Southeast Michigan

[Sean_A]

golf.  Friends of mine keep raving about two fairly recent openings.  Both courses are very affordable, these guys don't play upscale golf though they are all good players.

The first is Calderone Farms in Grass Lake about 20 minutes west of Ann Arbor.  Bill Newcomb is given the credit and it is meant to be a faux links for the most part.  The description sounds horrible, but my mates love it.  

The second is The Grande in Jackson.  Ray Hearn is given credit for the design.

Has anybody played these courses?  What are your impresssions?  I think I will be back in Michigan in October and may have time to make a short jaunt out this way.  

Ciao

Sean

[Peter Pratt]

Sean,

I haven't played Calderone Farms, but I have played the Grande, which was designed by Ray Hearn. The Grande is a solid second-tier public course with some very good holes. For some reason, however, Hearn is enamored of mid-fairway-landing-area bunkers on the front nine, a design feature that works once or twice, but not 4-5 times. Hearn is an up-and-coming regional architect. My favorite of his is the GC at Yarrow, north of Kalamazoo. Better yet, hop on I-94 and drive less than an hour west from Jackson and then go 8 miles south to Vicksburg and Angel's Crossing.  See a recent thread for the skinny on that course.

[Jfaspen]

I'm not trying to hijack your thread.. but I had a grand idea to start up a "Michigan Golf Course" thread that worked like the donald ross in detroit thread.
Basically, a thread for us to put courses we've played in the area with some brief notes about it.

I played Coyote Preserve yesterday.  Palmer design in Fenton, MI.  Overall I liked the course, but wasn't blown away by it.  Some interesting par 5's that were reachable for the good player but still required strategy.  
Favorite hole had to be #2.. A short uphill par 4.. Although at 320 it is tough to reach, there is a bunker center of the fairway which demands strategy off the tee..  
Our round was comped, but for $50, it was a decent test of golf (although I was annoyed at the overusage of rocks on edges of greens (see bayhill)).

jeff

[Chris_Blakely]

Sean,

I have played both The Grande GC in Jackson and Calderone Farms GC in Grass Lake.

I ended up enjoying Calderone Farms more than the Grande.  The Grande is part of a housing development and when I played last May, they had just started doing the sub-grade on the streets for the subdivision.  The Grande is on a good piece of property and has some good risk reward holes involving wetlands and or fairway bunkering.  The front 9 does have 3 or 4 center fairway bunkers.  Some of the routing of the holes on both nines was awkward due to the housing that will eventualy be crammed in.

Calderone Farms GC was intended to be only golf when originally built (not sure if that is still the case due to original owners selling course) and of the Bill Newcomb courses that I have played is the one I enjoyed the most.  He used deeper grassed faced bunkers on a lot of the holes that are almost Raynor-esq at times.  Some of the bunkering in too geometric at times; however, I enjoyed the routing (only the 10th being bad due to the Deer Museum - you will see if you play it) used the hilly terrain very well and created some intersting driving holes from the tee.

I would recommend Calderone Farms over the Grande; however, both courses would be enjoyable.

Chris