Troon Golf & Travel - July/August 2011

Alittle more than an hour’s drive fur- ther north, the Alpine-themed town of Gaylord bills itself as America’s Summer Golf Mecca, thanks to 21 courses within an hour’s drive.

The largest Mecca properties are Treetops Resort with five award-winning courses, and the Bavarian-style Otsego Club and Resort and its two courses. The owners of the Otsego club also own the nearby Wilderness Valley Golf Club, home to Doak’s Black Forest golf course.

Three of the Treetops courses were designed by renowned golf instructor Rick Smith, who is also a partner in the ownership. Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Tom Fazio designed the other two. Jones coined the name Treetops while marveling at the 30- mile view from the tees that sit 120 feet above his signature sixth hole, a 180-yard par 3.

Doak’s aptly named Black Forest was his third design before his sensational renderings of Pacific Dunes and Old MacDonald at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand and the rest of his bucket list courses.

Putts on the severely undulated, roller coaster greens at Black Forest are real knee-knocking white knuckle rides. So too is navigating around the treacherous, deep and shaggy British-style bunker complexes that guard them.

“You can play this course over and over and you learn something new every time,” Ficorelli said. “I doubt anyone could get tired of playing this course.”

boyne highlands

born in 1947. Golfers at the Mountain can never blame a poor start on rushing to the first tee. The starting holes for the Monument and Alpine courses are reached by a mile-long cart ride up the side of a ski hill, through stands of stately pine trees to tees perched on top of the hill.

The older Alpine course is a personal favorite that plays down to long stretches of tree-lined rolling meadows with tantalizing views of nearby Deer Lake.

The resort has Michigan’s largest indoor water park, Avalanche Bay. With the attached luxurious Grand Mountain Lodge condominium hotel, the Mountain resort is a popular choice for families who golf.

Afew miles west, Boyne’s Mountain Resort in Boyne Falls is where the still family-owned company was

Just more than 30 miles north of the Mountain, Boyne’s other properties— the Highlands Resort in Harbor Springs, the Bay Harbor Golf Club, and the graceful Inn at Bay Harbor, almost a smaller sibling of San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado— are located around one of the state’s most alluring beauties, Little Traverse Bay.

Few hotels in the country can match the Inn at Bay Harbor’s stunning lakeside visage.

Northern Michigan’s entry into major league golf began at the Highlands. Boyne’s founder, the late Everett Kircher, a national ski pioneer, brought Robert Trent Jones to his Highlands ski resort in 1967 to build a golf course, mostly to keep his winter ski workers employed in the summer.