Category: Courses
This section is for news about, and reviews of golf courses. If you've played a course and would like to contribute a review, contact the Editor.
Travel Books For Golf
If you’re travelling this summer, you might want to get one of these books which list top golf courses across the US. At the very least, you should visit your local library before setting out. After all, a vacation without golf is no vacation at all.
Zagat 2005 America’s Top Golf Courses (Zagatsurvey : America’s Top Golf Courses)
Fodor’s Golf Digest’s Best Places to Play, 6th Edition (Special-Interest Titles)
Whispering Pines Course Review
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.
Michigan v Michigan State
Here in Michigan, the rivalry never ends. Michigan football at the Big House. State basketball under Izzo. Both schools boast top flight hockey teams.
The rivalry even extends to their golf courses. Michigan has a 1931 Alister MacKenzie track, while Michigan State has a 1958 Bruce Matthews masterpiece. Which is best? It would take an impartial judge to tell, and I’m not impartial. Still, Brandon Tucker of Michigan Golf dot Com has taken a stab at the task.
Play Golf At Devil’s Lake
Golf In Northern Michigan
Every serious golfer has a few things that they want to do before they hang up their soft spikes: experience the Old Course; play Pebble Beach ... or maybe Pine Valley ... ; get a hole in one ... or another hole in one.
I don't know what's on your list, but let me humbly suggest another item: golf Northern Michigan at twilight.
I finished my twilight round tonight at about 10:05 p.m. The picture above was taken behind the 18th green, looking back over the course, just after I holed my putt (click on the picture to see a large version). I began my first round this morning at 7:30 a.m. (I shot a 94 on both rounds). Two rounds in the same day, nearly 15 hours apart. The picture really doesn't show it, but there was probably enough light to play another hole or two.
For my money, nothing beats a Northern Michigan twilight round. The air is cool; the breezes light; the shadows long and lingering. The Indian River Country Club wanders through primeval, cathedral-like pine forest, and in each hole's isolation, you forget that there exists any world outside of the tees, fairways and greens. I'm not given to poetry, but nights like these are poetry in and of themselves.
Its an experience you don't want to miss.
