Gaylord Golf Mecca

Standalones, Standouts–

Gaylord Golf Mecca Offers Unique Array of Courses

Recently a golf and travel writer

from Cleveland, Ohio, ventured north a few hours to visit the Gaylord Golf Mecca and was surprised. “The Mecca has the resorts with their great championship courses, but you also have these wonderful standalone courses that are part of the community and that makes this a very unique destination for golf and added something very enjoyable and surprising to the trip,” David Glasier of the News Herald of Northeast Ohio said. “I feel very good about recommending the Mecca to all golfers because it’s the kind of destination with the variety of golf I enjoy.” Glasier had just played Gaylord Golf Club the day after playing Indian River Golf Club, two of the 17 golf courses that make up the Mecca, a cooperative marketing group of nine properties, including resorts with multiple courses. The standalones, as Glasier dubbed them, also include Michaywe’ The Pines and Lakes of the North Golf Course. When you add “almost” standalones, The Natural at Beaver Creek Resort and Black Lake Golf Club in Onaway, the four-courses from Garland Lodge & Golf Resort – Fountains, Monarch, Reflections, Swampfire – and you add the duo from the Otsego Resort – The Classic and The Tribute – and you remember Treetops Resort has five courses – the famous Par 3 Threetops, Masterpiece, Signature, Premier and Tradition – it produces a sum total of 17 and incredible quality and quantity. The standalones, however, add something other resort destinations simply can’t match. For instance, Gaylord Golf Club is like the country club course you

grew up playing with 6,500 yards of rolling green terrain, only it also offers what many consider some of the best green surfaces in Northern Michigan. Paul Holmes has been taking care of the greens at Gaylord for more than three decades and it shows. Indian River was established in 1922 with an original nine holes designed by the legendary Wilfrid Reid. Over the years it has evolved, added nine more holes, promotes itself as the “Friendliest Club in the North” and then repeatedly backs it up. Lakes of the North had a first nine built in 1968, added another in the late 1980s and surprises golfers with 7,004 yards of green grass cut through a parkland setting on one side, and Northern Michigan woods on the other. Michaywe’ The Pines hosted the Michigan Amateur Championship twice in the 1990s, which indicates it can handle the most talented players in the state. Don’t be misled, however, with six sets of tees and comfortably wide fairways it can be played by anybody at anywhere between 7,040 yards and 5,194 yards. The Natural, the only course affiliated with Beaver Creek Resort, is essentially a standalone course and lives up to its name. It features all that nature offers in this part of the country, hills, trees, wetlands, wildlife and more, and add to that isolation and stunning scenery. It’s the ultimate getaway from it all course. And Black Lake, the only course owned by the UAW Black Lake Conference Center, is another standalone of sorts. It is a Rees Jones-designed course spread over hundreds of acres in classic style. It’s isolated and always among the top courses lists for Michigan and the Midwest. “I’m going to get back to the Mecca soon,” Glasier said. “It obviously takes more than one trip to play all these courses but having played seven of them and being so surprised and happy with the experience, I have to see the other 10.”

Indian River