Another Northern Michigan Summer Trip Post

[Jose c.]

Second for champions hill. + your only 15min away stop in five shores in beulah for a beer afterward. 

[putterboy75]

Ditto @Shriner Champion Hill is a challenging, beautiful golf course. You can tell they barely touched the land and the vistas looking across the property from the top of the 9th & 15th tee box are among the best I've ever experienced in the game. Champion Hill pretty much sums up everything good about N. Michigan... family owned and operated, great value, I could go on.

 

Will be interested to hear what you think about Mountain Ridge. A lot of the better known instructors in the area have made a stop at some point at the golf academy at crystal mountain, which has to be worth something. That said, remember that CM makes most of its revenue on the slopes, not the golf.

[AzSuperHack76]

Thanks for all the recommendations. We had a great time. 
 

Hemlock Golf Club was a challenging but fair layout, greens were very quick and rolling true. Had a great time there. 
 

Champion Hill really is a gem, just an amazing layout with excellent use of the land. Conditions wise wasn’t the best but by no means was it in bad shape. There was a good amount of rain so they were unable to mow the greens so they were rolling pretty slow. But I could imagine how that course would play if it was dried out. Will defiantly be back.
 

Crystal Mt., Mountain Ridge was a blast. Conditioning was good and the greens were fast and true like Hemlock. Sand was a lacking but overall the course was in good shape. Like hemlock it was tight but still fair. 
 

Arcadia South, just an absolute beauty. Design, conditioning, pace of play, customer service, everything was nearly perfect. They received 2 inches of rain the night before so it played pretty soft, didn’t get the true South course experience but was still an amazing course. Really looking forward to getting back to the South Course as well.
 

Arcadia Bluffs, the complete opposite of the South course. From the bag drop guy being clearly not wanting to be at his job that day to the horrendous pace of play. 5:40 and had to quit after 16 because of darkness.  No ranger/player assistant, multiple fivesomes on the course, and no, not a caddie in the groups ahead of us. 3 foursomes went out and just screwed everyone else on the course by joining up, going back and forth between the groups and in general being complete and total D-Bags. Course did absolutely nothing. Restaurant botched our dinner reservations as well but at least they made every effort to make up and show great customer service. The golf staff could take some lessons from the restaurant staff. I know Bluffs is usually slow from past experiences there but 540 and having to quit because of darkness was insane. 

[Jose c.]

So disappointing to hear.

[knickerbocker]

I have had the opposite experience at the Bluffs course.  I have seen them make groups skip a hole if they get behind on pace of play and even gave us a partial refund because of groups in front of us being idiots.  

[AzSuperHack76]

33 minutes ago, knickerbocker said:

I have had the opposite experience at the Bluffs course.  I have seen them make groups skip a hole if they get behind on pace of play and even gave us a partial refund because of groups in front of us being idiots.  

That would have been great, unfortunately there wasn't a player assistant cart on the course. It was an odd experience all the way around, and one that I had not experienced there before.

[Jose c.]

18 hours ago, knickerbocker said:

I have had the opposite experience at the Bluffs course.  I have seen them make groups skip a hole if they get behind on pace of play and even gave us a partial refund because of groups in front of us being idiots.  

I second this, maybe college kids going back to school is effecting the overall work force.