Elk Rapids Golf Club Review

Elk Rapids Golf Club Review

Elk Rapids Golf Club
Elk Rapids, Michigan
Grade: A
Teacher’s Comments: A Donald Ross in a small town in Northern Michigan.

Elk Rapids is a “village” on Elk Lake about twenty miles from Traverse City. Once a station on the Chicago and West Michigan Railway, it currently has a population of 1,700.

It also has a Donald Ross-designed golf course: The Elk Rapids Golf Club.

Go figure.

The story is that Elk Rapids once was a booming town with the railroad and the Elk Rapids Iron Works fueling the population. By the early 1920s, though, the iron works were gone and the town on the decline.

Hoping to bolster tourism, the town issued a bond for the construction of a golf course. Donald Ross was hired to do the design and Elk Rapids Golf Club opened in 1922.

Elk Rapids is a parklands style course with fairways separated by scatterings of trees and tall fescue rough. The bunkers have a craggy look, with the flashing faces topped with fescue. Many of the holes have beautiful views of Elk Lake.

The design is relatively straightforward, with the sort of straightish back-and-forth that one expects from courses of that period. The first and ninth are real doglegs, though.

The routing cleverly takes advantage of the land’s rise and fall as it approaches the lake. The second rises slowly to a high point overlooking the lake. The third plays slightly downhill from that space. The fourth plays back up to that ridge, and then drops precipitously to the green on the edge of a short bluff against Elk Lake.

The fifth is a part three that plays uphill to the same ridge the second green and third tee are on. Six has elevated tee boxes and then runs parallel to the lake shore bluff. Seven and eight also have one club elevation changes.

My favorite hole was the par four sixth. The hole runs parallel to the lake shore, beginning with a lightly elevated tee. The entire hole curves slightly right, and just before the green dips down and then up.

It is a really beautiful hole. I wish, however, that they would cut away some of the trees on the right side blocking a full view of the lake. On the other hand, maybe those roots are keeping the fairway from falling into the lake.

From the back tees, Elk Rapids comes in at 3, 067 yards, which puts it at 6, 124 for eighteen. It is short and the bogey golfer should score well here — assuming short game and putter are working.

Tees	Yards	Rating	Slope
Blue	3, 067	69	121
White	2, 850	66.4	115
Green	2,465	63.8	108

Conditions on the day I played were very good. The fairways were as good as any course I saw all summer. Greens were smooth and the tee boxes well tended. Elk Rapids was — dare I say it — “country club” good.

The Elk Rapids Golf Club review was first published January 18, 2024 from notes and photos taken on a round played in the summer of 2023. For all of GolfBlogger’s Michigan Golf Course Reviews (as well as golf course reviews from other states), follow the link.

A photo tour of Elk Rapids follows: