Angels Crossing
Vicksburg, Michigan

Overall Grade: B+
Value: A
Walkability: B
Course Conditions: A
Course Design: B+ (I question the design of a number of the greens)
Practice Facility: C
Food: Incomplete (I didn’t see any)
Teacher’s Comments: A spacious, interesting layout that’s designed to play like a 100-year-old classic.

Angels Crossing, in Vicksburg, Michigan, is a course of Brobdingnagian proportions. Laid out over 700 acres of prairie, woodlands and marsh, it offers a sense of space that I have seldom encountered on a course.

That isn’t to say that the course is unwalkable, for walk it I did. Unlike some “modern” courses, where the holes are separated by great distances, tees follow greens at very reasonable distances at Angels Crossing. The longest walk by far is from the clubhouse to the first tee.

It’s that first walk, though, that conveys an immediate sense of space and isolation. From the clubhouse, you walk past the practice green and tees, down a hill, follow a path along a river, cross over a marsh on a wooden walkway, pass through a covered bridge and then head back uphill to the first tee. It’s not until you reach that plateau that you actually can see the course.

The GolfBlogger is doing a little bit of an informal, unscientific survey here: What’s the most you’ve paid for a round of golf? Name the course, location and price.

For me, it was $85 at the Little Traverse Bay Golf Club in Harbor Springs, Michigan. Nice course, great vistas.

Don’t worry. Summer is coming. This photo’s from the Hickory Creek Golf Course in Canton, Michigan.

With all of the advances in clubheads, shafts and balls, the average golfer isn’t getting any better. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that handicaps are actually going up.

The Scotsman has an interesting—if rather depressing—take on the subject.: that golf courses are being made more difficult to cater to the top one percent. Longer holes, tighter fairways and faster greens are negating the advantages of better club technology.

Super Coach Hank Haney said:

“The biggest factor, however, is that golf courses today are generally so much more difficult than they used to be. What makes a course difficult - and you tend to see this whenever a big event is being played and the greenkeeper has prepared the place specially - is fast greens. Not only are fast greens more difficult to putt on and chip to, you have to hit your drives into the right spots if you are to have any chance of getting your approach shots close to the hole. When the ball runs after it lands, the game is always harder.”

In the article, author John Huggan also points out what the GolfBlogger has been saying for some time: making the courses longer just plays into the hands of the big hitters like Tiger and Mickelson. It’s true that on super long courses, the uber-drivers will be hitting into greens with a seven iron istead of a wedge. But the rest of the field will be hitting into those fast greens with a four iron or wood. (On some small scale, I know exactly what that feels like. I’m typicallyusing a club or two more than my playing partners for the approach.).

Unfortunately, Huggan also shoots down GolfBlogger’s pet theory about how to Tiger proof a course—to make the rough longer. The big hitters, Huggan contends, don’t really care about being in the rough (unless you make it US Open long, which I suppose the players wouldn’t tolerate.)

But there is a glimmer of hope—and something to think about at the end of the article, in another quote from Haney:

“We need to have more courses set up like Hoylake was for last year’s Open. There were different ways to play that course - you had choices. You could hit it long, and risk getting into trouble. Or you could hit short of the trouble. Or you could hit it medium length, and have a great week accuracy-wise. Hoylake rewarded everything, and penalised only long and crooked. The typical course on the PGA Tour doesn’t do that. ”

So here’s something to contemplate: a complete rethinking of how courses are designed—or perhaps a return to the way courses used to be designed. Imagine a course where every style of play would be rewarded, so long as you executed your shots and putted well. Where on every shot, a player had several options, each with its own risk and reward. (Like Augusta before the current regime fell into the Tiger proofing trap).  It could be done, but I’m guessing that most of today’s celebrity course “designers” wouldn’t be up to the task.

Just as the historic Rackham Course is about to fall prey to the greedy claws of the developers, so too are other excellent courses from around the country.

Regular reader Marty Lyle points out that the Bear Trace at Chickasaw course—a 2001 Golf Digest Top 10 Course—is in danger of being closed. Lyle writes:

“The closest course to Jackson and Memphis (5th and 1st most populous cities), the Bear Trace Chickasaw, is in danger of being closed.  The course is less than 10 years old, and was placed in a rural county as it was the home county of a powerful state senator.  This course must be one of the most beautiful courses not on an ocean.  Memphis itself may soon close an inner city wooded public course, the Davy Crockett.

I have played Chickasaw about ten times in 2005 and 2006, and it is a great course. “

Your friendly neighborhood Golf Blogger has got this half-baked idea about the need for a national clearinghouse / index of public courses that are in danger. I’ll have to think on it some more.