I got this photo along with a press release about the Danang Golf Club. It’s a Greg Norman design. Looks nice.

Sports Illustrated has a list of the most terrifying course names: Purgatory Golf Club, The Devil’s Claw, The Blue Monster, Hell’s Point, Deep Cliff, Shark River, Devil’s Lake (I’ve played this one), The Monster Course, and the Bigfoot Golf and Country Club.

You can read more about the courses here.

I got it into my mind to create a list of Halloween-Themed and scary golf course names. Here are a few I’ve come up with, but I’d really appreciate your contributions.

Pumpkin Ridge (Oregon)
Purgatory Golf Club (Indiana)
The Devil’s Claw (Arizona)
The Blue Monster (Florida)
The Monster (New York)
Hell’s Point (Virginia)
Devil’s Lake (Michigan)
The Dream and The Nightmare (Michigan)
Sleepy Hollow (Ohio, New York, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alaska)

I got out to play Stonehedge Golf Course in Augusta, MI during yesterday’s Indian Summer. It’s an absolutely fabulous course. There are two courses at Stonehedge (North and South) and the facility is part of a larger set of courses owned by the Gull Lake View group. These include Stonehedge North and South, Bedford Valley and Gull Lake View East and West. They’re all within a few miles of each other in Augusta near Battle Creek. I’ve also played Bedford Valley and Gull Lake View East. As a group, this may be the best complex of golf courses I’ve encountered. One of the best parts: they let you walk (unlike nearby Yarrow).

I’ve got full reviews of all of these coming soon.

A golf management company has accused a city in Florida of lying about the provenance of its Donald Ross course, and is suing to get out of its 20 year management contract.

If the city is lying, the lie is some 90 years old, because the claim has been made from the start. However, not all have believed the story. One doubter is Michael Fay, a founder of the so-called Donald Ross Society. Fay says that the course isn’t designed like a Ross and that city officials have been unable to come up with the proper papers.

I have little respect for that Society, though. In some communications I had with them earlier this year, it became evident that they had confused two Detroit area Ross courses, believing that Rouge and Rogell were one and the same. That’s not good research for a Society that claims to insist on proper documentation. If they’ve got that confused, who knows what else they have wrong.

There’s also the issue that many courses originally designed by Ross has been so bastardized over the years that they’re now barely recognizable. The St. Clair River Country Club, for example, sold several of the holes on its Ross course to a developer, and then hired a hack to add a few holes through a swamp. The transition is jarring. There are a couple of others in the Detroit area that have suffered similar fates.

Finally, on courses that are 90+ years old, I’m not surprised that there aren’t still bills of sale or other modern documentation around. The accounting and records keeping practices of many smaller municipalities and government organizations aren’t very good now—and surely weren’t that good back then.

Above: The ninth hole, a 186 yard par 3.

ating to 1927, the Western Golf and Country Club is a beautiful Donald Ross course located in Redford, Michigan along the banks of the River Rouge. It’s a private club and I’m grateful to board member Pat Hinman and Membership Director Jennifer Coleman for making me a guest for the day.

The Rouge is the central, unifying feature of Western. Although at that point in the watershed, the Rouge is little more than a glorified creek, the landscape it has carved comes into play on nearly every hole. Much of the course runs on one bank or the other of the deeply cut flood plain; the rest are located on the heights just above.

Following the river, Western is long and narrow; at only one point is it ever more than two fairways wide, and even that is separated by water. The first two holes move upstream, the third crosses the river and then the course turns back. The green of the par five fifth is the furthest the course wanders from the river; the sixth brings you back within sight. And so it goes.

The overall effect is that the course feels at once both large and cozy. Because there’s rarely more to see than the hole ahead, each made me feel as though my group had the course almost to itself. The same topography, however, made me feel as though I had undertaken a serious trek. (Don’t get me wrong; the course is eminently walkable and I was not at all fatigued. It just felt that way.)

The hole designs are what I’ve come to expect from Donald Ross courses in the metro Detroit area: fairly straightforward, with narrow fairways and small greens protected by oft scary bunkering. Changes in elevation from heights to flood plain and back also created some interesting optical illusions. Particularly when playing from the plain upward, holes and flags appeared much closer than they were.

As an aside, the course’s design reminds me very much of Rouge Park, another Ross course further down river. In conditioning, however, there’s no comparison.

I admit that I was a bit surprised to find excellent course conditions at Western. Over the course of the summer, I’d played several courses located along river flood plains and all had been badly damaged by the spring and summer’s alternating wet and dry conditions. The Donald Ross course at Rouge Park had been hammered by the weather. Michigan State University’s turfgrass center had even sent out a bulletin explaining how the wet weather drove oxygen out of the ground, preventing root development which then killed the grass as temperatures rose. In fact, virtually every course I visited this summer—regardless of geography—had seen better days.

There was little of that at Western. The fairways were full; the rough punishing and the greens smooth and slick. It was all the more surprising when I learned that the bulk of the course had been underwater during a spring flood. At one point, a greenskeeper apparently went out in a boat to rescue the flags—only the tops of which were visible.

y favorite holes on the course were the par threes. The third is a 190 yard shot from an elevated tee across the Rouge to a slightly elevated and mounded green flanked left by trees and right by a long bunker. The ninth is a 172 yard shot from a high bluff across the Rouge to a tiny green guarded front, left and right by bunkers. Both are particularly picaresque shots. Finally, the twelfth is a 165 yard shot from an elevated tee to a green nearly completely surrounded by bunkers. The elevation on all three make them play shorter, but the size of the greens and bunkers call for precision shots. It is as fine a collection of par threes as I can remember seeing on a course.

I had a fun round, made all the more enjoyable with the assist of a caddy. It’s the first time I’ve played with a real caddy and there’s nothing quite like it in golf.  In addition to the bag lugging and club cleaning duties, he fed me yardages, gave me aiming points, and offered putting advice—most of which I sadly was generally unable to execute. He was a very nice young man from a local high school (so I won’t mention his name), and made a great course even more enjoyable.

Above: A view of the Clubhouse from the 18th fairway, looking across the 10th fairway.

estern’s clubhouse is a sight to behold—a large classic structure that overlooks the tenth and eighteenth fairways, and the ninth green (the only point at the course more than two fairways wide.). The clubhouse dates to 1926, and clearly is appropriate to that era. It has a large main dining room, the “English Room,” Library, Western Grille, a main bar area and a Donald Ross room that just screams “Board of Directors.” The men’s locker room is immense and well appointed.

Of great interest to me was the men’s grille.Western has what I am sure is one of the area’s last remaining men’s only bar and grille areas. As you’d expect from a ‘Man Cave,” it’s got big screen televisions, a bar and no-frills seating and tables—all of which were bought with money donated by the gentlemen for just such purposes.

I feel lucky to have had the chance to play Western. If you’re interested in becoming a member, they’ve got some interesting specials running right now, which you can find here.

You can see a photo tour of the course, here.