Huntmore Golf Club
Brighton, Michigan

Grade: B
Teachers’ Comments: Tough.

Huntmore Golf Club is a deceptively tough course that requires precision shot making ability. Players who spray their shots are going to run up their scores and run out of balls.

Located near Brighton, Michigan, Huntmore is cut through swamp, field and forest. Fairways are tight, and there always seems to be a tree, a pond, a patch of grass or a swamp to make you pay for an error. The greens, too are tough.

When playing Huntmore, pay attention to the yardages. As a bogey golfer, I found the white tees offered plenty of course, even though they measured only 5995 yards. At that distance, Huntmore plays to a 68.8/127. Playing the blacks at 7,105 finds you at 74.8/143—as tough a course as I’ve seen in the area.

Local knowledge is at a premium at Huntmore. There are blind shots, deceptive lines and hidden surprises aplenty. I was lucky to play with a regular. Otherwise, I think I would have completely missed the fairways on a couple of holes. The fourth, in particular, gives no real clues as to what you’re supposed to do. I also was grateful to have someone telling me where to aim on the seventh, where the fairway seems to disappear in the landing area, and on the thirteenth, where the fairway runs at a right angle to the line off the tee.

Conditions on the day I visited were just so-so. The fairways were not in particularly good shape, with swampy areas and dead grass. Some areas looked uncared for. The greens were better, but nothing to brag about.

Huntmore’s prices are very good. As of this writing, you can play for $25 during the week, and they have an email club that regularly sends better deals.

I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to play Huntmore, but if you live in the area, it could be a part of your regular rotation.

You can see photos of Huntmore Golf Club here. When browsing, take into account the fact that it was a hazy, very humid morning, making everything look much more drab than it actually is. The photo above is the par 3 third.

The Nightmare
West Branch, Michigan

Grade: A-
Teacher’s Comments: A fun and beautiful course. Management needs to allow people to walk.

I’d be surprised if there’s a course more inappropriately named than The Nightmare. No bad dream, it’s instead a fun and beautiful layout that gives the bogey golfer a good chance to score well.

Cut through pine and broadleaf forests near West Branch, Michigan, The Nightmare’s most notable feature are the generously wide fairways and lack of trouble off the tee. If you’re even moderately accurate with the driver, you can grip it and rip it on every par four and five. The course tips out at 7020 from the blues and plays to a 73.9/132. I played from the white tees at 6527 (71.4/130) and don’t think it was as difficult as that might suggest. Had I not been stiff from the drive from Ann Arbor and blown up with a nine on the final hole, I think I could have broken 80.

The greens on the course are quite large, making the course even more accessible for the bogey golfer. There’s really no excuse for missing too many of these, but your first putt may be a long lag from the hole. That’s ok, though, because I found that the ball did just what I expected with the flat stick. There were no particularly tricky reads, or putts where I thought “wow, I didn’t see that coming.”

The Nightmare has two principal defenses: length and bunkers. Sixty five hundred-plus from the whites is quite a course. With the elevation changes, holes frequently played much longer. Fairway bunkers are the other threat. By my count, there were 34 such guarding the left or right (or both) sides of landing areas. An equal number guard the areas around the greens. Together, they have the potential to catch a player who is careless in lining up his shots. But playing out of the sand is not a certainty. I managed to avoid all until the 18th, when I caught two.

Course conditions on the day I played were terrific. The tee boxes, fairways and greens all were in top shape. Flowerbeds, fieldstone retaining walls, and other landscaping features added to the already beautiful north woods setting. The cart paths were in better condition than most of the roads in Ann Arbor. Mid afternoon, everything was still nicely cut.

It’d be difficult for me to pick a hole as my “favorite.” I thought the par 4 first, at 321 yards was a nice warm up. There’s no trouble off the tee, and the “rough” is so wide, I don’t think its possible to lose a ball here. The sixteenth (shown above) was a lot of fun, requiring a decently aimed tee shot, and an accurate iron to a hole set near water. The par 5 eighteenth is a nice way to finish. But in truth, all of the holes were pleasant. You can see a gallery of photos here.

The clubhouse is nothing to talk about, and the food is greatly overpriced, basic 7-11 fare. The Nightmare needs better meal facilities to match its ambitions as an upscale resort course. Eat in West Branch before your tee time, or play to return there after. That’s a minus for the course.

There are two other reasons why I don’t give The Nightmare top grades. The first is that they don’t allow walking. I asked at the clubhouse if I could walk, and the clerk said “its way too hilly to walk.” Pshaw. Aside from some graceful elevation changes and the long uphill sixth, there isn’t a topographic feature there worthy of the name “hill.” In fact, the course is perfectly designed for walking, with tees following relatively closely to greens (my guess is that the architect intended walkers).  Ironically, my cart gave out on the last hole and I had to abandon it and walk in—carrying my bag. The truth is that carts are a cash cow for management, and they don’t want to take a chance of losing that money machine.

And that brings me to the other issue. As beautiful as the course is, The Nightmare is overpriced: $60 weekdays and $70 on weekends (Fri. - Sun.). That’s in the price range of top Gaylord resort courses. For me, West Branch is the place where we stop to refuel on the way to those Up North resorts, not a destination in itself. In my opinion, they’re over reaching. On the Friday I played, went around the entire course and saw just one other group, who kindly let me through. My recommendation is to play if you can get a steep discount.

I played Worthington Manor golf course in Urbana, Maryland on Friday. It’s a terrific track.

The Los Angeles Country Club has a terrific pdf with descriptions of their restoration of Captain George Thomas’ design for the North Course. It’s full of before and after photos, and descriptions of the work.

Golfweek has its list of top college golf courses. Two of them are the University of Michigan Golf Course (number 12) and the University of Michigan’s Radrick Farms golf course (number 16). I’m surprised that Michigan State’s Forest Akers didn’t make the cut—it’s every bit as nice as Radrick Farms, although much more heavily played. Radrick is a semi-private course for University staff and alumni only, while Forest Akers is open just about everyone (as near as I can tell ... I just walked on one day with no tee time or credentials). Forest Akers is a bit more beaten up at any time than Radrick.

I’ve played four Big Ten courses—the two Michigan Courses, Forest Akers and Indiana University’s home course. The Ohio State University’s Scarlet is next on my list. What I’d really like to do is to play it on October 10 of this year on my way back from a football game in Morgantown, WV. I wonder if anyone out there can hook me up ...

The Wall Street Journal has one of those sky-is-falling articles on how the weather this summer is ruining the greens.

The sustained record-breaking heat across much of the U.S. this summer, combined with high humidity and occasional heavy rain, is killing the greens on many golf courses. A handful of high-profile courses have already had to close, and if the heat continues, others are likely to follow. Golfers themselves deserve part of the blame for insisting that putting surfaces be mown short and fast even in weather conditions in which such practices are almost certain to ruin them.

A proposed golf complex in Omaha, Nebraska would pay homage to St. Andrews while doing something very unusual: It would be designed to accommodate players with vintage clubs.

What would further set apart a riverfront course as a potential tourist destination in Omaha is that (Golf Architect Tom) Doak would design it in a retro style that allows play with pre-1900 hickory-shaft clubs and replica, limited-flight golf balls — and with the golfer wearing replica garb — while still being a modern, championship-length course.

Multiple tees would be built so the course could play as short as 4,500 yards to accommodate use of the limited-flight balls.

“Imagine,’’ (Gary) Wiren said, “you walk into the clubhouse and you get asked, ‘How do you like to play your golf today? Modern, classical (1920s equipment) or antiquarian (pre-1900s)? This would be something nobody in the world has.”

Doak said the land he has seen would lend itself to a course that is “low-profile,” or subtle, in design because the ground is relatively flat. Like St. Andrews, the course could be just two holes wide, with an outward nine and an inward nine.
Distances from greens to the next tee would be short, to promote walking and possible use of caddies.

“I’d hope you could make this a no-(riding) cart course,’’ Doak said.

The facility also would contain a museum that would hold Gary Wiren’s golf collection, a multi-million dollar accumulation of rare clubs and balls, golf related books, postcards and sheet music, photographs and other collectables.

What a great idea!!