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Saturday, September 2, 2023

Treetops Resort - Premier (Gaylord, MI)

 Premier is the only Tom Fazio course in the great state of Michigan. That’s hard to believe considering all the the terrific properties developed in the past thirty years in the Wolverine State. It’s also a testament to Treetops for convincing him to sign on to their project. The property was perfect for his style over substance philosophy on golf architecture. 


(The 195/168 yard par three eleventh features the only water hazard on the course. The left side looks very inviting. Why let this one hole torpedo your entire round?!) 

The Premier was the first course to be built on the North property which is three miles from the main lodge. It starts on a high ridge before dropping down to the valley and hopscotching between the hillsides. It has a unique routing. The seventh and tenth tees are perpendicular to each other as Fazio designed a triangular loop at 7-9 in order to take advantage of the broad valley that ten continues to climb.


(The 313/289 yard par four fifth seems like a reasonable birdie chance, and it is, but note the left side of the green. It drops ten feet down to a lower tier and requires absolute precision. I pity the golfer who has to putt up or down that slope.) 


(The 373/333 yard par four seventh plays into a valley before hitting to an elevated green. The putting surface is tipped away from the fairway, adding to the pressure of selecting the correct club.) 


(The 187/163 yard par three eighth is downhill to a perched green. It’s roughly fifty feet below the tee box, again adding pressure to grabbing the correct club. Anything short will spin twenty feet below the green.) 

When Fazio designed this course, everything he touched was getting rave reviews. Premier was no exception. It works well with the northern Michigan landscape, and he used all the elevation change to dramatic effect. My main concern with the course is the playability. The buffer zone between the fairway and treeline was very tight. Some of the C players in our group were having a difficult time NOT losing balls. Two things stood out to me about Premier, and I’m intrigued to find out if they are a Fazio trait. Many of the greens were set an angle from the fairway with a trap between the player and putting surface, forcing a high shot to attack the rear portion. The other was the severity of the bilevel greens. Several of them had the lower tier in the back, and at the par four fifteenth, the tri-level green dropped at least fifteen feet from front to back. The middle section was narrow, the front wide, and the rear half even wider. It was an amazing green! 




(The 362/334 yard par four fifteenth has an incredible green that slides down the hillside in three levels. We dropped balls on the front left just to see if we could putt to the the back left. The trick was hitting it up to the collar where it will gradually trickle to the left. Super cool in my book!) 


(The 546/494 yard par five sixteen doglegs left with a high right side allowing golfers to play the ground game around the tree line. The green has an upper level left and lower level right.) 

When I was looking for reviews on Premier, I noticed there seemed to be a love/hate relationship between the golfers. Some said it was their favorite course while others reiterated the difficulty that I mentioned earlier. Usually, in my experience, that means it’s going to be pretty good.  The course tops out just over 6800 yards, so Fazio made sure to bring precision shotmaking to conquer it. In most states, this would be a top ten public course, but in golf rich Michigan, it’s not even top twenty. Still, in my view, it’s a strong golf course. I give it a 6 (very good)(worth driving 1-2 hours to play). 





[we played the blue tees at 6,274 yards. My playing partners dueled to the finish with Wyatt sneaking out the win over Patrick despite a triple bogey on the last hole. I played arguably my best round of the year. The course had a +2 PCC on the ghin, making my differential 3.8. Playing the par fives in -2 and not making a double bogey will make for a good day.]













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