Although it has been the premier public course in the midwest for the last 20 years, I’d never really had a burning desire to play the Straits Course at Whistling Straits. The main reason was that it was incredibly expensive. But I also got to see it plenty of times on TV and between that and playing Arcadia Bluffs—Michigan’s equivalent—several times over the years, I almost felt like I had already seen it. These are some of the same reasons why Pebble Beach isn’t too high on my list.

But one thing that I’ve come to believe, maybe as a result of now being an independent adult and having the money to do it, is that for something you really want, or maybe even just something that you feel that you should do for completion’s sake, you should spend the money. I’ve become much happier to spend a good amount of money to play a course that I really want to play because it creates a lot of memories. I’m good about remembering details of courses, plus I take comprehensive pictures. So I get a lot that’s lasting out of it. And if you think about it, $350 for a round of golf is only ~$80 and hour, the price of a golf lesson. I’ll remember much more of this.

And actually, Whistling Straits was something of a deal in $/hr…because it took 5 1/2 hours to play. Our group was something of a small army on the first tee; four players, two wives, and two caddies. It was only my second time taking a caddie and…my second time learning why I never take a caddie. They double bag here and if the guy playing from the other bag is terrible, you’re gonna feel by the end of the round that the caddie should tip you for all the running back-and-forth that you’ll have to do. And for some reason, despite the fact that they’re shooting 125, people seem to treat every shot here like they’re a pro, trying to get distances to every one of the 1000+ bunkers, reading each putt from 7 angles. There was no one in front of us, we had six hours of sunlight, yet we barely made it. It was excruciating.

But back to the course itself. As mentioned, I felt pretty familiar with it having seen it so many times on TV. But there were a few surprises, some good, some bad. The first concern I had was that all of them being next to the water, the par 3s would feel too similar. That wasn’t an issue because they vary in elevation change and distance. The other was that the figure-8 routing would create paired holes that felt too similar to each other. Also not really an issue. 8/13 have a somewhat similar feel but 8 is much longer, so they didn’t feel too similar. Actually the par 5s 2/16 felt the most similar, but they aren’t in the same place in the routing.

The one thing that’s really an issue here is how narrow the fairways have become. They narrowed them for the PGA many years ago and I’m pretty sure they’re not extending them back. Some of the corridors of the holes along the coast also felt a bit too narrow and left me feeling that these holes might be impossible in a good wind. Finally, there’s one truly awful hole, no. 5, and a few greens that are completely overdone.

I mentioned that part of the reason that I didn’t have a burning desire to play here was that I had played Michigan’s equivalent, Arcadia Bluffs several times. How do they stack up? Actually, Arcadia Bluffs stacks up pretty well. It’s far less walkable, which is a real weakness, and it doesn’t have as many really good holes. But there’s more variety in the shaping of the holes at Arcadia Bluffs. I also preferred the greens there, which are heavily contoured but aren’t in so many awkward shapes. Arcadia only has a few cliffside holes but many of the inland holes are quite good. It’s a clear win for Whistling Straits, but the difference between them is not as big as the lists suggest…and closer to what I suspected.


Although it was some three weeks after the Ryder Cup, a lot of the stands were still up, including the one walking to the first tee. Walking through that was pretty cool.

The opening tees were up about 40 yards making this a short par 4 of ~360. Bryson may be able to drive the green but the rest of us should be focused on the bunker complex that narrows the fairway on the right at about 230. I went with driver in my first round and skirted the edge, leaving a wedge down the angle of the green. In my second round, I laid back and had an 8-iron. Unless you can get past the bunker, the green is very shallow, too shallow even for an 8-iron. I’d need a few more rounds to say for sure, but I think it’s best to take on the risk from the tee here.

The second is a par 5 of about 520 from the regular back tees. This was one of several holes where the fairway felt a bit awkwardly narrow. You need to carry about 260 here to clear the narrow area, which has bunkers and bushes on both sides.

The fairway jogs right in the layup area about 100 yards short of the green and you’ll need to decide whether you’re laying up, which leaves a partially obstructed view into the green or going for the sliver of fairway short of the green. If going for the green, there’s a nasty bunker about 20 yards short that you’ll have to avoid. The green is a beauty, both in view and contours.

Three is the course’s medium-length par 3 and it’s a good one. It plays a good one club down hill although you need to make sure that you carry it into the green because there’s a false front.

The long par 4 fourth also seemed awkwardly narrow, especially from the tee because you can’t see much of the fairway. Aim just inside the bunkers on the hill on the right, which are ~250 out. Long hitters need to aim a bit further left and the rest of us will ideally hit a draw because if you can get it past this, the fairway runs down hill to the left, cutting about 30 yards off the approach. The approach is a great one, with plenty of room to run the ball in from the right and a good chance of a favorable kick. Great hole.

The fifth is not a great hole. In fact, it’s one of the worst holes that I’ve ever played. I’m sure that everyone now tries to carry the pond like Bryson did. You can’t do it and shouldn’t try.

But you do need a long ball and should try to hug the pond because unless you get to the end of the fairway, the landing area for the second is completely blind. This second shot is probably one of the ten or so worst shots I’ve seen on a golf course. The fairway angles to the right and the whole thing is carry over bunkers, but it’s hard to tell how far you need to hit it and where the fairway on the right ends. The pond angles in on the left, but it’s hard to tell where that is too. I was amazed to see pros laying up into the water during the Ryder Cup but having played the hole now, I’m not surprised.

To me, a simple fix would be to remove the mounds around the bunkering on the right so that you could see the fairway. It would still be an awkward hole that stylistically has no place on this course, but it wouldn’t be such a disaster. Apparently they’re going to completely redo it though, which is probably even better.


The ~360 yard par 4 sixth also created a lot of drama in the Ryder Cup, with many pros trying to drive the green. But this was another hole that I didn’t like. The main problem is the hourglass-shaped green. If the pin is on the right, it’s simply too small for anyone but the pros to hit with anything more than a sand wedge. There’s no bailout area where you can be pretty sure that you won’t go back-and-forth across the green. And unless you drive it 250+ or way left (in the rough), you can’t really see this part of the green. So it’s a short par 4 that demands a long drive and has nowhere to play safe if you don’t pull that off.

I think that I would like the hole much more with the pin on the left (both times I played it was on the right), which makes it much easier. But I don’t see the problem with that as we just played two very hard holes and have several more to come.

Down on the water’s edge, the par 3 seventh requires a much longer iron and looks intimidating, but I found it much easier. There’s fairway short and left but the big help here is that you can hit a pretty good pull and the ball will still kick off the mounds onto the green.

Eight is a stunning long par 4. If you hit the ball in the 260 range like I do, it’s actually best to got to the 450 yard standard back tees (~7,100 yards) because you can run out of fairway on the right from the 415 yard green tees (~6,450 yards). There is room to the left if you carry some of the bunkers up the left side of the fairway. The green is large and there’s room to run it on, but you’ll need to be pretty accurate.

Playing into a funnel-shaped fairway, the par 4 ninth is one of the least-intimidating driving holes. But the approach makes up for it. Like six when the pin is on the right, you need a long drive here because the green is small.

Ten is another shortish par 4 where they moved the tees up in the Ryder Cup to make it drivable. It’s a tough hole from the standard back tees unless you can make the 240 carry to the ridge in the fairway. If you can, the fairway is quite wide. Like one, the green is narrow but deep.

Eleven is an excellent par 5, but a bit awkward. This is another hole where the drive is easier from the standard back tees if you hit it in the 250-260 range because that’s where the fairway narrows from the green tees.

The approach is very interesting. You’d have to be able to carry about 520 yards in two shots to go for the green but there are still a few choices with the layup. The fairway dips but then rises again about 100 yards from the green. Like on two, you’ll have to decide if you want to try to carry it up there to have a good view of the green, or have a partial view and longer shot from the valley. The green slopes pretty good from left-to-right so unless the pin is back-right, it’s best to layup up the right side.

Twelve is the short par 3 and for us it was very short—~100 yards. The main part of the green is large and undulating and you’ll need to be pretty close to the pin to avoid having a difficult putt.

But then there’s also that little ‘tongue’ in the back-right. When they put the pin there, even the pros were hitting it in the bushes. You also can’t putt to that section from the rest of the green. So it’s an awful hole if the pin is there. Otherwise it’s a good one, especially if they put the pin in the back-right of the main portion of the green, behind the bunker. That’s a proper (i.e. not absurd) tough pin.

Thirteen is a shorter and easier version of eight. It’s one of the few fairways that actually looks inviting from the tee. And the downhill second, to a green which looks like it’s floating on the lake, is one of the best-looking shots that I’ve ever seen. Just an incredible work of landscape architecture, especially when you consider that it was a flat, featureless site.

Fourteen is another short par 4 that gets almost no attention. But it’s a good hole. There’s a trade-off here; the further you go, the more likely you are to have a view of the green. But the green also angles front-left to back-right, so the angle becomes a bit more awkward. I think that trade-off is worth making.

Or you can do like I did and drive it in the left fairway bunker.

Fifteen is another excellent long par 4 but again, you run out of room on the left if you’re playing the green tees. But there’s another option: carry ~240 over the right fairway bunker. The hole works best if you’re playing it from a yardage where this carry is possible, but only if you hit a really good drive. This hole was just killing the pros in the Ryder Cup because it was into the wind and they couldn’t make this carry. So they were all missing way left into the stands.

The drive on sixteen is like that on number four, but less intimidating; it’s one of the widest fairways on the course. But the approach is a more intimidating version of that on number two because you can’t see the layup fairway very well. Still, there’s plenty of room up there and it’s very playable.

On a course with many contenders, seventeen is probably the signature hole. Even the non-playing wives in our group wanted in on the actions, putting down their phones for a few minutes and taking a shot and the green.

Even setting the views aside, it’s a great hole. There’s obviously a high intimidating factor with the wall on the left side of the green, Lake Michigan beyond, and the volcano bunker cutting into the green on the other side. But there’s more effective room to play to than you can see; if you can carry the bunker, the ball will kick left into the middle of the green. Hell, even if you miss the bunker right the ball will probably kick back onto the green.

Eighteen has always been a contentious hole because of its huge, goofy green. The green has gotten less goofy over the years. It used to be cross-shaped but they removed the lobe at the top of the cross so now it’s just T-shaped with the base of the T at the front-right.

But the drive is also contentious here. The fairway runs out at about 300 yards from the standard back tees although both days we were up a block and it was only about 265 to the end of the fairway. The problem with this is that the closest that you can realistically get to the green is about 180 yards. Now the right side of the green is reasonably receptive to a shot of such length and there is bailout room short left. You could also try to hit a draw to get your drive to catch the downslope in the left side of the fairway, which would cut off about 20 yards.

Overall, I liked the hole more than I thought I would. In principle, I dislike long par 4s that force you to have a long approach but it’s possible—if not likely—to shorten the approach with a perfect drive and while exacting, there’s room to play safe on the approach. Maybe making a 50 ft. birdie putt in my first round softened my view…

I’m glad that I finally played the Straits Course. It’s an excellent golf course with several great holes. It’s also just a thrilling property to walk around with some of most stunning vistas probably in the entire world of golf. I joked to one of my playing partners’ wives that in just walking the course, they were getting all of the benefits without any of the drawbacks of having to play.

If you’re a serious golfer and trying to shoot a score, there are definitely some drawbacks. The fifth hole is awful and frustrating. So is the sixth if they put the pin on the right. But there’s a lot of flexibility in the course and I get the sense that they try to maintain balance in the setup. Both days that I played, the pin was right on six but on the fat left part of the green on twelve. Several of the tees were up although as I mentioned, that creates another problem in that you can run out of fairway on several holes.

So overall it’s an excellent course, clearly the best that I played in 2021. But I don’t like it so much more than its counterpart Arcadia Bluffs on the other coast of Lake Michigan. I feel that Arcadia has a bit more variety in its holes. The bunker schemes differ more from hole-to-hole. Some holes are wide, some narrow. The greens are big and undulating, but in differing ways. Pete Dye’s courses are always very strategic but the scheme with the angles—hug this waste bunker/pond for the better angle—is repetitive. And it’s not my favorite of Wisconsin’s superior collection of public courses—I’d have both Sand Valley and Lawsonia’s Links Course ahead of it.

I guess my issues boil down to this: the course feels a bit over-designed. And I don’t even mean that in the sense that there’s too much visual clutter with the bunkers and mounds. There is, but even setting that aside, there are too many odd green shapes that make sense in theory but don’t work unless you’re about a +1 or better. Fairways seem to narrow in the theoretically right spot on every hole (250 from the green tees, 100 yards from the green on a par 5). The logic on every hole is very clear in plan and I guess it would be nice if once in awhile, that weren’t the case. I feel a bit the same way about the much-lauded Arcadia Bluffs South Course--everything feels a bit too calculated. I guess that when everything is the result of the hand of man, it’s tough not to make everything seem like it’s the hand of man.

But I can’t deny that the hand of man created several great holes and some impressive works of landscape architecture here. It can’t be the easiest thing to get the shaping just right to make the green seem like it’s floating above Lake Michigan, like on the thirteenth hole. And seventeen is every bit the marvel that it seems on TV, plus a hole with interesting, if not obvious options to boot. All this drama made it a perfect course for the Ryder Cup and one that every serious golfer should go play.

Like many golfers, I was watching the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits and thinking to myself ‘this course looks amazing.’ But unlike many golfers, I’m from a state that borders Wisconsin, have played many of Wisconsin’s best courses, but have never played Whistling Straits. So I was also saying to myself, ‘why haven’t I played there yet?’ I knew that I’d have to be in Michigan (I live in DC) during the middle of October so the day after the Ryder Cup, I thought—being skeptical of success—that I’d give them a call and see if I could get some tee times. I called the day after and to my surprise (1) I was able to get through and (2) I was able to get some tee times. So I was off to play a course that I probably should have played several years ago.

But as I think most golfers know, there are two courses at Whistling Straits, the Ryder-Cup-hosting Straits Course which occupies all of the best land along the shoreline and the inland Irish Course. The plan here was clearly to have one standout course and one ‘other’ course, but the Irish has been shaped in much the same spirit as the Straits and lake views aside, there’s often a similar look and feel. Both courses are heavily shaped to give them (I guess; I haven’t been) an ‘Irish dunes’ feel although perhaps because it was built on a flat piece of farmland and all that dirt had to come from somewhere, there’s more water on the Irish course. It feels more like a standard Pete Dye course than the Straits.

Now that I’ve played somewhere around a dozen Pete Dye courses, I’m starting to realize that there was a spectrum in his design style as far as shaping from subdued, like Radrick Farms in Michigan or much of the Meadow Valleys next door at Blackwolf Run, to extreme. At this end we find courses like the Dye Course at the Barefoot Resort in Myrtle Beach and Whistling Straits. While all of his course generate a lot of strategy in the placement of hazards, courses in the latter category have a lot of shaping between the holes, creating this faux dunes look.

I definitely prefer the courses in the former category. While the Irish has a lot of good holes and I appreciate that they were trying to create a consistent style across the two Whistling Straits courses and different from the two courses at Blackwolf Run, but the Irish just feels overdone too me. There’s plenty of width out there (certainly more than on the Straits), but there’s also a lot of awkwardness, with it being unclear where to hit several shots. And there’s just a lot more created severity than necessary. I’ve never played a Pete Dye course that suffered from being too easy, but several that suffered from the opposite.

Now I had to play the Irish Course because I hadn’t played it and needed to check the box. But it was probably my least favorite of the four Kohler courses and save for a heavy discount, I probably wouldn’t play it again.


The first hole is a mid-length par 4 running gradually up a hill to a green that’s on a diagonal from front-right to back-left. Although it had been three weeks, there was still Ryder Cup infrastructure on the course and we were limited to the 275 yard forward tee, making this an interesting driveable par 4. I’d like the original version more as an opening hole, but this version works and I would imagine plays similarly for someone who drives the ball 160 yards as the full version does for the rest of us.

Two is a very Pete Dye short par 4 with water up the left side and a shallow green that angles from front-left to back-right. Dye is always good a generating strategy—lay up on the dangerous left side for the best angle—but when you play a lot of his courses, you realize that it’s usually the same idea, just with somewhat different features…but usually a pond.

Three is a another Dye water par 3 although I like the steep-faced bunker in front of the green. You find this kind of shaping on the Blackwolf Run courses and a lot of it over there reminds me of Langford.

Four is the standard S-shaped long par 4, going around a big bunker on the left with the drive, then one on the right with the approach. Interesting, but standard stuff for Dye. The one thing that I like about this hole is that the fairway really narrows in the driving zone, so the optimal drive is not just a matter of taking on the risk of skirting the bunker, but also staying within the narrowing margin on the right.

The par 5 fifth hole reminds me of the notorious fifth hole next door. This is not a good thing. We have a similar drive skirting a feature that cuts into the fairway on the right, but at least this time it’s a bunker, not a pond. You need to be fairly close to the bunker because if you’re not, it’s difficult to carry the junk that cuts off the fairway ~90-140 yards from the middle of the green. Again, there’s certainly strategy here although it’s a tough carry to a narrow landing area for most and if you can’t carry, the layup area narrows and is kind-of blind.

I like the look of the short par 3 sixth but I guess, running out of ideas, Dye just decided to surround this narrow green with sand. Still, a good short par 3.

Seven is also a good short par 4 where a drive up the right side short of the bunker (~240) will leave you a look down the angle of the green. This is one hole where the heavy shaping around the fairways bothered me because it didn’t blend well with the forest setting.

Apparently I forgot to get a picture of the drive on the par 5 eighth, but it’s fairly narrow and awkward, with waste bunkers up the right. We have another awkward carry to a narrow layup area here. This one shouldn’t be too difficult for good players if they’ve hit a decent drive but is killer for high handicaps because again, there isn’t a lot of room on either side.

The ~390 yard ninth is a bit better because while it’s an interesting hole in its own right, it’s also a bit different for this course because the shaping is much more subdued. A winding creek bisects a very wide double fairway. The right side shouldn’t be a difficult carry if you’re playing the correct tees but the carrying left side demands a good hit. While there’s ample fairway to the right, the further right you go, the worse your angle into the narrow green and the more likely it is that you’ll be blocked by trees. Not too hard a hole, but interesting.

The tenth hole is next to and reminds me of the tenth next door; an uphill short par 4 that bends slightly to the left. Like that green and many here, this one is narrow but deep.

I thought that the par 3 eleventh was the most aesthetically effective heavily-shaped hole on the course. It's the one hole where the fake dunes start to look realistic. The hole is very similar in principle to the seventh next door, with a hazard on the right (this time a bunker rather than Lake Michigan) and a hill left that you can use to kick your ball onto the green. This hole would fit in very well next door.

Twelve is a not-particularly-interesting mid-length par 4 notable to me for one thing: the bold shaping at the front-left of the green reminds me of something that you’d see on a Langford course.

The par 3 thirteenth is a mess. The hole is in the wetlands, yet Dye decided to build some of the biggest mounds on the property and a wild ~15,000 sq. ft. green that you can only see about half of from the tee. Apparently there’s also an upper set of tees from where the hole is downhill, yet blind. Definitely a ? hole.

We’re back to more normal golf on the par 5 fourteenth, where the shaping is much more subdued and looks good. It’s another Dye template on the approach, this time the carry-a-diagonal-creek-to-a-high-landing-area-on-the-left-and-a-left-to-right-angled-green template. There’s a very similar hole at Bulle Rock in Maryland but this one works a bit better because the land is flatter.

The long par 4 fifteenth is another Dye template, with diagonal junk up the right and a hill up the left. It’s a good driving hole and you’ll need a good one here to have a decent length approach into the deep, narrow green that angles from front-left to back-right. Listen to your forecaddie and aim a little left and take one club less because the back bunkers aren’t great (as I learned).

Sixteen is another tough, long par 4, this time not any Dye template that I’m aware of. The drive is uphill and a bit narrow between a bunker (and hidden pond) left and a hill of sheit on the right. The look into the green is nice, with minimal intrusive shaping. Again, the green is narrow and deep, but this time there’s ample room to run the ball in.

Seventeen is a Dye pond short par 4 that was especially tough into a ~15 mph. wind on this day. There’s some nice shaping on and in front of the green but otherwise, the hole is pretty tedious.

While we drive over a pond on the par 5 eighteenth, it shouldn’t be too difficult to carry from the correct set of tees. The bigger issue here is keeping your drive up the left so that you have a clearer view over another creek to the green.

The approach here might be the best-looking shot on the course. The green is built-up and has another Langford-looking edge on the left side. While again there’s a creek crossing in the layup area, there’s ample room on both sides. This hole reminded me more of Blackwolf Run than the rest of the Irish course and it was easily my favorite par 5.

Dye courses are difficult to rate because most seem to employ the same strategy-generating elements. Because of the similarity, I think that the order in which you see them matters for personal preference. Arguably it should also matter for how you rate them; originality is important and a piece of work in which you do something great for the first time deserves more acclaim than another in which you do that same thing for the 20th time.

If I had never played a Dye course before, I probably would have liked the Irish a lot more because it’s very interesting in its own right. But after 6 or 8 courses like this, you start to think ‘yeah, it’s an interesting design style and generates strategy, but couldn’t you do something a bit different once in awhile?’ I don’t often get the feel that I’m seeing something new on these courses and when I do, it’s in a bad way—like the godawful 5th hole next door on the Straits course. It makes me wonder if I’d be unimpressed by TPC Sawgrass because I would have seen a lot of it elsewhere—even though it was the first for many of those templates.

Still, the Irish is a good course. There are several good holes and I thought that there were a few times that the manufactured landscape looked quite good, like on the par 3 eleventh.

But I’ll also reiterate another criticism: the fake dunes shaping doesn’t work well with the forest setting that we encounter several times here. There’s an interesting trade-off between shaping in a consistent way across a course and shaping in a way that fits the setting that you have, which may differ across the course. Dye is much closer to the former here, but I would have preferred the latter. I don’t think that there’d be anything wrong with having holes with fake dunes like 1 and 11 (which are also next to the Straits, where this shaping looks better) when there wasn’t much to work with and then transitioning to the more Langford-style shaping of the River Course or even something more minimal when you have a nice forest setting like 7, 13-14. You get a bit of a different style on 9 and 18, but I would have liked to have seen more of this. There’s something to be said for internal consistency, but different styles can work if you’re careful about the flow between them (Park Jr./Colt blend brilliantly on Sunningdale’s Old Course).

One more point: being the clearly inferior course at Whistling Straits, you’d think that you’d want to use the Irish as a warm-up course. But it’s way too hard for that; I wouldn’t say that it’s much easier than the Straits, only maybe a little bit because the fairways are wider. I’d go the other way with the Irish—play the Straits in the morning and use the Irish as your beer-drinking, golf-ball-losing afternoon round.

Come to think of it, Kohler could really use an easier warm-up course. The first six holes on the Meadow Valleys are perfect for this, but the rest of the course isn’t. Like I said earlier, Pete Dye courses have never suffered for being too easy and it would have been nice if someone else had designed one of these courses. Kohler wants to build a fifth course in a forested state park just south of Sheboygan but while the plans are currently on hold, apparently Dye was slated to build that one too. But now that Dye is gone, hopefully if they build that course—which I’m not sure that they should; it’ll mean tearing up a lot of old forest that’s in short supply in southeastern Wisconsin—they’ll get someone else to do it.

15 years after my first visit in summer 2006, I was finally able to return to Belvedere on my way back from the upper peninsula. While this semi-private course had a reputation back then as a hidden gem, it’s become less hidden since then, appearing recently on many lists of Michigan’s best courses and even Golf Digest’s top 100 courses you can play. I was a big fan of Belvedere when I played it back then. I felt that the back nine had a few outstanding goals. Especially notable were the green complexes, several of which I felt were among the better ones that I’d seen.

But I’d also been hearing that it had gotten a lot better since then because the club had done a lot of work on the greens. So the course moved right up to the top of my list of ‘courses that I most need to see again in Michigan’ list.

While it’s fundamentally the same course that I saw in 2006, many of the fairway mowing lines around bunkers and greens had been expanded and most notably, many of the greens look to have been expanded. I couldn’t remember what all of these greens looked like before, but I’m almost certain that greens like eight and thirteen had been expanded because I don’t remember greens having what has become the most interesting feature at Belvedere: the mounds within the edges of several of the greens. Some of the greens, like the first, had short grass around them before but there was also a lot more of this than I can remember, although I couldn’t always tell you where.

So the verdict: it’s a very good course with one of the better sets of green complexes in the state. I agree with it’s recent placements at the low end of Golf Digest’s top 25 courses in the state and I’m fine with its placement near the bottom of the top 100 public courses list too, especially because there’s a lack of classic courses on that list.

But I’d also push back against those who’d put it in the state’s top 10 or very high on a list of top public courses. Much of the front nine is on uninteresting terrain and most of these holes lack tee-to-green interest. And although I really like the greens, I wouldn’t say that they’re one of the best sets that I’ve see because too much of the contouring is at the edges and doesn’t come into middle of the putting surfaces. The greens are large and most of the pinable areas are fairly flat.

Still, it’s a very good course and certainly one of the ones most worth visiting in northern Michigan. That’s in part because it’s so different from every other noteworthy public course in northern Michigan; classic in style, easily walkable, and without any severe/silly holes. It’s a perfect complement to an itinerary filled with places like Shanty Creek or Boyne Highlands.


One hole that I don’t think has changed much is the par 4 first: it’s still a beautiful downhill drive and an approach to a green with interesting run-offs on the left side and back. These were mowed as short grass in 2006 although there may not have been as much short grass coming into the green. It’s an excellent green complex and gets the course off to a fine start.

I think that most would agree that the weakness of Belvedere is the stretch of holes 2-5, excluding the long par 3 fourth. These play through flat, marshy terrain. But two and three are both still difficult par 4s because they’re fairly long (~430 apiece) and the greens are well-defended by bunkers. You also need to beware of marshy area right of the second fairway and the stream left of the third.

The long par 3 fourth is not a weakness however. On my last visit, I thought that this was the best hole on the front nine and one of the three or four best on the course. I’m not sure that I still hold either of those beliefs, but more because of other holes having gotten better or just being better than I realized.

As it should be, there’s ample room to run the ball onto the green here. The green edges are outstanding although these short grass areas were much soften than I would have liked. It had rained pretty good the night before but I think that there might be a bit too much bent grass in them and they might be a bit long to work well in any except the driest conditions.

I thought that the par 5 fifth was the least interesting hole on the course before and I think that I still agree with that (two is close). But it’s a pretty good driving hole, with a bunker on the right cutting into the fairway at about 250, penalizing those who hedge away from the out-of-bounds on the left.

I also remember not thinking much of the medium-length par 4 sixth but this is one hole where my assessment improved a bit on the second visit. It’s a more interesting driving hole than I remembered. There’s about a 200 yard carry over the right fairway bunker but this is also one of those cases where trees help make a shot interesting; you either need to carry the tree next to the bunker or fade one around it to get to the optimal spot in the fairway.

The approach is uphill to a very good large, heavily back-to-front sloping green.

I had remembered the long par 4 seventh one of the other best holes on the front nine but I think that I was a bit less impressed the second time around. The fairway is very wide and there are bunkers up the right but unless you drive it >300, they’re not reachable. And they’re a bit of a red herring anyway because you’ll have a better chance to see the green from the left side of the fairway.

All the short grass around the green is very nice and just what you should have on such a long par 4. I’m pretty sure that the fairway width was much smaller here before. Again the green is large although the contours are fairly modest.

The uphill short par 3 eighth has seen the most notable improvements. I remember this being a nice, but standard par 3 before, with a roundish green and trees behind. Now the green is massive with very interesting contours at its edges. It’s gone from being a nice par 3 to a very good one.

Although I’m not sure that there have been many changes, the short par 5 ninth is a better hole than I remembered because the drive, which I thought was good, is actually outstanding. It’s certainly the best driving hole on the course.

The obvious features here are the three bunkers in the corner of the dogleg right. It’s about 260 to carry all of them and if you do this, it’ll just be a mid-short iron to the green. But I didn’t realize last time how important another feature plays in this drive: the road on the left, which is out-of-bounds. While there’s ample room short of about 240, there’s only about 50 yards between the bunker that cuts into the fairway and the road. If you have distance but play away from the bunkers, it’d be easy to run out to the road, especially if conditions are firm.

The rest of the hole isn’t as interesting because the bunkering is generic and the green large and mostly flat, but this one of the best driving holes in the state and I think that that’s plenty enough.

While the front nine has its moments, the back nine is clearly stronger. The par 5 tenth is not a particularly demanding driving hole but if you’ve driven it far enough to get near the green, the second is. That’s because there are staggered bunkers leading into the green for about the last 100 yards. Again, the green is large and fairly modest.

Although the fairway on the ~400 yard eleventh is wide and the drive doesn’t look particularly interesting, it’s important to be up the left side to improve the visibility into what must be one of the best greens in the state. A big part of why I like the green so much is how well its contours blend in with their surroundings. The area around the green is some of the most rolling that we’ve encountered so far and the green appears to roll along with it, although I’m sure that there was some earth movement here.

The longer par 4 twelfth starts with an interesting, semi-blind drive. There are some visual cues here in the form of trees left and right. You can also tell that the land slopes off to the right of the fairway. This should clue you in that you want to keep your drive up the left.

The fairway on thirteen, another mid-length par 4, runs along the base of the hill that we played across on twelve. I remembered liking this hole before but I don’t remember the green as having been anything special. That has certainly changed—the green now has wild contours at its edges, which must have been obscured by rough before. This must be one of the best examples of the improvements that the club has made throughout the course.

I remember the green on the par 3 fourteenth as being in poor condition as the surrounding trees weren’t allowing it enough sun. But the trees have been cut back and the large green was in excellent condition this time.

Although long hitters would tear it up, the short par 5 fifteenth is a good hole for the rest of us. The primary feature here is the bunker on the right although even from the back tees, it’s only about a 220 carry. The fairway drops right down a steep hill past this and if it weren’t for the overhanging trees on the right, long hitters would easily be able to reach the lower level of the fairway.

I wasn’t a fan of this hole before and I’m still not. Some of the trees on the right should go, but that would also enable long hitters to cut the corner too easily. I think that the best approach would be to remove some of the trees and then build a tee 50 or 60 yards back. There’s plenty of room behind the fourteenth green and they’ve cleared a lot of trees there which makes me think that they’re thinking of doing this.

But I and everyone else are big fans of the sixteenth, which is a great short par 4. It’s the most rolling hole on the course and features a deep green benched into the side of a hill at a diagonal with a steep run-off on the right.

While the great green seemed the same as before, I don’t remember this being such an interesting hole off the tee. The staggered bunkers make for a very interesting drive and for the best angle in, you want to be close to the one on the left, which starts at about 240 from the tips. It’s a good green to try and drive if you’ve got the distance because misses right leave manageable seconds. Just don’t miss left.

The green complex has some of my favorite shaping anywhere. Like eleven, the rolls at the edges blend so nicely into their surroundings. It’s a bit severe if you miss right, but there’s still plenty of green surface to hit to, so it all works very well.

The par 3 seventeenth is the second of an excellent three-hole closing stretch. The green complex is a bit of a mirror image of the sixteenth, with the drop-off on the left. But it’s also quite large and there’s no reason to mess with the left side.

The fairway on the long par 4 eighteenth is generous, but there are bunkers up the right side to about 250 yards. It’s best to be on the right side of the fairway as the front-right of the green is open and it’s easiest to run the ball on the green on that side.

But while this is a good hole from tee-to-green, that part pales in comparison to the green, which is both the best on this course and one of the best that I’ve seen. Unlike most of the other interesting greens, the contours here are consistent through the green rather than just at the edges. That makes all pin placements interesting. I wish that a few more of the greens  here had contours like this throughout. Of course, I wish that all other courses did too ;-)

While Belvedere has long been considered a very nice classic course in Michigan, it’s only recently that it has come to be considered one of the best classic courses in Michigan. And I think justly so. The expansion of mowing lines on and around the greens and some of the fairway bunkers is excellent, creating many interesting shots around the greens and giving you the opportunity to use the slopes to feed your approach shots into them (or into the bunkers…). I think that the current presentation of the course is exemplary; if all Golden Age courses were presented like this, we’d have even more excellent ones than we already do.

I mentioned at the outset and in a few of my comments on the holes that the courses could be more of a test of driving and that the contours could be a bit more consistent throughout the greens. Really, there’s pretty good balance in the driving challenges. There are some holes with stern fairway bunkering and the holes with less trouble off the tee (2,3,7) are some of the longer par 4s. It’s certainly not one of the tougher tests of driving that I’ve seen but on reflection, I think that it’s challenging enough. That’s one of the things that I get out of writing these reviews; in going through all the pictures and looking at the pictures/thinking about the holes, my thoughts become more well-considered.

I stand by my comment that while the contour at the edges of the greens is excellent, it’s a bit of a disappointment that this outstanding contouring doesn't extend through the greens. This is especially an issue because the greens are quite large. You can have (and I did have) a lot of long, straight putts and that’s something that keeps the course from that next level. Still the greens are very good and occasionally (11,18) outstanding.

But in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor reservation and only has bearing on whether I think this is a great course, not whether it’s a very good one. It’s certainly that. It’s certainly one of the best public courses in the state. It’s certainly on a list of the top half dozen courses that you should see in northern Michigan.

And I feel especially strongly about the last point because it complements the others that you’ll see so well. Most of the other courses, including the best ones (save for maybe Crystal Downs) have a lot of severity, with wild terrain, very deep bunkers, severe drop-offs around greens, etc. This course has none of those. Plus it’s walkable. So even if you might not think it’s the best course on a trip that includes Arcadia Bluffs, Kingsley, etc., it’s an excellent complement. But also clearly worth seeing in its own right and worth a stop if you’re anywhere near Charlevoix.

Indianwood’s Old Course has been the site of many big championships, including a pair of US Women’s Opens and a US Senior Open. For many years, it was one of the most highly regarded courses in the state, both due to its championship pedigree and what is, for Michigan, a very unusual but outstanding piece of land: mostly treeless and hilly, with long grass between the holes, giving a look a bit like Shinnacock Hills or maybe Prairie Dunes. I don’t know if this was the case before the 80s marketing strategy of treeless courses as ‘links-like,’ but the club has also given itself a bit of a Scottish branding, with a bagpiper as a logo.

But the course has kind of fallen off the radar of top Michigan golf courses in the last 20 years, perhaps ignored as the hype has built around top new public courses like The Loop and Arcadia Bluffs South and the renovation of older courses like Franklin Hills and Meadowbrook. The most recent Senior Open was only in 2012, but I haven’t heard anything about this course being under consideration for further large tournaments.

And after seeing the first few holes, it’s easy to see to see some of the reason why this course hasn’t drawn the attention that it once did: the current presentation is very much in line with the ‘old’ school of thought on how to present a course for championships. The fairways have been narrowed to well inside their original margins between the bunkers. The greens have also shrunk. Like the clubhouse, the course is looking a bit weary for age and could use some of the freshening that so many classic courses—including many in the Detroit area—have received in recent years.

But even considering the suboptimal presentation, this is an excellent course. It must still be one of the top 15 courses in the state. Although aesthetically they have very little in common, it reminded me a lot of RTJ Sr.’s The Dunes in Myrtle Beach in that it’s just a consistently demanding test of golf. You must drive the ball straight because there are often bunkers on both sides of the fairway and you must hit high, relatively soft iron shots. This is a serious ball strikers course, to which the course rating of 74.6 from the <6,900 yard tips on a par of 70 (!) attests. Except the somewhat awkward ninth drive and the kind-of silly ~20,000 sq. ft. last green, the holes are very sound, if not often spectacular. I’ve come to appreciate courses like this more over the years, even if they don’t require a great deal of strategy. Plus, the Old Course is on one of the prettiest and most interesting pieces of land in the state.

So I think that the Old is still a real winner and deserves some of its attention back. While the greens are not among the more interesting sets that you’ll see, it has one of my favorite sets of bunkers ever, at least from a shaping perspective. There are a few too many of them, but the relatively flat-bottomed pits and their steep slopes are some of the best looking bunkers that I’ve seen. I think that they’re almost the perfect-looking set of bunkers for the site.


The first is one of only two par 5s on the Old Course and it sets the tone right away: a drive out into a field, but still narrow because of bunkers left and right. Like most holes here, you just need to hit the ball straight. The fairway drops into a valley about 100 yards short of the green and you’ll have a largely blind shot if you hit it there. Unless you can go for the green, it’s probably best to lay back.

The second is a very difficult ~390 yard par 4 with bunkers pinching the fairway at about 230. It’s not a bad idea to lay up here but you have to be careful—I tried to lay up and my 2-hybrid still ran into the right fairway bunker. The hole widens past this bunker and it might be better just to try an carry past it…although you really don’t want to miss right.

The terrain on the approach and the way that the green sits simply on the ground are both beautiful. This is one of several holes where the mowing lines on and around the green could be expanded, but it’s still a very good hole as is.

Three is a ~180 yard par 3 over a valley with a three-tiered back-to-front sloping green that sits at about a 60 degree angle from the main tees. From the back tee however, left of the second green, you play right down the angle of the green. It’s a good hole either way, but I think that it’s a bit more interesting with the angle from the regular ~165 yard tees.

The long par 4 fourth has been the source of some grumbling as it falls over a beautiful piece of land but where the fairway has clearly shrunk from its original margins. The narrowed mowing lines around the landing area don’t bother me as much as the shrunken mowing lines on and around this green, which I’d say is the one thing on the course that’s under-performing most relative to its potential.

It’s very difficult to get far enough off the tee to be able to see anything but the top of the flagstick on the approach. So everyone is dealing with a blind approach shot, but the approach is perfectly designed for this, with a broad fairway leading into a generous, back-to-front sloping green. Unfortunately both the approach fairway and the green itself have shrunk. This would be an incredible looking hole if they widened these sets of mowing lines and would make it easier to play the run-up shot that most will need to play from such a long distance off a sidehill lie.

The fifth is the second of four excellent par 3s. It features two very deep bunkers at its front-left and right. We’ll see after a few more holes that this green is something of a template on this course; sort-of a thumbprint in the front-middle with a higher second-tier around the back. Almost all of the greens tend to funnel from the sides and back into the middle and this lack of variety is a drawback.

Six and seven are two flat, straight par 4s. Six is about 465 yards and very difficult. The green opens from the right and so you’re best to be on that side of the fairway. The seventh green opens from the left and so you’re best approach from that side. And if you hook it all the way over into the sixth fairway like I did, that also isn’t too bad.

Eight is a bit of a bland uphill drive but it’s a very difficult second shot thanks to the small hilltop green. It’s really crucial that you hit a solid iron shot here.

I had been warned by a few people that the dogleg right short par 4 ninth was weird. It is. You drive over a valley to a diagonal ridge that runs off to the right toward the green. The first issue is that you need to carry it at least 200 yards to reach the top of the ridge. But you also need to keep it short of 240 or you can run through the fairway down a steep hill. Longer hitters will be tempted to hit driver across the corner and I’m not sure that that’s a bad idea given the lack of landing area in the lay up zone.

The approach is downhill to an absurdly back-to-front sloping green. Don’t be long and bank one off the clubhouse…like I did.

Ten is a fairly simple short par 4 where you just layup short of a pond at about 250 and pitch on to another steep back-to-front sloping green. Not the most interesting hole, but the shows off nicely the excellent shaping of the bunkers and the green complex.

The par 4 eleventh offers another choice of angles off the tee: a semi-blind drive over a bunker to a fairway that turns right but slopes left from the 400 yard back tees or straight up the chute from the ~360 yard middle tees. It’s a better choice than the third because this time, the back tees have the more difficult angle. The approach is similar to several others, uphill to a plateau green fronted by deep bunkers.

From the back tees, the 490 yard twelfth might be the hardest par 4 that I’ve ever seen. It’s a bit absurd because at 250 there’s a series of bunkers on the right and a pond at the edge of the fairway left. It’s one of the most difficult driving holes that I’ve ever seen. Even if you hit the fairway, the approach is to a green that’s completely fronted by bunkers, so leaving almost no way to run the ball on. It’s best to just lay up off the tee and play this as a par 5.

The par 3s are highlights on the Old Course and the 215 yard thirteenth might be my favorite of the bunch. It plays to what looks like a punchbowl green, but—unlike every other green on this course—it actually slopes out to the back left. That makes it pretty tough; unless you can hit something high that lands in the front, it’s hard to hold the green. It’s also hard to run one up here because of the slope short.

Thirteen is a pretty uninteresting long par 4 to another table top green. The holes on this part of the property (6-8, 14) are a weakness of the course although they’re still quite demanding and at least not gimmicky.

The rolling par 5 fifteenth is a bit more interesting. It shouldn’t be hard to carry the bunker on the right (although I didn’t…) and if you can get it to about the 280 mark from the tips, you can catch a downslope and run well downhill. The second shot is tough as the black locust tree on the right is getting too big and encroaching too much into the fairway. The green sits past it at the top of the hill.

The worst walk on the course is from the fifteenth green to the sixteenth tee; it’s about 175 yards. But it’s worth it because the long par 4 sixteenth is one of the course’s best and the beginning of an excellent three-hole closing stretch. The drive is through a chute uphill and you need about 240 yards to reach the plateau. The hole turns right around a cluster of fairway bunkers at about 275 and the approach is over beautiful, rolling land to a surprisingly small green. The best miss here is in the ample fairway short because the green is very narrow and the bunkers on both sides are, as usual, very deep.

I thought that the par 3 seventeenth was just beautiful. The green is sited at the far end of a ridge, so you really don’t want to go long or left. We have another variation on the thumbprint green, although this one is a bit different with the low area being at the front-right and the high area around to the left. Again, short is a good miss here.

I don’t know if it was like this originally or the club has altered it over the years, but the eighteenth is wild. Wild and very good, but with some flaws. In principle, this is a great driving hole, requiring about a 250 carry to reach the plateau up the left and where a long hitter can shorten the hole by a bit if the can carry it about that same distance over a mess of bunkers on the inside of the dogleg.
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But while it’s still a good drive, it’s too difficult at the moment because the fairway fills only about half its margin and it’s extremely narrow, making it difficult to run the ball up the hill. Mowing the fairway out on the left would help. I also think it would help if they lost one or two of the bunkers that cut into the fairway on the right to give a bit more width to try and skirt the rest of them. As is, the drive is very punishing for short hitters and I’d recommend moving up to a set of tees from where the carry to the top of the hill is manageable.

The approach over rolling hills to the massive green site is a beauty, but the green, probably the size of half of the rest of the greens put together, is absurd. Not in a bad way though—the contours on this monstrous green are some of the best that you’ll ever see. Although I wouldn’t want every green on the course to be this size (the greenskeeper certainly wouldn’t either), I wish that some of the other greens had this wonderful, free-flowing contouring. It’s hard to get the ball close to the pin here but it’s a lot of fun to putt when you fail.

I’d been wanting to play the Old Course for at least 20 years and it was nice to have the opportunity. I played Indianwood’s New Course back in 2002 and that was…interesting. I described it to someone as a course with multiple personality disorder; one hole it thinks it’s Pine Valley, then a resort course in northern Michigan, then Pete Dye, then St. Andrews. It takes landscape variety to the extreme. It’s an interesting course, but a bit of a mess. And as you’d expect given its late 80s origin, very hard.

The Old Course shares the difficulty of the New, but without any of the gimmickiness. Its personality is much more consistent; every hole is framed by beautiful long grasses and one of the best looking sets of bunkers in the state.

Yet I can’t help but think that while the Old’s personality is consistent, it’s still a bit lacking. As I mentioned at the outset, it’s a very stern test of golf. Low handicappers will appreciate this course. But while there are several very good holes (4,16,18, the par 3s), most of the rest seem a bit less interesting than they could be. The greens are definitely one issue; they’re too similar to each other, almost all sloping back-to-front and into the middle. I’m certain that a few of the greens have shrunk substantially and probably several more have as well. The lack of interest on the green surfaces is unfortunate because the green sites are outstanding, as is the shaping of the green complexes. Along with the bunkers, this is one of the best-looking sets of green complexes in the state.

The bunkers, while good-looking, are another issue. Their placement doesn’t generate much strategy. Most holes have bunkers lining both sides of the fairway and most greens have bunkers at both sides and at the front. So you’re trying to do pretty much the same thing with every drive and every approach shot—high and straight. It’d be nice if the bunker patterns changed from time-to-time, cutting into fairways at a diagonal to create carry hazards or an occasional one in the middle of a fairway.

So while the Old is a very good course as is, it could maybe benefit from bit of the freshening that southeastern Michigan’s other top country club courses have gotten recently. I don’t know if the original layout was better on some of these critical points that I’ve mentioned. If not, it may be worth doing a bit of redesign rather than restoration. But it might go a really long way just to change the mowing lines. In any case, the property is so good and there’s so much already going right here that it’d be nice if they could maximize the potential of what they have. As is it’s still one of the best courses in the state but I suspect that with the right treatment, it’d be a shoe-in for the top 5. There’s that much potential.

After a morning round at the excellent Keilir, we headed about 45 minutes north to the other side of Reykjavik to Brautarholt, a 12 hole course that’s gotten some attention for what in pictures look to be some pretty wild cliffside holes. I had seen a few more pictures of this course than of Keilir, so I had a bit more of expectations coming in. And they were high ones.

And they were largely met. This is a truly spectacular course. I wouldn’t describe it as a 12 hole course, though; I’d describe it as a nine hole course with three extra holes. Holes 1-9 are the spectacular ones, heading straight out along the cliffs and staying there most of the way. Holes 10-12 are on flatter inland and while they’re solid, they have none of the drama of the other nine and don’t really feel like part of the same course. It was just as well that as we headed out, a four ball was just in front of us and I asked if we could start with 10-12 and then loop around to play 1-9 to avoid running into them. This is the superior way to play all 12 holes here because then the course starts modestly and the drama builds. Playing it in order would result in a big letdown for the last three holes.


The one possible drawback to starting on 10 is that then the course starts with a par 3. This doesn’t bother me so much as probably 1/3 of my favorite courses in England started on a par 3. And this is an appropriately modest one, with little trouble in front of the green.

We were also greeted on the tenth tee by this curious robot. I wasn’t sure what it was at first until I started to see more of them. Then I realized…these robots are roomba lawnmowers and are the course’s primary grounds crew, mowing all of its fairways! They’re very cute and easy to turn off if they get in your way. Just don’t forget to turn them back on. And maybe give them a helping hand if the GPS has malfunctioned and they end up in a ditch, like one or two that we saw did.

The eleventh is a short par 4 with two of the course’s volcanic-ash-sand bunkers about 210 out in the middle of the fairway. It’s worth going for the green if you can carry these but into a wind with rental clubs, I wasn’t trying that. 

It’s about 240 to the bunker on the left on the ~350 yard twelfth. That’s the line you want to take…if you go too far to the right, one of the roombas might have to rescue you.

Crossing over the hill to the other side of the clubhouse, it becomes pretty clear that we’re in for something different for the next nine holes when we get to the ~480 yard par 5 first tee. This is just a spectacular-looking hole although a bit of a puzzle from the tee. With the ever-present wind, it looks to get quite tight between a pond on the left at about 240, junk on the right, and bunkers in the middle at about 260. I really don’t understand the point of the bunkers in the fairway here; it’d be a very tough drive without them.

The second shot is just spectacular…definitely one-ups anything we saw at Keilir in the morning (except maybe the drive over the bay and the fishing houses, but this is prettier). There doesn’t look to be and isn’t a lot of room in the lay up area, although there’s fairway over the first set of mounds on the left.

The green is just awesome; right on the cliff’s edge, large, and with outstanding contours. It’s a great hole anyway but lose all of the bunkers and it’s probably one of the world’s best. To use Tom Doak’s chess notation, it’d go from being a !? to a !!.

Other than the over-bunkering on the first hole, my only real issue with these nine holes was the long walk to the second. It’s probably about 350 yards up and around the cliffs. I suspect that they could have fit a rugged little par 3 somewhere in here.

The second hole is a short par 3 (~140) and reminded me how difficult a short par 3 is when the wind is blowing. There’s a small pond at the front-right of the green. Probably in any conditions, you just want to aim for the middle of the green, which is built-up in the back and receptive.

We only have about a 10 yard walk to the tee on three, a par 4 of about 320 yards. This is another spectacular hole but also a very interesting one. The angle of the green and visuals are much more open from the right side of the fairway but to get there, you have to challenge the cliff and the strip of rough/rocks that cuts into the fairway. It’s about 225 to the start of this and I’d suggest laying up short.

The walk is also very short to the fourth, another short, but very different par 4. This one appears quite wide open although it’s a bit unclear what exactly is out there. But you can swing away because the fairway gets even wider if you clear the crest at about 225.

The approach is to an unusual green that angles from short-right to long-left and is on this angle about 70 yards long (!). But the whole thing is quite shallow and is best approached from the right side, which allows you to play into a deeper aspect of the green. There’s a fantastic back-left pin on a peninsula, with your ball disappearing into the rock if you go a bit right, long, or left.

By any standard, the par 3 fifth must be one of the world’s greatest: ~240 yards over a black sand and gravel beach. Unlike some of the world’s famous long par 3s however, there’s plenty of room to bailout short and left and the smartest play (although less fun) is probably to the front left of the green. I suppose that you could describe this hole as Iceland’s friendlier response to Cypress Point’s sixteenth hole.

The last four holes here are inland but each is interesting. It’s about a 200 yard carry over a ditch on the ~365 yard sixth. After that, the approach is uphill and you can only see the top of the flagstick. But it’s best to be up the left side as the green is quite deep from this angle.

Seven is a tough ~400 hole with water up the entire right side. It’s best to aim at and pick a club that will keep you short of the 150 (meters) post on the left side. The approach is uphill to a large green which you should try to hit on the fly, but where there’s also the possibility of a rebound off the rock (there’s also a possibility of going from one set of rocks to another as I learned…). In any case, don’t miss long as the green has severe back-to-front pitch.

The short par 3 eighth is only about 120 yards from the seventh green on a direct line but following the cart path doubles that. This is another case like the second where the walk to the hole is longer than the hole (~130). The primary feature here is a ridge running left-to-right across the middle of the green. Hit the back of this and your ball will go through the green.

Nine is about a 540 yard par 5 from the back tees and is probably the easiest hole so far, as long as you can avoid the small pile of rocks in the middle of the fairway about 300 from the tee (reachable because the hole faces eastward and is probably downwind most of the time). The layup is to a wide fairway but the green, which angles from front-right to back-left, is best approached from the right. It has excellent interior contour.

Probably the best way to describe Brautarholt at the moment is as possibly the world’s most spectacular nine hole course with three bonus holes. Apparently there’s a plan to expand the course to 18 holes. Continuous expansion seems to be a common practice in Iceland as Keilir started as 9 holes, then became 18, then 27. I’m not exactly sure where the addition six holes will be, but there’s a lot of good undulating land right of the current seventh and eighth holes. It won’t be as spectacular as the current 1-5, but could be comparable (if a little less dramatic) than the lava holes at Keilir.

More even than Keilir, this course feels like a real adventure. It’s almost completely hidden from everything around it. To reach it, you have to go off-roading through about half-a-mile of grazing land. It’d be a great place to go hiking without golf clubs. The cliffs and surrounding scenery are also much more dramatic here although like Keilir, the former are used well to create some excellent holes.

Brautarholt may not be a championship test of golf like Keilir, but it has some outstanding holes and save for a few too many bunkers on the first and an awkward walk to the second, no real weaknesses. The fifth must be on the short list of the world’s great par 3s. Like Keilir, it has an outstanding set of greens. That was one of the real surprises of these two courses—both have a set of greens that compares favorably with the best sets of greens on southern English courses. They’re suitable counterparts to the drama from tee-to-green without ever being too severe.

While I can’t say that they beat a hike up to the base of Snaefellsjökull, glacier climbing, or a day in the pools and steam rooms of the Blue Lagoon, golf should still be a required part of any golfer’s trip to Iceland. There are several other courses around Reykjavik (you’ll see them driving around its outskirts) and while they’re probably not as dramatic as Keilir or Brautarholt, a few of them are supposed to be quite good. There’s also a course in the Westman Islands about 2 1/2 hours + a short ferry ride southeast of Reykjavik that has several holes on the cliffs and also looks excellent. If I go back to Iceland, a visit to some of these courses would definitely be on my list.

Iceland certainly isn’t likely to register much of a signal on anyone's radar of golf destinations. Yet the country has more golf courses per capita than any other. You start to get the clue when you drive anywhere around the country—almost every town seems to have a golf course next to it. And at least in the summer, the conditions are perfect for golf—the cool, moist weather is perfect for growing fescue and the long days enable you play almost as many holes as you want. It reminded me of playing golf in Scotland.

All that plus the country’s well-known spectacular landscapes make golf something that’s definitely worth doing if you go to Iceland, if not being worth the trip there in itself. And if you’ve only dedicated one day to playing golf like I did, the question is where to go. Like a lot of people would, I did this by looking at a ‘best courses’ list, in this case the UK-based top100golfcourses.com. They do a very good job ranking English courses, so I figured—especially for a lack of other sources—why not use their list here too?

And the course that they ranked number one was Keilir Golf Club, about 15 minutes south of Reykjavik and just off the highway into town from the airport (you can see the front nine if you’re looking). So I decided to book one round here and one round at the spectacular-looking 12 hole Brautarholt course, about 45 minutes away on the north side of Reykjavik.

While I don’t know how it compares to some of the courses that I didn’t play, I’d certainly call Keilir a ‘must play’ if you’re going to Iceland and want to play golf. And it should probably be at the top of the list given its proximity to Reykjavik and how it manages to capture a lot of the spectacular variety of Iceland’s landscapes. The two nines are very different from each other; the front nine plays through a generally flat lava field, without bunkers but with ground contours reminiscent of the great links courses while the back nine is a sloping piece of land on the high cliffs, a bit reminiscent of Pennard or Southerndown in Wales…although with even more spectacular holes on the cliff’s edge.

The two nines are very different in character and one might raise that as a point of criticism of the course. It didn’t really bother me because the holes are consistent in design character. Both nines have an excellent set of greens with good variety. There are simple greens at the end of complicated holes and complicated ones at the end of simpler ones. While the front nine has all the hazards it needs with the lateral lava fields, the back nine has quite a few bunkers (many sod stacked) and some carries over cliffs to match the challenge of the front. While the course is only about 6,500 yards it’s plenty challenging, especially given the ever-present wind and rain.

This course has changed a lot over the years, starting as 9 holes on the cliff top, then expanding to 18 holes there, then 27 holes with 9 holes in the lava and the original 18 redesigned into 9 big course holes and 9 par 3 course holes. There were several new holes on the back nine and the club looks like it’s making one final change (by the British duo Mackenzie and Ebert), converting the par 3 tenth and par 4 eleventh into a par 5 and adding what looks to be another spectacular par 3 on the cliff’s edge. I’m not sure whether the next round of changes will improve the course but there’s no doubt that this club has shown a desire to continually try to improve their course.


The drive from the airport to Reykjavik is mostly through a lava field and the contours will remind a golfer who has played a true links course a lot of those. Of course for building a golf course, that’s where the similarities end—on links land, you can just plant grass on the existing soil while here, you have to either cover the lava with an enormous amount of top soil or bomb your way through it…and then cover it with an enormous amount of top soil.

​The drive on the par 5 first is quite intimidating between lava fields on the left and right. There’s actually a lot of room over the lava on the right if you can carry it about 220 from the back tees…which wasn’t happening for me into a stiff wind with my 11.5 degree rental driver. My first shot of the day landing in the gravelly edge of the lava on the left and I opted to pitch out rather than take a full shot chance ending my round with a broken wrist after one shot.

The rest of the hole is fairly wide open but I was struck by the contours of the ground—they reminded me of some of the best links land that I’ve played (a ’Lava Links’ is a perfect name for it). And the fairways are mostly fescue and rye, so they play similarly too. It’s best to approach the small, flat green from the left side because the fairway is a bit flatter over there and the green angles from front-left to back-right between lava mounds.

The ~375 yard second has, at least from the back tees, probably the most intimidating drive on the course. The fairway narrows between the lava fields at 200 yards and into the wind, it felt like there was nowhere to hit it. Again, the hole opens up past about 220 yards. The approach is to an elevated green over a lava mound, which kicked my ball right onto the edge of another lava mound.

​I was pretty concerned after the first two holes that I was playing a course that was just too difficult to play in any kind of wind, which is of course most of the time here. But I felt that the course became a lot more reasonable starting with the sub-300 yard par 4 third. The green is hidden behind lava and you can only see the top of the flag from most of the fairway.

But the fairway opens up past about the 240 mark and if you can get it here, you’ll have a simple shot straight onto the green. This is a very intimidating shot from the tee because you can’t see any of this landing area over the lava from the tee. But if you can put that out of your mind, there’s a lot of risk in the reward. Unlike the simple first two greens, this one has heavy contour and is excellent.

Turning back down wind, four is a simple, slightly downhill par 3 of about 165 yards. Not much trouble around the green but the green has wonderful subtle contours.

Also fortunately downwind was the 450+ yard par 4 fifth. The objective with the drive is to just keep it between the lava but the approach is a real beauty: the green is just beyond a gentle ridge which messes with your depth perception (I was 15 yards short), open in front, and slopes gently away to the middle. This green complex would fit in very well on many of the finest links courses.

Six is an excellent short (~150 yards) par 3. It’s much more intimidating than four thanks to all the lava around the green. And if you go at any pin on the right side of the green, you’ll be trying to hit to within a few feet of it. Any push will play plinko in the lava. But what makes the hole so good is that you can see plenty of safe area left of the green and easily play to it.

The par 5 seventh resulted in a new experience for me. The landing area on seven is generous but when you get out there, the grassed area continues to the left. So I laid up that way and hit my third shot over a pond to a green tucked back to the left in a way that the hole was shaped like a big reverse question mark. I thought that this was the first really stupid hole that I played.

And that’s because I hadn’t played the seventh hole: I played the first half of the seventh hole and then the second half of the eighth hole, which I didn’t realize until I saw the sign after the green directing players to the ninth tee. The second shot on the actual seventh hole was blind to the right over the lava. Turns out that the actual hole is a really good one because the carry over the lava is diagonal and the more that you bite off, the closer you can get to the green. If you bail left, you leave yourself an awkward angle and view into the green.

The actual eighth hole, ~380 yard par 4 plays to the widest-appearing fairway so far, although the lava doesn’t cut in on the left at about 250 yards. The course’s one water hazard on the right shouldn’t come into play. The approach is partially obscured by lava but is to what might be the course’s best green; angled front-left to back-right and sloping upward in this direction, with an interesting bowl at the front-left and running off on the right side.

Nine is another simple driving hole if you can’t reach the lava at about 285 down the right side. But the approach is very awkward, with a blind pond covering the left side of the shallow green in front. Probably my least favorite hole on the course.

Although it’s maybe two dozen yards from the ninth green, the par 3 tenth has a completely different feel from everything that’s come before, playing downhill with no lava to a large, undulating green at the sea’s edge. I liked this hole but it is behind replaced by a par 5 that encompasses both this and the next hole.

The next hole, a short par 4 starts from what will be the landing area of the future par 5 and it looks like there will be few changes on the second half of that hole from the current hole. This is a good this because the current hole is excellent: about 340 yards along the cliff with bunkers on the right edge of the fairway in the driving zone. It’d be a fantastic hole for long hitters, who could challenge the cliff to get near the green…although I’m not sure how feasible that will ever be given the cold and the wind. For the rest of us, the further you lay up to the right, the better the angle into the narrow green perched on the cliff’s edge.

Twelve is a medium-length par 4 with an up-and-over blind drive. This hole will be lengthened and played to a new green, becoming the finishing hole. The current green is a quirky one, perched off the edge of the hill overlooking the tenth. This hole reminded me of something that you’d find on an old countryside English course and I liked it. The new hole will be stronger and look more modern, consistent with the direction that the club is taking its course.

But the thirteenth hole, a new short par 4 that will become the tenth, ensures that the course will keep some of its English quirk. It’s a completely blind drive over a field of rocks with an aiming post. I think that you want to aim right of the aiming post because the fairway slopes hard right-to-left.

We go from quirky to brutal with the long par 4 fourteenth—at least if you play the back tees. From here, it’s one of the most dramatic and difficult drives that I’ve ever seen, over the edge of the bay and some (I think) fishing houses. The carry looked a bit long for me, especially with rental clubs. Turns out that I was right: it’s about 225 to carry the seawall from here even at the nearest point!

But it’s a great drive for everyone because it retains the same great diagonal carry from the middle tees. From the fairway, the green is fairly open if you carry a bunker about 20 yards short and left. While very difficult, this is a great risk-reward hole.

The difficulty doesn’t let up with the 210 yard fifteenth. There isn’t much room to bailout thanks to two pot bunkers left of the green but you can lay up short and left if you don’t feel up to the challenge. I nailed a three-wood, which got me to the middle of the green. A great par 3, especially if you don’t think that extreme difficulty shoudl count against a hole.

Sixteen, a par 5, is the third consecutive hole that follows the water’s edge. The drive is almost as dramatic as that on fourteen, although you can also play safe away from the cliff. It’s about a 250 yard carry over the cliff right of the rightmost of the fairway bunkers although again, into the wind and cold weather.

The are two bunkers in the middle of the fairway about 100 yards short of the green then two more at its entrance on the left. The lay up here reminds me a bit of that on fourteen at Royal St. George’s because the best placement is between the bunkers and the cliffs edge. But unless you can easily carry the bunkers, it’s probably best to lay back short of them. The green seemed pretty new—all fescue.

It also looks like the club has been tinkering with the ~360 par 4 seventeenth because the bunkers looked newly constructed and there was new grass in the fairway. Despite the short length on the card, the hole was quite difficult as it plays pretty good uphill and looks tight between all the bunkers.

More evidence that the hole is new is that Google Earth doesn’t show it…meaning that I also don’t know how far it was to reach the bunkers off the tee. In any case, laying back to no more than 230 off the tee keeps you safe.

Eighteen is a long par 4 which will become fifteen in the new routing. That’s a bit of a shame because this is a truly great hole and a fitting conclusion to the round. There’s a bunker somewhere to the right off the tee but plenty of room to miss left and no reason to challenge it.

The important thing here is that you hit a long drive because there are a variety of challenges on the approach. First, a rock wall and road cross the hole about 50 yards short of the green. If you’ve hit a weak drive, it’ll be a challenge to carry the wall. If going for the green from long distance, it’s important to hedge left as there’s open fairway here and the ground slopes left-to-right. If you go at the green and miss short or a bit right, you can run about 20 yards down a steep hill to the right, leaving a nasty shot into the narrowest aspect of the green.
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I love a good long par 4 and this is one of the best that I’ve seen.

Playing golf in Iceland might seem odd to a golfer traveling from abroad. It doesn’t seem like a place where people would play golf and it fits a bit oddly into a travel itinerary filled with hiking, glacier climbing, and dips into hot springs (and eating the infamous fermented shark which—spoiler alert—just tastes like ammonia).

But golf at Keilir isn’t odd at all. This is a strong, challenging golf course which, as evidenced by the continuous changes to the course, the club takes very seriously. The course is very thoughtfully designed, with plenty of challenge in the form of lava on the front nine and strategically placed bunkers and choices regarding carries over the cliffs’ edges on the back. And I thought that this set of greens was better than those on at least half of the much more famous courses that I played in the UK. Probably only Royal St. George’s, Royal Cinque Ports, and Woking had a set of greens clearly better than these.

So I think that Keilir is a perfect part of an Iceland trip for the golfer because the course captures a lot of the spectacular scenery of the country (the cliffs, the lava fields) while allowing you to play golf at the same time. And it will potentially be even better when they convert ten and eleven into one par 5 and build another spectacular cliff’s edge par 3 after it. I wish I had gotten a picture of it—it will play slightly downhill with the ocean directly left of/behind the green. There will be a ~180 yard walkback up the hill to the eighteenth tee, so there’s a bit of a trade-off in that. I suspect that the trade-off will be worth it for all but the strictest routine curmudgeons.

In any case, the other sixteen holes that aren’t being changed are almost all very good to excellent so if you do show up, whenever you do, you’ll experience an excellent course, one that would be a top 100 public course in the US and one at which I’d be happy to play the majority of my golf.

When I had the opportunity to play Battle Creek in the summer of 2020, I jumped at the opportunity to do so. This old Willie Park Jr. course, while not widely known, has been developing a reputation in recent years as one of the best hidden gems in Michigan. There’s been work, I believe by some of Tom Doak’s associates, to restore the greens to their original sizes. While I don’t know what the greens looked like before, most of the greens filled what looked to be their original squarish pads. Unlike many pre-WWII courses, these greens appeared to be close to their original sizes.

And that’s where the course has developed its hidden gem reputation, for the green complexes. It’s certainly an interesting set. Most are on large, flat pads, built simply 2 or 3 feet above their surroundings. I like this simple style of green construction, especially on a relatively flat piece of land as this. Several of the greens have interesting little humps and bumps, although they’re never very undulating. Most notably there are two greens, nos. 3 and 18 that consist of a massive unpinnable slope running up to a small, flat pinnable area. I liked these greens and in their simplicity, they reminded me a bit of two of the Park Jr. courses that I played in the UK: Sunningdale Old and Stoneham. There’s a bit more shaping on the pad edges than the Sunningdale greens, but the otherwise simple construction is similar.

How about the rest of the course? My main criticism is that it’s a bit one dimensional off the tee. While I imagine that the club has done some tree removal, there are still several holes where the trees are quite tight to both sides of the fairway. There’s also a lack of fairway bunkering. I thought that the par 3s were the class of the course, culminating with the long par 3 sixteenth, which I thought was one of the better par 3s in the state. I’d be interested to know how the current fairway bunker scheme looks relative to the original and if there are a few missing bunkers as I suspect, whether the club plans to restore them.


Battle Creek gets started with one of its toughest and best holes: a long par 4 with a fairway bunker left that requires about a 240 carry. My favorite aspect of this hole was the large green which like most others was on a slightly raised, flat pad, but had a lot of interesting little contours. The green is typical of (most of) the course: not too difficult, but with lots of interesting subtle contours.

The 390 yard par 4 second doglegs left around trees. It’s not too difficult if you hit the fairway and the green is wide open in front even if you don’t. The primary challenge here comes from the tiered green. You don’t want to be above the hole.

Three is an interesting long par 5 which one of my playing partners made known to us was one of his favorite holes. Like the first, it’s a good driving challenge with a bunker on the left about 230 out at the crest of the fairway. The hole starts to run gradually downhill after this and a long hitter could easily get within range of the green off a good drive.

The primary feature here is the green, which is almost 50 yards from front to back but where the first probably half is a long, gradual slope that isn’t pinnable with today’s green speeds (there might be a spot or two; I’d have to have another look). I’m not sure that I’m such a fan of this feature, which we’ll see again at eighteen but it does give you something to do: make sure that you clear it. It also helps slow down a higher handicap’s runner into the green.

Four is the first of four very good par 3s. The first three are a bit similar in length (150-175) but with different bunkers schemes and green contours. The fourth green slopes to the front right, meaning that you’ll have to challenge the front and right bunkers to give yourself an uphill putt.

The next two holes, both medium length par 4s, show what I think is the primary issue with Battle Creek: it’s often not particularly interesting off the tee. Six especially is a tough driving hole because of the proximity of trees on the left side of the fairway. But in both cases, it’s best to club down a bit to hit one straight.

While seven is similar in that it’s also roughly 400 yards and the fairway is lined with trees, the approach is different, with the green on a ridge rather than on the flat. It’s a bit of an intimidating looking shot for a first timer because all you can see is a false front. But the green is almost 50 yards deep and the false front isn’t nearly as long as that on three.

I suppose that eight looks a bit like the fourth, although the bunkers here are short and left. There are some interesting mounds at the edge of the green and (again) pretty good back-to-front slope. So unless you’re close to the hole, it’s a challenge.

While the drive on the 520 yard par 5 ninth is similar to that on seven, the rest of the hole is interesting. Both the drive and the second are uphill and while the second shouldn’t be too hard if you’re laying up, there are blind bunkers left and right starting about 70 yards short of the green. Like many, the green is deep but not too wide so a miss online short will be better than an inaccurate one.

The next two holes, a par 5 and par 4 feature drives up and over ridges. Eleven has two bunkers up the left side to about 230 yards out, but there’s no reason to challenge the left side here. The much bigger issue is the green, which has one of the steepest back-to-front pitches on the course.

After another medium-short par 3, we come to another fairly flat, tree-lined par four. The major issue from the thirteenth tee is a small creek that crosses the fairway at about 280 yards from the back tee. The approach is to an elevated green that has good, subtle contours.

Fourteen is a tight dogleg left between trees. The green competes with eleven for steepness although this green is sectioned into two tiers. Make sure that you’re on the right one.

One of my playing partners had a real problem with the large oak tree just to the right of the beginning of the fifteenth fairway, which he thought obstructed too much of the hole. The tree returned the favor, catching his drive and deflecting it somewhere where we couldn’t find it. I agree that the tree blocks too much of the hole but I also thought that the branches were high enough to drive under it without difficulty.

More interesting to me was the large green which again had many interesting little contours. It’s tough to capture these with a camera (well, at least an iPhone camera) but they make the greens a lot of fun to putt.

The 220 yard par 3 sixteenth was easily my favorite hole on the course and I think that it’s also one of the best par 3s in the state. I’m a sucker for a good, long par 3 and this one has a lot of things that I like: a green that’s open in front but with trouble at the sides and outstanding interior contour. I’ve noted that I think that the strength of this course is the subtle contouring on the greens and I thought that this one was clearly the best. The contours are hard to describe because they’re pretty random but they’re pronounced enough that you can see them pretty well.

I thought that the short par 4 seventeenth was one of the best driving holes on the course. At just over 300 yards, I guess now it’s drivable for many but the fairway turns right and narrows at a bunker about 240 out. This wouldn’t pose a challenge for really long hitters and I suspect that the hole would be pretty easy for them but it’s a good challenge for us shorter hitters. Probably the smart play is to just layup (and not into the rough like I did) then pitch to another large green. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that this green had the interest of several of the others, which detracted from an otherwise interesting hole.

Eighteen is a long par 4 that doglegs right at a bunker about 270 yards out. The green provides a pretty memorable finish—although it’s almost 50 yards deep, there’s a maybe 15 yard deep pinnable area at the back.

I really enjoyed playing Battle Creek Country Club. It’s just the type of course at which I’d like to be a member. It’s an easy walk, there are a lot of opportunities to play shorter loops of holes (you could probably come up with a loop of almost any number of holes), and the course is a good challenge without ever being severe or gimmicky. It’s a very solid golf course and an enjoyable one. No frustration about stupid or overdone holes here.

Yet at the same time, I’d pushback against those who think that this is one of the best courses in the state. It does have a very good set of greens but I’d probably limit the praise to ‘very good.’ I like the subtle contouring of many but I’d have preferred it if these humps and bumps were more often a bit less subtle, like on the sixteenth green. 18 greens like that would be a set of world-class greens. As mentioned, I also think that the course too often lacks interest (if not challenge) off the tee, with too many mostly straight, tree-lined fairways. The few fairway bunkers provide a good challenge for me but if you can carry it 260, almost none of them are in play. The terrain is modest, so you don’t get the variety of lies that would add to the challenge of approaching the greens.

But this isn’t the most important thing. More important is the answer to the question: “If I lived in the area and had an opportunity to place this course on a regular basis, would I?” And the answer is “Yes.” I’d rather play this course on a regular basis than several of the courses in Michigan that I think are better because this one is a nicer walk and is a good challenge without having any of the severity that many of those courses have (cough cough Greywalls, Arcadia Bluffs, and Kingsley Club…). Increasingly, an absence of severity is a real plus for me. So all that adds up to a pretty positive experience and I’d definitely recommend playing Battle Creek if you get a chance. I hope to be able to do it again.

I was fortunate to play Meadowbrook Country Club recently as part of an outing. While I grew up close to the course and my family lives even closer now, it was never a course that I had heard much about nor one that I had much interest in seeing. That all changed a few years ago with a renovation by Andy Staples, who turned the course from a standard American tree-lined country club course to an open one with bold features heavily influenced by MacDonald/Raynor design principles and style of shaping. With the pictures that I had been seeing over the past few years, Meadowbrook moved pretty much right to the top of courses that I wanted to see in my home state.

Despite some reservations that I’ll discuss in detail when I get to the relevant holes, Staples and co. have done an outstanding job here. There’s a level of thought put into the design of these holes that’s uncommon, even among the top new courses. There’s a lot of care in this work. The course has excellent balance from tee-to-green, with some easier driving holes and some tougher ones, and complements some (to put it mildly) unreceptive greens with more receptive ones. Bunkers are very thoughtfully placed and not excessive, unlike some other top new courses. The internal green contours are simply outstanding.

I think it’s also important to commend the club for its boldness with this redesign. Although I never played the previous version, I’ve seen pictures and the transformation is just remarkable. And risky. They must have sunk millions of dollars into this renovation. Their course must have been closed for the better part of at least two seasons. I’m sure that the decision was controversial and difficult because you never quite know how well people will react to the changes. You could lose a lot of members and the promise of new ones might not materialize.
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Fortunately from what I heard, the risks have paid off. There’s a waiting list for membership as the new course has generated extraordinary buzz. The course immediately started making lists of the best courses in the state and there’s a strong argument to make that’s it’s placed too low on some of them (especially Golf Digest). So the future looks pretty bright for Meadowbrook Country Club.


So let’s discuss the golf course. The short par 4 first is a fine start. It shouldn’t be too difficult if you play the proper conservative drive to avoid the bunker ~225 out on the left. It gets more difficult if you try to get further down the fairway, which narrows and has a tree on the right. The approach is uphill to a green which slopes pretty good from back-to-front and most of whose surface is obscured by bunkers.

The second hole is an excellent par 5 that follows the property line. It’s possible for many to carry the fairway bunker but you need to be careful about how close you cut the left side as the out-of-bounds is tight there (and I saw at least a handful of balls cross it).

It’s a very tough layup if you can’t reach the green. Two bunkers pinch the layup zone from around 100 yards. The green has a very steep false front and I saw more than one ball roll off the front (this will become a theme…). But it’s also quite large and the hole provides opportunities if you approach it sensibly.

The third is one of the holes for which the new Meadowbrook has received a lot of attention. Again, there’s only one fairway bunker and it’s pretty easy for a good player to carry.

But the main event here is the green, which is one of the most unusual that I’ve seen. It’s sort-of an upside-down L shape, for which the hook of the L is a bowl with four sideboards. This is one of the most receptive hole locations that I’ve seen anywhere, although it’s small and you probably won’t be able to see its bottom. While pin placements in the front-left shouldn’t be too difficult, the back left is tricky because it’s narrow and if you miss right, it’s a really tough putt out of the bowl. I think that this might actually be my favorite hole location because the shot from the bowl is playable and there’s a safe miss to the front-left of the green.

I’m not a huge fan of the angularity of some of the shaping or the flat tier of fairway-height grass at the front-right, but it’s a very thoughtful green complex and very interesting.

The par 5 fourth was one of my favorites on the course. There’s plenty of room off the tee although trying to shave off the left side can result in tree trouble. Whether laying up or going for the green, the second shot is outstanding. There’s a bunker in the middle of the fairway a few dozen yards short of the green. Laying up short and left of the bunker should leave a flat lie, but also leaves a poor angle to a green that runs away. Getting past the bunker on the right opens the view and allows you to play more into the contours of the green.

The best scenario is if you can get your ball just short-right of the green because the green edge is quite mild here. Like many of the greens, this one is convex (slopes off) on the edges and most of these edges are quite severe—a bit too severe for my tastes. If you miss short or left, there’s a good chance that the next shot is coming back to your feet or going over the other side. Approaching from short and right helps a lot here.

The long, dogleg right par 4 fifth has gotten a lot of attention for its punchbowl green. Now my main complaint about Meadowbrook, which I’ve already started with on the last hole, is that there are several greens with multiple severe edges that make it easy to miss the green on your chip. But as I mentioned in my intro, the course is well-balanced and several greens, like the third and this one, are more receptive. I’m not a huge fan of this green because I’m not a fan of the abrupt shaping at its edges. But the receptiveness of the green balances the difficult of the hole from tee-to-green. So artistic quibbles aside, it’s a very good hole.

The mid-length par 3 sixth looks pretty severe and it is if you go at the middle of the green and can’t put a lot of spin on the ball. The runoffs long and short are steep and fairly long. But there’s another possibility—the area right of the green kicks balls onto the green. Although you can’t really tell from the tee, there’s a lot of short grass over there and if you can’t hold the green on the direct line, it’s a sensible way to play the hole. Not obviously, but certainly something that you’d learn to use after repeat plays.

It’s probably not an obvious pick, but the short par 4 seventh was one of my favorite holes. Although the pond presents a real challenge for shorter hitters, the fairway looks wide open and a bit mundane for everyone else. Why even mess will the bunkers on the left?

Because the green is narrow, very undulating, and angled in this direction. The left side is also the only place where you might have a decent view of it. It’s very difficult to approach the green from the right rough (the right side of the fairway kicks right) and while the visibility is better the closer that you are to the green, the high right shoulder makes for a very awkward short shot. The green has some of the best internal contours of any and I thought that this was a great hole.

I found the green complex on the mid-length par 3 eighth to be a bit too severe. There’s a steep falls front and you want no part of what’s over the green (although it’s an interesting variety of impossible shots). The smart play is to the middle of the green which will put you in decent shape for a pin anywhere on the right side but will still leave a very difficult putt to anywhere on the left. There are too many disasters if you aim at a left pin and miss (although there is a backstop for a front-left pin) so just aim to the middle and do the best that you can with the putter.

Nine is a short par 4 with another severe green complex. It’s a very good driving hole, with two bunkers up the right that you can try to carry based on your ability. While being a bit more to the left allows you to play into the deepest aspect of the green, the green is so narrow and the edges around the entire front so steep that there isn’t a whole lot of safety in the perfectly placed layup. But it’s also very difficult to hit the green from anywhere near the green.

I think that the safest play is to play to the back-center, where there’s a pretty good backstop. This will be a very unsatisfying play if the pin is in the front and will leave a very tough putt but it’s easy to make a 6 if you aim at the front of the green from almost anywhere unless you’re about a +2 handicap or better.

Most good golfers should be able to carry the right fairway bunker at about 230 yards (except me). That’s probably the best play here because it gives you a much clearer view of another undulating green. This one feeds to the back-right. A noteworthy feature of this hole is the beautiful elm tree short-left of the green.

Eleven is a fantastic downhill par 3. The green is very deep but the right side is very undulating, featuring a little dip in the right-center that runs off the green. There’s plenty of open space and short grass to the right of the green, but you’d better have a pretty good short game if you’re over there.

I think that it’d be reasonable to call the par 5 twelfth hole the most relaxed hole from tee-to-green on the course, but it’s none the worse for it. There’s a moderate task in carrying the left fairway bunker but the approach is straightforward and there’s no trouble in front of the green.

As we’ve seen on many other holes, the green is a bit less relaxed than the rest of the hole. There’s a false front here, but it’s only severe on the left side. Most of the green is pretty receptive and like at the fourth, if you’re approaching from the right, it’s not too hard. But if the pin is front-left, be careful…I saw more than one person putt off the green to that hole location.

Looking at my photos, I’m reminded that when I first stood on the par 3 thirteenth tee, I thought that the fourth green was the the thirteenth! The actual thirteenth green is in the right side of the frame. It’s a much easier shot than that to the fourth green would be! Long is dead, but the green is pretty wide and receptive.

There are a few interesting aspects to the short par 4 fourteenth, the first being its uphill drive over a big ridge. The architect/shapers have helpfully cut a gap through the middle which provides a nice aiming point and gives shorter hitters and chance to get up the hill. That gives you a better chance of seeing the green, which is pretty important here. It horseshoes around a bunker at its front-center. Just as important is the ridge running across the middle of the green. It can help contain shots played to the front of the green but makes for very difficult putting if going front to back/vice versa.

The long, gently doglegging right par 4 fifteenth was another of my favorite holes, due in part to its relative simplicity. By that, I don’t mean that it’s an easy hole—if you bail out away from the right bunkers, it can be a long, awkward approach. But the green complex is large and the edges (except at the front-left) are either softer or have rough on them, which stops the ball from running too far away. The green is open in front, which helps with the long, running shot that you’ll likely have.

Sixteen is pretty straightforward. I think the main thing here is that the further you drive it, the better view of the green that you’ll have. This green is quite large and the edges aren’t too severe—another nice case of the balance that I mentioned at the outset. It also has some of the finest subtle contours of all of them.

With several large oaks and maples at its edges, the drive on the par 5 seventeenth is the most traditional country-club-looking shot on the course. The green, however, is anything but: it sits at the back of a massive biarritz pad that starts with two bunkers about 60 yards short of the green. The biarritz swale forms a false front for the actual green surface, which has another sharp runoff at its left. I’ve never been a huge fan of the abruptness of biarritz swales on other courses and this green, with a particularly steep-and-deep one and sharp runoffs right and left, is a bit much for me. As on 4 or 5 other greens, I would have preferred some softer contours at the edges here.

The final hole is a bit easier off the tee than it looks. Good players should be able to carry the right bunker easily and if you do that, you should be able to run it pretty far down the fairway. The green is different in character than the others, sitting on the lay of the land at its back and only moderately built up in front. I suspect that this green, which is on the site of its predecessor, is also most similar to its predecessor. I thought that the softer edges around this green were a nice change of pace and I liked it—although it’s still very difficult, with pretty good back-to-front slope and a trough in the middle.

I think that Meadowbrook is easily one of the ten best courses in the state of Michigan and possibly one of its top 5. While they haven’t yet, I suspect that the rankings will catch up with it soon. There’s so much that’s interesting here. While its architectural roots appear to be in the MacDonald/Raynor style, it doesn’t have the standard template holes (the biarritz is on a par 5) so it has a strong sense of originality. The green contours are as interesting as you could want. It’s very thoughtful from tee-to-green without going overboard on the bunkering…something that its northern Michigan stylistic counterpart the South Course at Arcadia Bluffs unfortunately does. Because of its greater variety and sense of balance (and better land), I prefer Meadowbrook.

As I’ve mentioned a few times however, I had two issues with some of the greens, one more aesthetic and one functional. I didn’t love the look of the sharp ridges and hollows around a lot of these greens. The property is hilly, but there’s no part of it that’s really abrupt. The slopes are mostly gradual. I thought the abruptness of a lot of the shaping was a bit inconsistent with the character of the property. I don’t mind shaping like this, but I think that it’d bit in a bit better on a site that’s flatter (like Arcadia Bluffs—South) or had abrupt features like these…like the rock outcroppings you find in Westchester County, NY or near the Appalachians.

But this is really a matter of personal taste and while I personally hold it against the course a little bit, I can understand not holding it against the course at all. A bigger issue I think is the severity of the edges of some of the greens from a functional perspective. Some of these greens are very difficult to hit and leave you little place to miss from which you’ll have a straightforward next shot. I think that it’d help if some of the greens had been built a little bit lower and the slopes off them were more gradual and longer (this would also address my first criticism) because then a shot that just runs to the edge of the green runs a few feet off rather than down a steep hill into a very difficult spot. Wild shots would still be penalized because they would run far away from the green but shots that are a little bit off would be punished far less.

As I mentioned though, not all of the greens are like this. At least half-a-dozen are very receptive and you might argue that that’s enough to give people a chance to make up for some of the grief caused by the others. As with the rest of the layout, there’s still pretty good balance across the green complexes. But I think that a lot of the interest in what the architect/shapers were trying to go for around the edges of the greens could have been accomplished with softer slopes.

I suppose that the best thing that you can say about Meadowbrook is that it stimulates a lot of thinking. It’s a course that you want to play over in your mind because there are so many interesting details and it’s difficult to know what to think of them as you play them, especially if you only play once. This course is the reason why I like to take pictures of courses: when someone puts this kind of thought into a place, the pictures can help you remember some small detail that you forgot about, but that helps make a hole. I’d love to have the chance to see it again some day.

As with the Dunes, True Blue was a course that I had wanted to play on my previous 2007 Myrtle Beach trip but it somehow slipped through the cracks. I ensured that this didn’t happen again on my spring 2021 trip, telling the extremely helpful golf package operator (I think his name was Tyler(?)) that I was flexible about other courses, but I had to see True Blue and the Dunes.

I was especially interested to see True Blue because it would be the third Mike Strantz course that I’d see and there’s quite a spectrum running from subdued to severe between the other two, Caledonia and Tobacco Road. I was curious about where True Blue would fall on that spectrum. Based on pictures that I’d seen, I thought that it’d fall much closer to Tobacco Road. Like Tobacco Road, it looked like a sprawling layout, which would be a sharp contrast to the intimate Caledonia. I didn’t have as good a sense of whether the earthworks and shaping would be closer to the severity of Tobacco Road or the more restrained nature of Caledonia.

My verdict on the style of the course: a bit closer to Tobacco Road than Caledonia, but not to the extent that I expected. The scale is much closer to Tobacco Road: this is a big course with wide fairways and lots of sandy waste areas. But the features (with a few exceptions) aren’t as severe as those on Tobacco Road. I suspect that that’s probably because Tobacco Road was a site with severe ‘natural’ features, namely spoils leftover from mining. But in any case, while the scale of True Blue is obviously much larger than Caledonia, the shaping here reminded me more of it than Tobacco Road.

Overall, I really liked the course. I don’t have nearly the number of reservations about this course that I do about Tobacco Road…although I also wouldn’t say that the highs here were as high as those at Tobacco Road. This course has some very good holes, but it doesn’t have world class holes like some of Tobacco Road’s par 5s. It also has some of the same routing clunkiness of Tobacco Road, with several long green-to-tee drives and a shoehorned par 3, no. fourteen. Finally, the closing three holes are over-the-top difficult. If you have a decent round going coming off the fifteenth green, don’t expect that you’ll finish with one.

But there are several beautiful holes and I felt that the shaping throughout was very well done. While there’s a lot of trouble, the fairways and greens are large enough and their edges soft enough that you shouldn’t be regularly running into it unless you’re hitting a lot of bad shots. It’s also important that you have a good course guide here (I’d recommend buying the yardage book) because a lot of shots are visually complicated and you’ll want to view a schematic of the holes to parse everything that’s going on. Still, with the exception of a few holes, I think that it plays a bit easier than it looks.


Like Tobacco Road, True Blue starts with a fairly long par 5, although this one is substantially more generous and less confusing. It doglegs left so you want to keep it up the left side and the only real trouble should come from getting too greedy with this. But if you bail out right, it’s a very long hole. While the bunkers are dramatic in typical Strantz fashion, I loved the simple shaping of the green complex, which was the first hint that I might not be playing Tobacco Road 2.

Two is a short par 4 that’s a bit confusing off the tee and like several other holes here that I’d describe similarly, you should do the simplest thing off the tee: hit to the part of the fairway that you can see most clearly. It’s important to get near the end of the fairway because if you’re short off the tee, you’ll have a bad angle into the skinny green over a live oak tree. I thought that the green was a bit too narrow and awkwardly shaped but again, the shaping is very nice.

The island green par 3 third is just too difficult, especially if you play one of the two back sets of tees, which are ~160-170 and have trees encroaching on the right. The green is too narrow and because of the built-up front, you can’t see how much depth there is on the right, making it even more intimidating. I much preferred Tobacco Road’s difficult water par 3 no. fourteen…at least you can see everything that’s going on.

I’ve seen the par 5 fourth referred to as one of True Blue’s best holes but I think that it’s also a bit too difficult. It’s similar in shape to the par 5 fourth at Tobacco Road, but the obvious difference is that this time it’s water rather than sand. It’s also much easier to run into junk right off the tee because the waste bunker/trees cut in and narrow the fairway. The layup area is narrower than Tobacco Road’s as you come closer to the green and again, the penalty is more severe. The final approach into the green is similar but there’s less short grass around the green here. Interesting hole, but a bit too much.

The long par 4 fifth is, on the other hand, interesting and not too much. I’d argue that this is True Blue’s best hole.

The straight line to the green is over the bunker on the left and while there’s plenty of room to the right, you’ll want to carry as much of the bunker as you can to shorten the approach and leave a better angle. I thought that the green was the course’s best; large and open from the left side, but with a high shoulder at the front left that allows you to feed low shots to back hole locations and can help contain approaches from the right side of the fairway. The simple strategy and meaningful yet subdued shaping reminded me of Caledonia and many other courses that I like.

I didn’t get a picture of the drive on the medium-length par 4 sixth, which could have used some tree clearing. There are two greens; on the right making the hole a shorter dogleg right and on the left making it straight away. We played to the left green which was a nice shot but the one on the right looked good too. Just cut some trees down between the tee and the fairway.

Seven is a very nice ~170 yard par 3 to a skinny green that runs uphill from short-left to long-right. It’s best to always hedge a little short and left here as that leaves you more room and an uphill putt (or chip).

Like two, eight is a complicated shorter par 4 where you should do the simple thing and hit it down the part of the fairway that you can see. Again like two, the hole turns to the right although this time the green is much larger.

One of my criticisms of Tobacco Road is that the course isn’t super hard for low handicaps but is absolute hell for high handicaps. This is true of True Blue’s back-to-back par 5s nine and ten (and a few other holes) as well. Both have wide fairways but unless you make a decent carry, you get handcuffed by junk crossing the fairway on your approach and if you mishit shots, it can be difficult to make those carries.

But nine is a very good hole for a good player because it’s reachable, yet the green is very difficult to hit unless you’ve hit a long drive in the right position. I hit a long drive, but a bit to the left of where I wanted. I had a reachable distance (~240) to the green but because it’s well protected on the left, I didn’t think I could carry and hold it. But that still leaves something to do; play a little short right of the green and you have an easy pitch on.

Ten is very similar to nine except that you want to be in the far left of the layup zone to set up the angle rather than the far right. Like five, some shaping at the front left of the green can help contain shots play from the wrong angle.

My biggest criticism of True Blue is of its set of par 3s—they’re too difficult. The greens on three, here at eleven, and fourteen are too skinny for their length (here ~180) and surrounded by difficulty. I don’t mind the narrow-but-deep two-tiered green here, it’d just be better for a hole that’s 30-40 yards shorter.

The next two holes are very good medium-length par 4s. The driving hazard on twelve is up the right and a green that opens up from that side. Thirteen is a bit more visually complicated, with a diagonal bunker up the left that obscures most of the fairway. You’re better off the more of this you carry than if you drive it to the right, although that’s mostly because a drive of the right can have tree trouble on the approach.

As mentioned, fourteen is another skinny green par 3. It’s pretty easy if the pin is in the front section but not if it’s in the back as it was on this day.

But the bigger flaw with fourteen is how it fits in the routing. This hole starts near the thirteenth green but plays in the opposite direction of the fifteenth tee. So you play the hole, then drive back to the tee and progress on in a straight line from the thirteenth green to the fifteenth tee. I’m sure that Strantz could have come up with something better.

Fifteen is another long par 5 and it’s very good from tee-to-green. The best drive here will skirt the waste bunker that cuts into the fairway on the left about 270 from the second-to-back tees.

This is one hole that you need to have played at least once to have a sense of what to do. It’s very important to leave yourself a yardage that you’re very comfortable with for your third because the green is shallow and it’s almost impossible to leave yourself an angle that significantly deepens the green (left side is better, but only if the pin is back right). There’s a pretty steep false front and it’s very difficult to hit and hold the green unless you put pretty good spin on the ball.

The last three holes are very tough with too much water in play. The par 3 sixteenth green is large but it’s a pretty long hole for most. It might not be a bad idea to move up a set of tees here.

That’s not a bad idea on seventeen either, although it’d also make it easier to run through the fairway into the water on the right. This is a very tough driving hole because you can’t see the shoreline on the right and it’s difficult to know which line to pick. As on many other holes, it’s really helpful to have the yardage guide here. The approach is all-carry and unless you’ve hit a good drive, it’d be advisable to play out to the left.

Like nine and ten, eighteen is a bit of a mirror image of seventeen, with the water up the left. I wouldn’t mess with the left side too much here. The green is large and deep and because I was having a neurotic meltdown with my shooting, I forgot to take a picture of the approach. But you’ve probably seen it in a golf magazine anyway.

While I think that stylistically True Blue falls somewhere between Caledonia and Tobacco Road, I think that it’s best to compare it to Tobacco Road. It doesn’t have the space constraints that Caledonia has which enabled Strantz more latitude to do what he wished rather than what would fit.

And as I said in my Caledonia review, I think that those space constraints may have helpfully restrained Strantz because here as at Tobacco Road, when given the space, he seemed to have a penchant to overdo things. Several holes here are a bit too difficult, with greens that are too narrow or too much water in play. The course would be fine with half the amount of sand.

But in some important aspects, True Blue is less overdone than Tobacco Road. I much prefer the shaping, or at least how the land is used, here. I’m not sure exactly what at Tobacco Road is shaping and what was the site that Strantz got, but in any case several holes there are very overdone. I thought that Strantz’s greens shaping here fit in very nicely with the surroundings for the most part and I’ve highlighted several examples of that. There’s also far less blindness at True Blue.

And while I’ve complained about a few of True Blue’s greens being too narrow (especially on the par 3s), this is far less of a problem than at Tobacco Road, where you have numerous greens that are very skinny and very wide with poor visibility to several parts, making it very difficult to know how to even try to play your shot. That’s not an issue here; here you’re at least given a good sense of how you should try to approach the greens.

These issues plus the routing being less cohesive than I suspect it could have been result in a course that’s a bit short of great. But it’s certainly very good. I suspect that it’d be a solid choice for the 80-100 range of a US top 100 public courses list. It was a solid 3rd for me in Myrtle Beach; more interesting than the Dunes, but held back by some flaws and excesses. Still, if you’re in Myrtle Beach, True Blue is definitely worth playing.

The Dunes Golf and Beach Club has been the course in Myrtle Beach which intrigued me most so I was excited to play 36 holes there during my spring 2021 visit. For some reason that I can’t remember, I didn’t arrange to play here on my previous 2007 Myrtle Beach. I remember looking into it but then not pulling the trigger for some reason.

That’s just as well for the sake of my more recent self because I meant that I had this course to look forward to. The Dunes has intrigued me because I’ve seen to it referred to several times and one of Robert Trent Jones Sr.’s best courses or even his best course. I haven’t played many Trent Jones courses but the few that I’ve played have all seemed similar to me: heavy fairway bunkering, often on both sides of the fairway, and heavy greenside bunkering, in many cases surrounding the greens. I was interested to see whether his style on this course, built early in his career (1948) differed from that of his later courses. Perhaps his earlier work was a bit more strategic and it became more target-oriented and penal later (like after his revision of Oakland Hills).

Nope—this is a Trent Jones course like most of the others with narrow, bunkered fairways and heavily bunkered greens. One difference may be that the greens on the Dunes aren’t too large—but this just makes the Dunes one of the most challenging courses that I’ve played, especially on the iron game. More than any other course that I’ve played, the Dunes demands consistently well-struck, high iron shots. If this isn’t your strength, you’re gonna have a rough time with this course.

I was a bit disappointed by the lack of variety in the course. The drives and approaches to the greens felt pretty similar. Almost every green has bunkers left and right and many have them front and back too. This diminishes the importance of where in the fairway you place your drives—although just hitting the fairways here given their narrowness is an accomplishment.

Having said that, I liked the course overall. Its major strength is the excellent piece of property; gently rolling with plenty of frontage on the area’s coastal marshes. And Trent Jones’ routing is excellent, easily walkable with most greens perched on natural rises and excellent use of the marsh. The latter is most noteworthy on the famous 90 degree+ dogleg right, long par 5 thirteenth, which is one of the best par 5s that I’ve played.

In general as I’ve become a better player, courses like this appeal to me more. It fits the ‘tough but fair’ cliche, but the more courses that I’ve played, the more I realize that it’s an accomplishment to have 18 consistently strong holes without any stupid or weak ones. This certainly characterizes the Dunes. And while angles into the greens may not be so important, the fairway bunkering patterns are varied and someone who can shape the ball off the tee will be at a great advantage over someone who cannot. Simply put, this is a real golfer’s course, fitting for a course that has hosted several professional tournaments. And I couldn’t help but think that the course would be an excellent venue for the PGA Championship now that it’s been moved up to May.

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Get comfortable with the look and feel of the medium-long par 4 first hole because you’re going to encounter drives like this one several times during the round. The fairway bunkers are staggered with the first on the right from about 230-250 and the second on the left about 275 out. I mentioned in my intro that angles from the fairway aren’t so important and that isn’t quite right. Here as at many greens there are front-left and front-right bunkers and the green angles behind these. So whichever side the pin is on, you’ll have a slightly better angle from the opposite side of the fairway.
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But in any case trajectory, spin, and distance control are more important than angle because you can’t run the ball onto most of the greens.

The similar length par 4 second illustrates the importance of shaping the ball off the tee on this course. The fairway turns ends at fairway bunkers at about the 230-240 range and turns left. Unless you can pop a high ball over the trees on the left, you either need to (1) layup and have a long approach to an elevated, well-defended green or (2) hit a draw around the corner. I opted for (1) and had a 6-iron into a green which, as you can see, is not great for hitting a 6-iron.

Three is another medium-long par 4 that’s a bit more open off the tee. Unlike most holes, there’s some room to run the ball onto the green here. Also, the green is quite large, which makes this one of the course’s easier par 4s.

Like two, shaping your drive right-to-left is critical on the short par 5 fourth. Depending on which tees you’re playing, it’s about a 220-250 carry over the bunkers in the left corner of the fairway. Ideally you’d carry these with a bit of a draw. If you pick a line too far right and hit it straight, you can easily run through the fairway. The layup is straightforward.

But if you’re going for the green, the shot is thrilling. Yes it’s just a carry over a pond and anyone can do that. But—and maybe it’s because the hole is just the right length for me—the combination of a drive that if I pulled of just right left me a yardage that was doable (~210) but which required a well-struck iron shot made the hole really exciting to play. It’s certainly heroic but it’s also strategic—if you take on more risk of the tee, your reward is being able to reach the green. And then you get to do it again but this time if you fail, it’s a drop.

The mid-iron par 3 fifth is a pretty similar shot to most of the par 4 approaches. Aim to the middle of the green for safety or carry the bunker/shape your iron at higher risk to get close if the pin is on one of the wings.

Six is another ~400-415 yard (from the second-to-back tees) with a very tough tee shot. The issue here is that while there’s a bunker on the left if you push it right, the further you go, the easier it is to run into the live oaks. Again, only real bombers will be able to carry the fairway bunkers (~270). If you can consistently carry the fairway bunkers, you need to move back a set of tees.

Seven is very similar to the previous hole off the tee but the approach is different: this time the green is wide and shallow with a bunker right in the middle in the front. A long drive is important here so that you can hit something with enough loft to carry the bunker and stop your ball on the green. This will be a very difficult approach for most.

Same deal with two bunkers left off the tee on the ~515 yard par 5 eighth and bunkers fronting the green. You’d have to hit a very long drive to consider going for this one in two because over the green is a short grass swale. Actually going for the green might not be so bad if you miss on the right side and can pitch uphill into the length of the green. Otherwise layup to your favorite yardage short of the bunkers that start 90 yards short of the green.

The starter tells you to look right of the green when you play the par 3 ninth because it’s the one time that you get to see the ocean. But the heavily bunkered, wide-yet-shallow green was commanding my entire attention. For a course that’s long on demanding iron shots, this is one of the most demanding. I can’t imagine playing into this green from the 220 yard back tees…although I guess for Bryson, Brooks, and the bunch that’d only be a 6 or a 7-iron anyway, which is what I hit from the ~170 blue tees.

The back nine begins with a shorter par 4 (~350) that substitutes a blind pond for fairway bunkers. The pond is about 265 from the blues, so stay short of that. The fairway is quite wide short of the pond and if the pin’s on the right, you can give yourself a better angle by playing well to the left.

Eleven is another just-under 400 yard par 4 but with a bit of a different look to previous holes as it borders the marsh on the right. The marsh doesn’t (or I should say shouldn’t) come into play off the tee but if you hit it >280, you either need to move back a set of tees or play a bit to the left (over the edge of the bunker) because the marsh sneaks in on the right at about 290. In fact, left off the tee generally gives you a better angle into the green because the green is deepest from here.

Unless you’re playing the 245 yard championship tees (I’m not even sure where they are), the twelfth is probably the most straightforward and easiest hole on the course.

Neither straightforward nor easy is the famous par 5 thirteenth but it’s certainly none the worse for that. This is a truly great hole. The water runs up the right side off the tee and the further you go, the more it narrows the fairway. But it’s important not to stray too far away from it because that makes the absolutely heroic second shot much more difficult.

The second shot is probably the best that I’ve seen on a par 5 (the similar eleventh on Blackwolf Run—River is close). If you’ve hit a 260 yard drive into the middle of the fairway, you’ve only got about 150 to reach the second inlet but the water is omnipresent up the right and it’s natural to place safe a bit further to the left. If you overdo this, you can run into the trees. A perfectly placed drive of 280 would give you a shot at the green but the water cuts in again at about 200 and you’d better be sure to hit your approach solidly.

But remember, many will have shied away from the water. A 250 yard drive in the left rough leaves you >160 minimum to carry past the first inlet. Anything shorter and you’ll have to play short of this and probably won’t reach the green in three. It’s really important not to be too far from the water off the tee here because it makes the second much more difficult.

The green is a bit of a weak point, having the standard front-left and front-right bunkers. It would have been better if Trent Jones had only bunkered the left side of the green so that the best angle in was from near the water on the right. But the pin on this day was in the back-left and with this pin, that’s how the hole plays anyway.

Fourteen is yet another tough, medium-long par 4 with bunkers left off the tee and front-left, right, and back bunkers. Like six, you can run through the fairway into the live oaks on the right if you hang one out here.

Fifteen is a very awkward short par 5 that features another blind water hazard, this time short of the bunkers on the right. It shouldn’t be a problem unless you mishit your drive or are playing too far back. The two fairway bunkers on the right, on the other hand, will be a problem for everyone. Only one bunker in front of this green but it’s big and the green is quite elevated and deep, but narrow. It demands a very precise iron shot and misses, especially deep, will be punished with very difficult pitches.

Stay short of the lone fairway bunker about 250 out on the right on the par 4 sixteenth…because the hole is only 350 and you don’t need to go any further than this. The green is completely encircled by bunkers and pitches pretty good from back-to-front.

I feel like the par 3 seventh is kind-of a Trent Jones par 3 template: wide, shallow green with big bunkers front-right and front-left and another build into a mound behind the middle of the green. You see this exact same hole at Ft. Belvoir near D.C. and at Oakland Hills—and, funny enough, in all three cases, it’s the seventeenth hole. Not my favorite but at least this one is only ~150 yards; the other two are ~200.

Appropriately, the Dunes concludes with one of its toughest holes. There are left and right tees here. The hole is a slight dogleg right from the right tees and a slight dogleg left from the left. We were on the left tees and while there are no fairway bunkers, it’s easy to run through the fairway into the trees on the right. You only want to go about 240 from the blues here, which sets up a short iron over a pond to another severe back-to-front pitched green. Again, nothing to do but be precise with your iron.

So that’s the Dunes, a course which I really wanted to see and which was in one sense disappointing but in another fulfilling. It was disappointing in its lack of variety; it felt like I was facing the same tee shot along bunkers and the same approach shot to an elevated green surrounded by bunkers on almost every hole. I thought that given this course’s consistently high placement near the top of Trent Jones’ portfolio, it would have done something a little different, at least once in awhile. But no, it’s the standard Trent Jones, different only in that there are probably a few more bunkers and the greens are even more consistently elevated than usual. It reminded me very much of his course at Boyne Highlands in northern Michigan—another notoriously hard course.

But as a low handicap golfer, I also found the course fulfilling. Simply put, you have to drive the ball well and hit your irons well. You also have to be thinking about your approaches into the greens because many have pretty good pitch and you need to stay below the hole. This is especially true because the maintenance of this course is impeccable and the greens are like putting on glass—even on this day when they had sanded them. There’s simply no way to a decent score here without good driving and excellent iron play, unless you have Seve-like skills from bunkers.

From a ratings standpoint, among it's Myrtle Beach brethren, I can’t place this course above the artful Caledonia, which possesses in spades the variety that this course lacks. But the Dunes is probably second, beating True Blue by a touch because of the latter's occasionally awkward holes and routing. The Dunes is still very good, worthy of placement in the top 100 public courses, although probably not its current top 50 spot (probably somewhere in the 75-90 range). And I’d wholeheartedly endorse this course as the site of a big tournament—it’s plenty long enough and I’m pretty sure that the smallish, elevated greens would give the pros plenty of trouble (Collin Morikawa would love this place). Now that they’re reverting all the classic major championship venues back to their original style (or at least a Gil Hanse version of it), it’d be nice to have an exemplar of the Trent Jones style. This course is certainly that.