Playing The Ross Memorial At Boyne Highlands

On Saturday I had the chance to play The Ross Memorial Course at Boyne Highlands with Boyne’s Director of Golf Sales and Marketing, Ken Griffin. It was a terrific course on a perfect fall day.

What made the Ross Memorial great was that in spite of being composed of holes from disparate courses, architect Bill Newcomb managed to stitch them together into a seamless whole. If you forget about the origins of each of the individual holes, the Ross Memorial at Boyne Highlands stands on its own merits. The holes flow naturally from one to the other and finishes with a wonderful “signature” hole (in actuality, Oakland Hills’ sixteenth) in front of the clubhouse.

Boyne’s ten courses spread across three properties (Bay Harbor, Boyne Highlands and Boyne Mountain) with tons of lodging and food options make it an ideal stop for a golf trip. While time is running a bit short now (although there still are some great fall options), you should start planning next summer’s buddy or family trip now. Boyne’s Director of Golf Sales and Marketing, Ken Griffin was explaining some of their golf-lodging-food-recreation options that had me scratching my head as to how Boyne actually makes to turn a profit. One item for avid golfers to put on their activity list is a trip to the Boyne Golf Center’s Gears facility. There, the tour-and-manufacturer-grade body tracking system combined with a Trackman system can help to fine tune the contents of your bag, or offer a fix for a long-standing issue. Prices again seemed quite reasonable, even for this school teacher.

In addition to golf, Boyne has tennis, fishing, hiking, biking, zip lines, carriage rides, spas and other great things to do. Northern Michigan also has other things on the agenda such as wine tours, excellent dining, boating and other lake activities. It would be very easy to convince the family to take an adventurous trip to Northern Michigan as cover for a series of golf outings.

I think that the Ross Memorial is a must-play in Northern Michigan. I’ll have a full review soon.