Ryan Taylor and I played our match on Wednesday at Battle Creek CC. We had an absolutely perfect day for golf and I managed to squeak out the win.
BCCC has gotten quite a bit of love on this site for several years - I would assume primarily due to Tom D.'s Golf Mag article and his subsequent posts here, not to mention work by Bruce Hepner to restore/renovate the course. It didn't disappoint. To my untrained eye, it seemed like a master class in making a course's greens the central point of interest. That's not to say the holes aren't interesting because many are. The land has gentle rolling small hills with some cool ridges, but also has some pretty flat sections. However, the land isn't dissimilar from hundreds of other courses in the Midwest. But the greens are very dissimilar to many other course's. There are a few greens that seem to stand out with massive false fronts (#3 & #18 the most obvious examples) and while they're very visually stimulating, it was the consistency of the less "dramatic" greens that impressed most. The greens are very large and contain all sorts of subtle humps, hollows, spines, etc. Some of these features are not overly dramatic (someone not paying attention may miss them all together), but they make putting, chipping and approaching really fun and interesting. If felt like almost every hole Ryan and I were looking at each other saying "wow that is a really cool green."
I am certain not everyone has the skill to shape greens like Willie Park, but playing a course like BCCC is almost depressing because it makes you think back to all the courses you've played on similar pieces of property that, in comparison to BCCC, seem like missed opportunities to make fun, engaging golf.
BCCC is well worth a trip to see and seems like a great, down to earth local club. Don't pass up a chance to check it out.