Wolcott Mill Golf Course Review

Wolcott Mill Golf Course
Ray, Michigan

Grade: D-
Teachers’ Comments: Boring and poorly kept.

Update: Closed in 2017 by Huron-Clinton Metroparks

Michigan’s PGA TOUR player Dave Hill once quipped: “Eighty acres of corn and a few cows. They ruined a good farm when they built this course.”

Hill was famously speaking of Hazeltine National Golf Club, site of the 1970 US Open, but he may as well have been talking about Wolcott Mill Golf Course.

Wolcott Mills is a part of the otherwise respectable Huron-Clinton Metroparks. It is without a doubt the worst of the bunch.

The layout of Wolcott consists mostly of straight shots at ill-defined fairways. Seven fairway bunkers did not come into play for me, and they shouldn’t for you either. I counted ten bunkers around greens, but they also don’t really threaten par. Boring.

I supppse that the argument could be made that it’s a “links style” layout. But if that were the case, management should haul in some dirt, create some mounding and fill the spaces between the fairways with tall gnarly grasses.

From the back tees, Wolott Mill measures 6,266 and plays to a 70.3/122. The middle tees measure 5, 975 and play at 69/117. I shot one of my best scores of the summer there, but even that didn’t encourage me.

An annoying aspect of the course design is that it plays under an inordinate number of overhanging power lines. I counted a half dozen holes where power lines could interfere with ball flight. On one, the par four tenth, overhanging wires made me change my club selection on the approach to keep it under the wires. You can see the lines crossing the fairway if you look carefullly at the photo above.