-Jones were blah.  I believe 7 of the 8 par three's have huge dropoffs.  Fun the first time you see a 7 iron go 190, but then really boring.  There are a few good holes on both, but there is so much golf up there, it seems a shame to waste 4 hours on either one.

I preferred the Smith because of the variety of holes.  3 (?) is a really great hole.  Unfortunately, 18 is probably the weakest finishing hole of the lot.  

As mentioned earlier, ThreeTops is a blast.

[Chuck Brown]

Fly into Traverse City.  Call the GM at Kingsley Club, they were very accommodating when I did in 2007, I doubt it's changed.  Everything is about 45 minutes away but Traverse City has nice restaurants for night time.  The group I went with had a great time.  We played Arcadian Bluffs, Kingsley 2x, Forest Dunes, and were fortunate enough to play once at Crystal Downs, which immediately entered my Top 10 lifetime list.  Forest Dunes is the sleeper of that group, Arcadian the over-rated IMHO.

I agree with that general plan, and choice of golf courses.  For less driving, include Belvedere and Antrim Dells, and omit Forest Dunes.  I agree with the notion, however, that Forest Dunes is one of the best courses on the short list.
btw it is "Arcadia Bluffs," not Arcadian, and I think that it is one of the handful of the most fun courses in Michigan.  It is far superior to anything at Rick Smith's Treetops resort, and it is in a class with Pete Dye's Whistling Straits in terms of that kind of dramatic new design on Lake Michigan bluff land.  It isn't Crystal Downs, but there aren't many Crystal Downs.  Arcadia Bluffs is doing everything that a high-end daily fee golf course should.  We here at GCA sometimes look askance at the mere mention of anything that begins, "high-end daily fee..."  I don't know of a place in America that is doing it any better than Arcadia Bluffs.

[Ben Kodadek]

Chuck,

Agree with your  Arcadia Bluffs take entirely.  I think the whole program there is top notch.  Indeed, it may be expensive, but a very unique experience in that part of the country.  However, if you book one of the twilight times, you can play 18 with two hours to spare for a bettter part of the summer.

[Brian_Sleeman]

Another plus for a twilight time at Arcadia is the dining...dinner and drinks as the sun sets before you on Lake Michigan is quite cool.

[Bill_McBride]

What is better... Forest Dunes or Bay Harbor?

Forest Dunes is a better course. 

Forest Dunes is awesome. We knew that Crystal and Kingsley would be good, Forest Dunes shocked us with how good it was.

The holes in the dunes get all the press at Forest Dunes, but I really loved the heathery type holes in the middle of the back nine.  A couple reminded me of golf at UK heathland courses with the carries over the local version.

[Matthew Rose]

Treetops is a happy place for me... I made my first hole in one there. It was #8 on the original Smith course. I guess for sentimental reasons that that would be my favorite one of the four there. I actually saw Rick later the same day and got him to autograph the card; pretty cool!

I think I liked the Fazio the least out of the lot. The Jones was fun. The par-3 course is also great fun.

[Jason McNamara]

I am going to circle back in here, because it's interesting that there's relatively little consensus here on Treetops.  Limited sample size, of course.  But typically there's a pecking order and I am not seeing one here as yet.


ps.  Hope this is not too much of a thread-jack, but the original topic seems to have been fully discussed (with rather more consensus, I might add).

[Wyatt Halliday]

What differentiates Tullymore from Jim's other designs?

[Andy Troeger]

What differentiates Tullymore from Jim's other designs?

For one thing--its pretty flat! Compared to most of the others in Colorado that creates some different challenges. Its more walkable than most of those others, although I think there are still a couple long walks between holes (#1-2, perhaps a couple more). Like some of Jim's other designs, there's a lot of risk/reward "go for it" type of situations. The course has more water than most of his western designs due to the nature of the terrain, and uses some tall trees to create some interesting dilemmas (which side do you take?).

[Joe Hancock]

I don't care for the par 5's at Tullymore for the fact that they ask you to negotiate trees, water and sand coming in to the greens. I think it was every par 5 that was guarded in that manner. For me it took away any sense of going for them in two because there was too much going on to bother with it.

Joe

[Wyatt Halliday]

Joe and Andy,

Thank you for the reply. It's just the type of insight I was looking for.

Wyatt

[Andy Troeger]

I will disagree with Joe regarding the par fives, at least in a couple instances. One of the things I like about Tullymore is that there seems to be actual reward for the risk, if that makes sense. The 8th and 18th at Tullymore, especially, do offer a chance to be brave and get home in two, but as Joe mentions there are plenty of obstacles. I think the trees are more mental hazards than physical unless one gets rather unlucky.

The 16th is too long, the 1st is pretty narrow, and the 13th doesn't fit my eye off the tee, so in those cases I pretty well consider them three-shotters.

[Steve Lang]

   Overheard from around the 3rd green while 75 yards away on the 18th fairway at The Black Forest:

"MAN, I'M GETTING SEA SICK JUST LOOKING AT THE GREEN!"

had to laugh..  with all the wet and cool weather BF is one tough test these days.. if it warms up abd drys out a little bit in August its gonna be in superb shape this fall!