AD is absolutely worth doing for the overall experience, no doubt about that. YMMV on your golf experience
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To be clear, not shitting over the FoH experience. Seeing the names and walking through the memorial wall is cool. The Nickel throwing tradition is special. It is a cool and unique experience but I think it is an overpriced round of golf but glad to have played it.
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We are reading from the same script my friend 
I missed the part where you had already played AD. I have not played Harbor Shores but it does pop on TV.
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That’s what it seemed like driving by - not something I’d want to spend 5 hours doing, but if I can get a 3.5hr 18 there might be worth a go just to have done it, with a few interesting shots but also a good way to play trackman and try to put up a number.
If you haven’t been, Pigeon’s Creek is a more interesting version of the same class course. Would recommend.
Also in the region at a similar tier, I have yet to try Winding Creek, Crestview, Terra Verde, or Western Greens. Not recommending any of them specifically, just noting they exist and that I’d try pretty much any course once.
I’m starting to suspect you sickos have corrupted me with a wealth of quality golf experiences and now I struggle to enjoy boring architecture / low grade public golf.
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I played Terra Verde on July 4th… Just a PAINFULLY slow round but expected for a holiday round. Some interesting elevation changes and not bad for the price. Tips out at around 5900yds, IIRC, but not necessarily easy out there. Could use some bells or something on a few blind shots, can see group easily getting hit on, on a few of the holes. Hard to beat 18 holes w/ cart for about $40.
Was on my radar but this is my last weekend here and Im headed out to Pilgrim’s Run on Sunday as probably my last round in MI.
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Still disappointed we don’t get to see you rocking FcF flair, but we wish you the best with GPGC
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I’m surprised terra Verde was that slow. Every time I’ve played it’s been pretty open.
Tee sheet was jammed and they were not pairing groups off, so my fiancée and I were playing alone, we were behind a threesome who were behind a twosome. There was a twosome behind us, followed by another twosome.
Not a bad local track tho.
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I really enjoy that place for how quirky it is. It’s unfortunate that almost all of that area is clay soil. If someone bought it and put in a bunch of aesthetic native areas and got the greens running it could be a special little course. Usually a great place to go play a fast 18 by yourself if you go early enough.
Playing a very early 18 tomorrow at Captain’s Club with a great friend of mine (FCF recruit, stay tuned), who is just coming out of first new baby hibernation. Heard lots of rumors about money being put back into the course, and my first time playing it. Should be a fun morning
Last I knew the watering situation was dicey. For how burned out it can it, the greens are still not that fast
You should have seen it several years ago. A new guy bought it 4-5 years ago and has put quite a bit of money in the place. My dad mows there as his retirement job. When the new owner took over it was in such bad shape it took them almost two years to find all the sprinkler heads because they had been used in so long and were buried. Still needs work but vastly improved over that period.
Back from the trip here and was going to share some thoughts.
1 - How do people live day to day with these flies? 
My legs look like I invited a block party over for an all you can eat buffet. Multiple types of bug spray were no match. Oof.
2 - Kingsley might somehow be underrated…which seems kind of silly to say given how glowingly everyone speaks of it… BUT I don’t know that I have ever played a course that married experience, design and conditioning better than it. It was firm, fast and truly in unbelievable shape. I wish everyone got a chance to play this golf course.
3 - Forest Dunes was probably the course I was most pleasantly surprised by. Conditioning was shockingly good for a resort type course. Typically you see a lot more wear around the edges, in my experience but whoever is the superintendent is doing a phenomenal job given the play stress out there. The greens there were absolute glass and it offered a really interesting variety of holes. I think the Loop gets talked about a lot more but Dunes was the standout to me.
4 - The Loop Red was interesting. We got a lot of advice from the starter, all of which was generally terrible. Setting that aside, this course seems to be polarizing but I left liking it, even playing very mediocre golf. I can see how someone would have a truly awful time out there if they just didn’t have it, as when you get out of position, you are absolutely not getting out of it without a penalty…many times it was 2 shots. I don’t mind that style of golf but know some people do.
My only huge qualm with The Loop was the conditioning. I thought relative to what you pay and where this course is ranked, everything was average to below average. The greens were fine…firm and rolling but the surrounds were so chewed up and bumpy. So if you needed to putt a ball because a chip was sudden death, it looked like the ball was rolling over a parking lot and you basically were just praying it stayed even remotely online. Tons of random stray grass and the waste areas were riddled with rocks (not pebbles) in a way that was a little head scratching. It wasn’t just a “hey, just pick a few rocks out situation”. You would have been there all day and 2 of the 3 waste areas I was in were also rock underneath…which I found out after, what looks like, hitting the bottom of my 5 iron off a parking lot. Maybe it isn’t possible to clean the rocks up, I have no idea but having played well thought of courses with things like waste, these were by far the most horrifically maintained.
Still really liked the golf course and would definitely play it again but it was, the most rough around the edges. And yes, I get the course design, turf conditions you want, etc…played plenty of golf courses with the same mix as the loop and I thought it was by far the worst from a maintenance perspective. When it effects how you can play the course around the greens (putting and bump and runs being an absolute land mines experience), I think that is a big miss.
5 - Arcadia…man, what an unbelievable piece of property and course. I’m sure I won’t say anything that hasn’t already been said but visuals, golf course, land…it is a 10 out of 10. My only complaint is directed at the resort course bozos who don’t fix pitch marks. We played twilight and must have been fixing 5 marks each per green.
All in all, Michigan just has some very special golf. It was my first trip there for extended play and really can’t recommend it enough. If anyone ever invites you to play Kingsley, just drop everything and figure it out.
Golden hour on 17 at KIngsley.
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I’m not going to argue your experience, everyone’s welcome to their thoughts. My $0.02 (mostly on the loop where your main comments focused)
Kingsley - you nailed it, nothing to add, 12/10
FD - Generally agree. My addition - can be penal off the tee and doesn’t leave much room for creativity on approach shots
Loop - As you noted, links golf: you have to pre-plan for both where you want to be and where you absolutely cannot be. Not intended to be green and prim and proper. Think Pinehurst after restoration vs. when it was 90’s green, but on 1/10th the budget. Its also intended to play firm, allowing for more run up / run out (hopefully it was for you). Much more manageable a second (or third) time thru, after you’ve seen the holes from multiple angles. When I was there in May it didn’t feel in disrepair, but it’s possible they’re getting heavier than expected use (or you were behind a particularly rough week)
Arcadia - Same comments as FD
Glad you got to experience a great weekend!
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We maybe caught it at a bad time but our experience was:
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Land it on the green, pretty much death…which again, that is fine, it is just a different type of golf. But 2 and 3 being what they were, made a lot of it feel a little pointless at times.
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The front surrounds looked like they hadn’t been rolled or mowed recently. So it you hit a shot lets says 5-10 yards short, only like 1 out of 6 times was it actually hitting and rolling forward for us. So if you had advice to hit a club short, that was absolutely not working on the day we played it.
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When you were short of greens, the surrounds being less then ideal made it pretty impossible to ever get up and down, unless you got extremely lucky. The few times anyone did, it was when a pin was close to you. If you had to putt through the surround to a pin of any distance away, the condition of the surrounds made it nearly impossible to control line and distance, which is obviously so critical out there. To me, it is tough to ask most amateur golfers to accept a challenge that exacting at times but then do things to not make it possible to answer the question.
Again, maybe I am being harsh relative to time of year and play…but if the surrounds merely got a little more love, I think the rest is fine. It was basically just asking you to play links style golf without links style conditions around the areas where shot value mattered. Will be interested to see how it is the next time I get up there.
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- you nuke those fuckers with some flicks and leave their corpses as warnings to their friends and family.
- I wish i could comment on this place, hopefully i can in a few months
- the first time i played forest dunes a few years ago i simply did not have it with the irons that day and it really soured my experience. when i was there in may it was so much more enjoyable, there are a few holes that i still really dont like, but on the whole it is a much better course than i remembered it being from my last visit. howeva! the fact that 90% of the fairways have a 1% or less slope on them (feels that way anyway) is very weird, so many dead flat lies make it feel boring in some way to me.
- tough to hear that the surrounds are getting beat up as Matt said that was not my experience earlier in the year, but yeah they really need to send the maintenance crew out there to pick up rocks.
5.I have thoughts on arcadia, to the extent that i will just continue to play the south course there and be happy.
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Yeah, I think that is spot on. While the fairways don’t offer some of the features of the other courses, I thought they did a good job presenting challenging tee shots and also demanding quality shot value on your approaches. Definitely several holes where there is nowhere to hide and I thought the closing stretch of that course was both fun and great for a match.
So many people I chatted with just mentioned it like an afterthought…and everyone was eager to talk about the loop. So maybe it just caught me off guard that it was such a good mix of variety, conditioning and green complexes.
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I think for the Michigan crew, Dunes is a very premium version of what we’re used to playing elsewhere in the state, whereas The Loop is true links, which we have very little of. I suspect the uniqueness of The Loop is what drives higher engagement from us on this very self-selecting message board of sickos
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Good call there - I’m always caught off guard by what qualifies as “typical” golf when I travel since I’m so used to FD style tree lined golf. Lawsonia Links makes my brain fire, Lawsonia Woodlands feels like a 75% version of what I can play everyday
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This couldn’t be more spot on because when we played the nightmare the day before playing forest dunes I felt like I was paying $65 for 70% of the Fd experience.
I will commend them for having 2 incredible different experiences on sight and I hope the 3rd course will offer a 3rd style
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