Playing Bruce Hills, Glacier Club, Eagle View and Maple Brook

Playing Bruce Hills, Glacier Club, Eagle View and Maple Brook

I’ve been on a bit of a golf binge lately.

Monday, I teed off at Bruce Hills in the morning and Glacier Club in the afternoon. Tuesday found me at Eagle View in the morning and Maple Brook in the afternoon.

Bruce Hills, in Romeo, is one of a half dozen courses in SE Michigan managed by the Vargo Company. It is shortish (5, 630 yards) and in need of a great deal of TLC. Water is everywhere, coming into play on all but one hole.

It is not a course I’d return to play, but on a positive note, they had a large kids tournament there the morning I played. I started on the back nine, and only caught up to the kids after I made the turn and played seven holes on the front. I like to see courses growing the game among youth.

After Bruce Hills, I drove over to Glacier Club in Washington, Michigan. Glacier Club is a 1993 Bill Newcomb design that was renovated in 2008 by Arthur Hills. That’s a pretty good pedigree.

I am not generally a fan of housing development courses, but on Glacier Club, the homes were generally far enough back from the lines of fire that I didn’t worry overmuch about hitting a window.

Glacier Club is billed as a “links style” course, and it is to a degree. It has wide, mostly open fairways with lots of mounding. Many of the holes have “stadium style” mounding on the edges.

I thought the conditions were quite good. I had fun.

Tuesday’s binge began at Eagle View, a golf course you can see from US-127 just south of Mason. It is a farmlands course and is no doubt a favorite of the locals.

From the back tees, Eagle View is just over 6,000 yards. The front nine is wide open and with the exception of two holes, mostly flat. The back nine is hillier. The fairways on both nines were quite narrow — 12 to 15 yards in several spots. Beyond the fairways it was all clover and dandelion, mowed to a rough height. I spent a lot of time hitting out of the clover, making it difficult to advance the ball.

The real gem of my four course, two day binge was Maple Brook in Charlotte, Michigan.

Maple Brook is a nine-hole, Tom Bendelow design dating to 1926. Originally the Charlotte Country Club, it was purchased in 2013 and renamed Maple Brook.

I wish Maple Brook was closer to GolfBlogger World Headquarters because I would play it on a regular basis. It is a delightful design with wide fairways, tricky greens and interesting elevation changes. Conditions were superb.

One of the neatest things about Maple Brook is that it has two complete sets of tees for each hole, allowing players to go around twice for an eighteen-hole experience. It works very well. The tees present enough of a different look to make it worth playing twice.

In talking with the pro there, I learned that the course is working on returning the greens to their original rectangular shapes. That’s the same thing that is happening at Washtenaw Golf Club.

So that’s it for the binge: Two days. Four courses. Three rounds walked (I had to ride at Glacier Club).