Best public golf courses in Michigan

Michigan is home to some of the best public golf courses in the United States across its forested peninsulas jutting out in to the Great Lakes.

This beautiful hilly wilderness boasts dramatic cliffs, dunes and more shoreline than any other state in the country making it the perfect canvas for plenty of great golf courses.

Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club

Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club is blessed with naturally rugged terrain and phenomenal scenery courtesy of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. It’s open to the public seven days a week April through November each year. The Bluffs Course made its debut in 1999, an immaculate world-class links style layout with undulating, open fairways, large greens and panoramic views of Lake Michigan from its setting high up on the bluffs above the shoreline.

In 2018 it was joined by the South Course, a classic layout with the feel of a Golden Age design from the 1920s. There’s flat-bottomed grass-faced bunkers, straight fairways and crowned square greens. This course is more strategic than Bluffs and together they offer superb golf to the fee-paying public.

Forest Dunes Golf Club

Forest Dunes Golf Club is another club that always comes up in any conversation about the best public courses in Michigan. This Tom Weiskopf design lies within a 1,200-acre estate in northern Michigan set in pine forests and birch groves by wetlands and dunes. It’s a risk reward design that mixed links with parkland golf which Weiskopf said was in “the top three which I have ever been involved in in the United States”.

The golf club became fully open to the public in 2011 and now also includes a Tom Doak design called The Loop which opened in 2016. It features 18 fairways and greens that are reversible, which means golfers can play the same course in two different directions on consecutive days. The clockwise route is called the Black Course with the anti-clockwise route is named the Red Course. Whichever direction you play, both offer top-class holes which is a testament to its genius design.

Tullymore Golf Resort

Tullymore Golf Resort is nestled amongst 800 acres of pristine Michigan woodlands and wetlands and is home to two immaculate courses. Tullymore Golf Course opened in 2002 and winds through woods, meadows and wetlands and unusually features five par-3 holes and five par-5 holes. There’s also the unique ‘muscle’ bunkers and bowled greens that designer Jim Engh became known for. St. Ives opened before it in 1995 and features elevation changes, raised greens and forced carries. Together, these courses are a brilliant option for the public.

Marquette Golf Club

Marquette Golf Club set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is home to the Heritage Course and the Greywalls Course. Heritage dates back to the first nine which opened in the 1920s and the second nine from the 60s. The front nine plays over rolling terrain of classic parkland beauty, while the back nine offers more dramatic slopes with views of Lake Superior.

Greywalls opened to the public in 2005 and gets its name from the granite rock outcroppings that edge some of the holes. It’s beautifully rugged links and parkland combination and plunges up and down with incredible views over Lake Superior.

Bay Harbor Golf Club

Bay Harbor Golf Club is another great option open to the public where Arthur Hills developed 27 diverse holes on three distinct and varied courses along Lake Michigan’s coastline. The courses are typically played in pairs, each with a different finishing nine. Links, Quarry and Preserve make up the three layouts where there’s a Scottish wooded links-like feel with trees, dunes, fescue, cliff faces and gusty breezes.

University of Michigan Golf Course

University of Michigan Golf Course also deserves a visit, an Alister MacKenzie course from the 1930s which was upgraded by Arthur Hills in the 1990s. It’s one of the best collegiate courses anywhere, sitting on hilly terrain by the Big House, the Wolverines’ football arena. It’s got rare boomerang greens and one of the best closing holes in the state.

The Highlands at Harbor Springs

An honourable mention deserves to go to The Highlands at Harbor Springs in Northern Michigan, both a ski resort and golf club with four 18-hole public courses to choose from. The Heather by Robert Trent Jones Snr, Arthur Hills by the man himself, the Donald Ross Memorial and The Moor. Arguably no other Michigan golf resort offers the variety of golf courses that this place does with rolling terrain and glorious hilltop vistas.

Among the other great Michigan public courses is Eagle Eye Golf Club, a Pete Dye links-style layout with signature Dye elements of steep greenside drop-offs, pot bunkers and an island-green 17th, just liked the famous original at TPC Sawgrass.