Pheasant Run Golf Course Review

Pheasant Run Golf Course Review

Pheasant Run Golf Course
Canton, Michigan
Grade: B-
Teacher’s Comments: A nice development/municipal course. Too many houses. Way too many houses.

Pheasant Run is a 27- hole Arthur Hills design that is both a development course, and Canton, Michigan’s municipal facility. The course is constructed on classic southeastern Michigan topography: flat and spotted by marshland. Water and marsh appear on fourteen of the eighteen holes on the course, and are significant design elements. In some cases, the hazards are simply an obstacle to power past; in others, they force you to think about ball placement. With no elevation changes and precious few trees, holes shaped around these hazards are at the heart of Pheasant Run.

I’ll say this about Arthur Hills: He is particularly adept at getting the best out of Michigan’s landscapes. I have enjoyed his courses, such as Lakes of Taylor, Red Hawk, Shepherd’s Hollow, Stonebridge, and the course I think is the best muni in the area: Lyon Oaks. If you have a piece of flat, marshy land to turn into a golf course, Arthur Hills is the guy you should call.

Unfortunately (though perhaps necessarily), the course is also routed through vast forests of … houses. For my tastes, the houses are just too close to the fairways. I didn’t end up in anyone’s backyard, thanks to angles and mounding, but I did get a better look at some people’s lives (and in one case, body) than I desired. I have played development courses that avoided the feeling of housing claustrophobia. This wasn’t one of them.

Fairways at Pheasant Run are wide, with a lot of ebb and flow. The greens are moderately sized, and fairly straightforward. Played from the correct tees, Pheasant Run should be accessible to a wide range of player skills. The back tees will challenge skilled players; the forward tees will reward higher handicappers with a fun round.

On my visit to Pheasant Run, I played the West and North nines. That routing stretches to 7, 053 yards from the back tees, where it plays to a 74.2/147. Quite difficult. I played the white tees at 6, 074 yards, which rate a 69.5/127. From that range, I played well, and managed to get through with just one ball, in spite of all the water.

Two holes at Pheasant Run stand out in my mind. The par five ninth on the West Course is a lot of fun. The fairway is at a right angle to the tee box, with a large pond on the right.  The pond, which runs the length of the hole, makes a player consider just how much to bite off. The safest play is to hit it straight out, bypassing the hazard, and landing in a generous fairway area. That, however, makes the next two shots very long. Angles to shorten the hole, however, bite off more and more of the pond and present a more narrow landing area. The green (see photo below) is wrapped around the end of the pond, creating a circumstance where all but the best placed second shots will need to fly over the hazard and stop short. This hole is about managing risk and ball placement.

Another interesting hole was the par three seventh on the West Course. The 165 yard par three is a mid-range shot to an elevated green, surrounded by bunkers and swales. I like the texture of the hole, and appreciate a par three that lets you bring a short to mid-iron in to play. It is just 130 from the white tees.

Conditions at Pheasant Run were very good. Tee boxes, fairways and greens were all well-tended.

Unfortunately, Pheasant Run does not allow walkers. That’s a shame, because 1) it is perfectly flat. 2) as a municipal course, management should be encouraging fitness for its residents. There were plenty of people jogging on paths near the course, though, including a few on the cart paths. Points off for the anti-walking policy.

In the end, I’m glad I played. There’s not enough there to make me return, though, except for perhaps an outing.

More photos of Pheasant Run are below.

The Pheasant Run Golf Course Review was first published on GolfBlogger.Com in September 2017 from a round played in July 2017.