Sage Run

I played Sage Run in the summer of 2020 as part of a trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan focused on an outing at Greywalls, which I hadn’t played in almost 10 years. But I’ve also been interested in playing the other courses that they advertise in the UP golf packages: Sweetgrass, Timberstone, and the newer (2018) Sage Run. Based on photographs, I was particularly interested in Sage Run, which appeared to be on interesting rolling terrain and have a rustic look, a bit like Diamond Springs, with bluegrass fairways and minimal shaping. The trip to the UP for Greywalls gave me reason to detour about an hour-and-a-half south into another time (Central Time) to check out these other courses.
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I usually find that the pictures that I see of courses tell me a lot about the course and are a pretty good predictor of whether I’ll like it. With Sage Run, what I saw is (mostly) what I got: a nice (and secluded) rolling site, with a rustic look. But pictures don’t tell you everything and there were two things about Sage Run that I hadn’t expected: (1) how hilly it was in places and (2) how difficult a test of golf it was.

Let’s start with the latter because it will help start us on our tour of the holes: Sage Run is difficult. And it’s difficult primarily because of the bunkering. There are a lot of bunkers and as has become common practice in our ‘New Golden Age’ of golf course architecture, they’re often in the middle or at least encroach into the middle of the line of play. So you have to go over them or around them. We can see this in the tee shots on the first hole, a gentle dogleg to the right and the second hole, a gentle dogleg to the left. Both holes offer you an opportunity to go around the fairway bunkers although both holes have slightly reverse camber fairways, i.e. the slope of the land is the opposite of the direction of the dogleg. This will also be an issue on latter holes.

The drive at the first and the first of many either around or over fairway bunkers.

Then the hole turns right and if you carried the fairway bunker and stayed right, you'll have a better angle of approach to the green, which has a bunker front left.

The second doglegs gently left over the fairway bunker on the left.

The next photo is of the approach to the second green and shows an example of what will become my primary issue with the course: that bunkers are often in the middle of the line of play and don’t give you sufficient contours and short grass to play around them. The second hole is a long par 4 with a reverse camber dogleg left fairway and this green side bunker is right in front of the green. The ground slopes gradually from left-to-right, so we might think that we’d be able to run the ball in from the left. And we’d be able to do that, if they cut this grass to fairway height. They haven’t so for my liking, the hole doesn’t really work. It’s one-too-many challenging elements.

The approach from the right side is blocked by a bunker in the front middle of the green. There should be more short grass short and left of the green to enable a run on approach.

We have a similar tee shot at the par five third, except this time the fairway bunkers cross almost the entire fairway, so you have to carry or lay-up short. So I wasn’t a huge fan of the tee shot (I got stuck in the rough on top of the bunkers…), but the rest of the hole is beautiful, with the green sited on what appears to be a natural small hilltop and bunkers built into the gradual upslope. This hole captures both the beauty and the challenge of Sage Run—it’s quite difficult, but the elements (green, bunkers) are well-placed and well-shaped. It’s aesthetically pleasing and makes for interesting golf.

The drive on three, where a good drive should carry at least the left of the two fairway bunkers (mine didn't). Then the hole turns right.

The approach to the green is very attractive.

And the green is on a small, natural knoll.

After another tough long par 4 we come to the par 3 fifth, which is, I think, one of the ballsiest holes in the state of Michigan. Michigan, especially northern Michigan is known for its drop-shot par 3s. Too much so; architects have screwed up their own routings just so they could include a drop-shot par 3 (one of the other UP tour courses, Timberstone, is twice-guilty of this violation). Well, this hole makes up for some of that. It’s the most steeply uphill par 3 that I’ve played—probably 70 or 80 uphill from the back tees for an about 200 yard hole. It plays up to the top of the property’s main feature, a large hill (which they call a drumlin) that sits in the middle of the property. This is the only hole that I’ve seen that compares with the first at Painswick in England for uphill severity. It’s probably a bit much for most golfers (although my 20-something handicap companion managed), but there is some room to play short up the right (although it’s still blind).

Waaay uphill to the par 3 fifth green. I see this hole as an overseas sister to...

...the straight uphill 220 yard first at Painswick in southwestern England.

Despite the severity, I admire this hole and its next-door neighbor, the short par 4 sixteenth for tacking the land head on rather that taking you on a 400 yard cart ride from the previous green either around or to the top of the hill. Some of my favorite holes in England are the uphill par 3s and architects seemed to use them as a way to climb the hills that in the early 20th century, you couldn’t just drive a golf cart up (and you still can’t because almost no one takes carts, which they call ‘buggies’). You have to appreciate an architect who, when confronted with a difficult situation, takes the challenge head on and uses it as an opportunity to create something different. Paul Albanese has done that with the fifth and sixteenth holes at Sage Run and it’s something that he should be commended for, even though it will cause some golfers a lot of grief.

The sixth is a very nice long par 4, playing downhill and around a long fairway bunker left back uphill to a green with several bunkers short right. This is another hole that makes good use of the terrain and has bunkers that are well-placed both in terms of aesthetics and strategy.

Downhill, then uphill to the left on the par 4 sixth.

After a fairly nondescript part 3, we come to the short par 4 eighth hole. It’s based on a nice concept—you can go for the green by carrying the bunkers up the hill to the left or you can play safe to the right. But like a lot of short par 4s, it gets in a bit of trouble by trying to do too much. One, the lay-up fairway to the right is fairly narrow and slopes right, into long grass and the woods. This spooked both single-digit handicap me and my aforementioned 20-something companion. The tree right of the bunker combined with what looked to be woods encroaching ahead on the right also made the long right lay-up seem risky. We drove the golf cart up just short of the green to see if this area was more forgiving than it looked from the tee, but there wasn’t enough room to make me feel secure that I could go over the tree and still hold a shot in this area. So I just went for the green, which is completely blocked by bunkers, into one of which I went.

​If you’re a decent hitter but can’t make the long carry to the green, I think that the best play is about a 200-220 yard shot directly at the green, into the lay-up area short of the bunkers. But I thought that the hole was a bit too complicated and that the ‘safe’ options were too difficult for many players. I’d remove the tree, expand the fairway to the right a bit, and reduce the bunker area in front of the green so that there’s some space for a long but not super-long hitter to skirt them with an accurate tee shot.

The aggressive play on this confusing short par 4 is over the bunker in the middle, but unless you can carry it to the green (at least 260), you need to keep it around 210 yards. It's not clear to me the best way to lay up to the right.

The back nine begins with two more difficult long par 4s, each doglegging left. Ten has a pretty severe (and narrow) reverse camber fairway (with a fairway bunker on the left) while eleven again requires a carry over fairway bunkers, much like the third. There’s a bit more room to play around them here, although there could be more short grass to the right. I haven’t talked much about the green complexes and surfaces, but these two holes provide a good opportunity to do so. The tenth is a very nice example of green siting/construction. While the left-to-right slope is gradual, it would have been too steep to just lay a green--so Albanese dug a bunker on the right side and built the right side of the green up slightly. Standard stuff, but the work is subtle and the shaping blends in very well with the slope of the land.

The drive on ten doglegs left, so go over this pile of rocks.

The very attractive green, opening to an approach from the left side.

The eleventh goes over these two fairway bunkers, then left.

The eleventh green is built into a downslope and, unlike too many architects, Albanese let it slope naturally away from the line of play rather than build up the back to make it back-to-front sloping. I don’t know why architects don’t work with slopes like this more often rather than build up a big hill to fight them (and requiring a bunch of drainage at the low end). And in addition to the pleasant tilt of the complex, this green has interesting (but hard to see in this picture) interior contours. This green probably has the most interesting surface contours on the course. Overall, I’d say that the course is more noteworthy for its choice of green sites and construction of the green complexes than for the green surface contours themselves. The latter are very good, but it’s the green sites and the complexes that stand out and are among the better sets of green complexes on a Michigan public course.

The eleventh green slopes away and to the right from the line of play.

The twelfth is a nice par 5, although probably with a few too many bunkers in the line of play. The thirteenth is a very good par 4 with another excellent and beautifully shaped green site on the top of a hill to the right. This might be the best green site on the course as it sits nicely in a saddle and gives you the opportunity to use the gentle right-to-left slope of the land to run the ball on the green.

A long drive that fails to hug the fairway bunkers closely enough on thirteen will leave you blocked behind this almost-dead hemlock tree.

Just short and right of the thirteenth green. The way that this green sits on the land is beautiful and also enables you to hit a run up shot if necessary.

This brings us to the fourteenth, another uphill par 3, but this time very long—about 240 from the back tee. But I think it works beautifully because again, Albanese gives you ample room to run the ball up on the left. This hole also reminds me of another—and very famous—hole in England—the heroic long par 3 thirteenth at the Addington. But I actually like this one more because while they’re the same distance, this hole gives you more room to run the ball on the green. Maybe that, plus the lack of jungle around the green makes it less heroic than its English counterpart, but it also makes it more playable.

The heroic, long par 3 fourteenth.

...which reminds me a little bit of the heroic par 3 thirteenth at The Addington just south of London. There's less room to run the ball on the green there, but it also isn't uphill.

The fifteenth is a downhill, long par 4 with staggered fairway bunkers on the left and right, but with ample room to play around them (at the expense of distance and a good angle to the green).

The downhill par 4 fifteenth.

This brings us to the sixteenth, sort-of a short par 4 companion to the par 3 fifth that goes up and over the drumlin. I suspect that most of the earthmoving for the course was done on this hole as Albanese had to create a fairway on the side of the hill. The shaping is still pretty minimal; just enough to create a low deck of fairway where a ball can hold. The longer hitter can either carry the fairway bunkers or try to run the ball up around them on the fairway to the right. I appreciated that here, unlike the approach to the 2nd, you have short grass and can use the contours to run the ball around the bunkers although as I learned, it’s pretty steep there to the right and the ball won’t run far. The green site is excellent; right at the top of the hill with the front half sloping toward the line of play and the back half away from it. This is right up there with the thirteenth as the best green site on the course and is another example of Albanese using the lay of the land to create something different and very interesting.

Sixteen, a short par 4 version of the fifth.

The green is at the crest of the hill and slopes up to the middle, then away to the back.

The course ends with a simple par 3 into the woods and a pretty awkward, long, reverse camber dogleg left par 5. It’s definitely not my favorite finish. We started on ten, so we played these holes at the turn—and I think that the course would be better if they flipped the nines because 8 and 9 would be good finishing holes and the start to each nine is similar.

The awkward drive on eighteen.

But Sage Run is an excellent addition to Michigan’s excellent slate of public golf courses. There are some excellent packages through the Island Resort where you can stay at their hotel/casino in nearby Harris and play their other course, Sweetgrass, plus Timberstone and Greywalls. And while it was going to be impossible to top Greywalls, I think that Sage Run is clearly the second-best of the big four UP courses. It’s also a great example of how norms have changed in golf course architecture. The shaping is more minimalistic, blending into the natural contours of the land and without all of the pointless mounding around the fairways and greens that mars so many Michigan public courses. They put a lot of work into the greens, both into choosing good green sites, blending them into the surroundings, and creating good surface contours. And there’s a lot of strategy, with ample use of centerline fairway bunkers that require the golfer to make decisions about whether to go over, around, or stay short.

For my liking, the bunkering is a bit overdone. The site has very good contour and as we’ve seen, is sometimes quite hilly. As with the greens at Greywalls, the golf course was always going to be enough of a challenge if the architect just followed the lay of the land, which DeVries did at Greywalls and Albanese did here. There was no need to compound the challenge with a lot of difficult features. So I think that about a quarter of the bunkers here could go and there could be little more short grass around them. This might reduce some of the strategy in the design, but it would create a bit more opportunity to use shot shaping and the contours of the land to go around the bunkers rather than having to go over them.

But again, my appreciation for the inclusion of so much strategy more than outweighs my issue with it being a bit overdone. That plus an excellent set of green complexes make Sage Run easily one of the top 20 public courses in the state.