Lake effect: Northern Michigan's natural surroundings create spectacular scenery—and even better golf

Golf Digest, Sept, 2001 by Matthew Rudy

Bay Harbor Golf Club is run like the private club it is for the 310 members (mostly property owners in the adjacent development or globetrotting serial club joiners). Guests at the Inn at Bay Harbor--a stunning 139-room Victorian hotel with a full-service spa and beach club--can play the course for $180, but nonguests will pay a Monterey Peninsula-like $240, assuming a tee time is available.

You can debate whether any course is worth such a steep fee (and play Arcadia Bluffs twice while you're at it), but Hills doesn't cheat those who are willing to spend the money. The 27-hole complex has three miles of direct frontage on the lake. The 500-yard seventh hole on the Links is a microcosm of that particular nine. It isn't especially long, even from the back tee, but it plays wildly differently depending on the wind. From the tee, it looks as if the world falls away into Lake Michigan down the right side of the fairway, but you've actually got plenty of room. The hole plays uphill the rest of the way to a green set on a promontory overlooking the water. A 40-yard wide runway of short grass funnels run-up shots onto the green, but miss right or long and you'll need rappelling gear, a hatchet and some scuba equipment to retrieve your wayward ball. Five other holes on the Links nine have direct lake frontage. Call it Whistling Straits East.

Northern Michigan's other ski resort giant, Shanty Creek (in Bellaire, only 20 miles from Boyne Mountain), has assembled its own cadre of prominent architects to bolster its four-season schedule. The Legend Golf Club, an Arnold Palmer design, has been a staple of resort play in Northern Michigan since it opened in 1985, but it has been overshadowed by new sibling Cedar River Golf Club, a Tom Weiskopf design cut from mature forest and straddling a mountain stream.

Weiskopf left most of the trees intact, which makes the course look as if it has been there for years. As you wind your way out of the forest to more exposed terrain after the first five holes, water takes the place of trees as the dominant design feature. The 383-yard seventh is protected on its entire left side by a small lake. The green juts into the water as well, and anything long or right is swallowed by bunkers. If the pin is on the left side of the 176-yard eighth, you've got to play a long iron over the same lake.

Any doubts about Shanty's commitment to golf are swiftly dispelled with a quick walk through the accompanying Lodge at Cedar River, a massive cedar structure with bold galvanized-steel flashing. Half the rooms overlook the 18th green, and throughout the lobby and other common areas, televisions hang in the corners--tuned perpetually to The Golf Channel.

The publicity generated by opulent openings at Bay Harbor and Shanty Creek has inspired less-traditional developers to try to capitalize. The United Auto Workers union, which represents the rank-and-file laborers at the big-three car manufacturers that dominate Michigan's economy, decided to diversify some of its pension holdings by investing in real estate.