The Ridge Golf Course Review

The Ridge Golf Course Review

The Ridge
Grade: C
Teacher’s Comments: A good design that needs a chainsaw.

The Ridge is one of the three course collection under the umbrella of The Loon Golf Resort in Gaylord, Michigan. The others are The Lakes and the eponymous The Loon.

Formerly known as “Marsh Ridge,” the course is a design by Mike Husby, who also laid out The Loon and Wild Bluff.

The Ridge is in many ways typical of a northern Michigan resort course, with forest-lined fairways, dramatic elevation changes and plenty of marsh and water. It has not one, but two of the sharply downhill par threes which seem to be a requisite feature on Northern Michigan courses.

Routing took full advantage of the ridge that gives the course its name. The first begins atop the ridge; the second plunges down to a valley floor. Two and three and four play in some flat lowlands before climbing up to the fifth tee, which is a downhill shot. Six climbs up and so forth. It’s interesting.

All that said, while The Ridge has good bones, it could use a facelift. My play found the course overgrown, with trees, branches and brush intruding on lines of play. The course is tough enough without having to worry about clipping branches. At times, it was hard to enjoy the course for the constricting feeling it projected.

My favorite hole was the par five ninth. After an uphill tee shot through a relatively tight window, the fairway jogs right and opens up to a rolling, twisting fairway.

For big hitters, there’s a chance of reaching the green in two. A pond, however, extends from the left just in front of the green. There’s fairway on the right, but that’s not going to get a player to the green in two.

What I liked about the hole was the decision space on the second shot: At what yardage was I going to lay up (there’s no way I’m reaching in two)? Play toward the left side or right?

The eighteenth was a similar hole, but with an obnoxious carry.

And speaking of carries: the downhill 172 yard par 3 tenth was fun.

From the back tees, The Ridge extends to 6, 231 yards and plays to a 71.2/132. The hills, carries, and overgrowth, however, made it play harder than the rating would suggest.

Tee	Yardage	Rating	Slope
Blue	6, 231	71.2	132
White	5, 842	69.0	128
Gold	5, 237	M: 66.4 W:71.8	M: 121 W:135
Red	4, 495	67.1	119

Conditions on the day I played were not great. Fairways were suffering and there was standing water in many places. Trees and branches constricted lines of play.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the course that chainsaws and brush whips couldn’t fix; cut the trees and branches back from the fairways to open lines of play and let the light in. I have read in several places that golf turfgrass needs 50% to 80% sunlight in the summer to be healthy. Lack of sunlight is the easiest explanation for the sparse fairways and greens I found.

I might return to The Ridge if I had some indication that a team of lumberjacks had gone through. Otherwise, if I were staying at the resort, I would stick to The Loon and The Lakes.

The Ridge golf course review was first published March 8, 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.

A course tour of The Ridge follows: