Whispering Pines
Grade: D

I took a day off last week for some mental R&R and ended up playing a course in Pinckney, Michigan called Whispering Pines.

Built in 1991, it measures 6017 yards from the middle tees with a slope of 121. But it's much harder than that. So hard, in fact, that I consider it an "unfair" course, and I don't think I'll go back.

The unfair part of Whispering Pines is that there doesn’t seem to be a safe landing spot anywhere on the course. Even tee shots that split the middle of the fairway ended up on sidehill lies, or on a difficult uphill (or downhill) slope. It was most discouraging to hit a good tee shot, only to watch the thing roll sideways off the fairway.

Now, I don’t mind a difficult course—in fact, I rather like the challenge of thinking my way around a course that’s really too much for my physical skills. But Whispering Pines didn’t seem to offer anywhere for me to “bail out.”

Back at school the next day, I found that I wasn’t the only one who considered it unfair. It’s apparently on the “do-not-play” list of some of the building’s better golfers.

On the positive side, its a very pretty course that manages to give a woodlands feel while winding its way through a golf course community. The visuals were the only reason this course didn’t flunk.