Prairies Golf Club Review

Prairies Golf Club Review

Prairies Golf Club
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Grade: B
Teacher’s Comments: A nice neighborhood course.

Prairies Golf Club is a delightful parklands course that dates to 1912. Located just minutes from downtown Kalamazoo, it is a oasis in an urban setting.

At one point the property was known as the Maple Hills Country Club. It apparently went bankrupt during the Great Depression before being purchased and reopened by the Elks Lodge 50 of Kalamazoo in 1944, which, as far as I can tell still owns the course today.

Prairies is a very playable course. The fairways are wide; greens are on the large size; water shows up only on the ninth. As with a course of this vintage, the fairways mostly run parallel and are straight-ish.

This is not to suggest that The Prairies is uninteresting. Most of the holes have some kind of elevation change, ranging from gentle to severe. Greens are well bunkered, and favor a shot from one side of the fairway or another. Wayward shots can roll into tall fescue.

There’s enough at The Prairies to be interesing without beating up the players.

The Prairies is also a pretty course, which added to the charm. Tall fescue and other prairie grasses on the edges added texture. Trees separating holes are well trimmed, but offered definition.

There were a lot of enjoyable holes at The Prairies Golf Club, but the one that stands out as an exemplar is the par five eighteenth.

What I mean by exemplar is that the eighteenth has a little bit of everything that gives the course its character. It has a wide fairway with prairie grasses on the edges, rising from tee to landing zone. Trees on the edges add definition, but are largely out of play.

From the landing zone, the hole is parklands, with a relatively flat path to the green. Shallow bunkers protect the sides of the green.

It is an enjoyable and visually pleasing hole, and a nice way to end a round.

Prairies Golf Club is on the short side, with the tips at 6, 208 yards. I think, however, that makes it an ideal course for higher handicappers, seniors and women.

Tee	Yardage	Slope	Rating
Black	6, 208	M: 128 W: 134	M: 70.6 W: 76.6
White	5, 955	M: 125 W: 132	M: 69.3 W: 132
Gold	5, 401	M: 119 W: 124	M: 66.4 W: 71.9
Red	4, 686	M: 113 W: 117	M: 63.2 W: 67.5

Conditions on the day I played were good. Fairways, tee boxes and greens were all grown in and well-tended. The superintendent and his crew obviously take care of the course.

The Prairies Golf Club is a course that I would be happy to play again. Kalamazoo is too far from GolfBlogger World Headquarters for a repeat visit, but if I lived in the area it would be a regular stop.

The Prairies Golf Club review was first published March 11, 2025 from notes and photos taken on a round played during the 2024 season. For a list of all of GolfBlogger’s Michigan golf course reviews, follow the link.