A-Ga-Ming Sundance Golf Course Review

A-Ga-Ming Sundance Golf Course
Grade: B+
Teacher’s Comments: A very interesting and eclectic collection of holes.

Sundance is the newest of the two courses at A-Ga-Ming resort near Torch Lake. A Jerry Matthews design, it opened in 2005.

A-Ga-Ming’s Sundance is an interesting synthesis of a fairly open design with typically hilly Northern Michigan terrain. The relative lack of trees (for Northern Michigan) and abundant bunkering has led some to call Sundance a links-style course, but that really isn’t the case. Sundance is a hilly course, built on land that could very well have been a former vineyard or orchard.

At Sundance, Matthews used the landscape to produce an interesting variety of holes. The course is routed up and down several hills. A couple holes play across marshes. The course features not one, but two of the classic Northern Michigan dead drop par threes.

The end result is a fairly eclectic collection of holes. Each, however, is very playable. As befits a resort course, fairways are wide, and greens are large. Sundance will challenge mid and high handicappers, but not beat them up.

From the tips, A-Ga-Ming’s Sundance stretches to 6, 935 yards and plays to a 72.8/132. The middle men’s tees are in at 6, 252 and play at 70.5/127.
All the usual cautions about playing from the correct tees hold true here. Play from too far back, and it will be a long day.

My favorite hole was the short par 4 eleventh. Measuring 325 from the tips, the eleventh has a large waste bunker running down the right side, and three smaller bunkers along the left.

Playing downhill from the tee, the eleventh snakes right, then left, then right again as it rises to the green. A tee shot to the left hand side of the fairway likely offers the best angle to the green.

A precise shot off the tee has to be just long enough to take a shot at the large and elevated green with a short iron. To the rear of the green is a steep hill.

For me, the attraction of such a short par 4 is that a player has many choices off the tee. A driver is an option, of course, but so too is a mid iron.

Conditions on the day I played where what you would expect from a resort course. An unusual hot and dry spell in Northern Michigan left much of the areas off the fairway parched, but the fairways and greens (and even most of the “official” rough) were in good shape. In more typical weather conditions, it should be quite lush.

The A-Ga-Ming Sundance Golf Course Review was first published January 30, 2019 from notes and photos from a round played July 3, 2018.

A course tour of A-Ga-Ming Sundance is below:

The first at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 392 yard par 4.
The second at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 337 yard par 4.
A view from the fairway on A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s second.
A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s third is a 190 yard par 3.
The fourth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a split fairway 390 yard par 4.
A view of the green on A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s fourth.
The fifth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 368 yard par 4.
A view of the green on A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s fifth.
The sixth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 527 yard par 5.
A view of the sixth green at A-Ga-Ming Sundance.
The seventh at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 387 yard par 4.
The eighth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 204 yard par 3.
A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s ninth is a 608 yard pag 5.
A view from behind the green on A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s ninth.
The tenth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a downhill 412 yard par 4.
A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s eleventh is a 325 yard par 4.
The twelfth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 446 yard par 4
The thirteenth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a downhill 160 yard par 3 — a classic Northern Michigan par 3. No course up there is complete without one.
Fourteen at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 512 yard par 5.
The fifteenth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 435 yard par 4.
A-Ga-Ming Sundance’s sixteenth is a 581 yard par 5.
The seventeenth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 201 yard par 3.
Eighteen at A-Ga-Ming Sundance is a 460 yard par 4.
A view of the green on the eighteenth at A-Ga-Ming Sundance