Forest Dunes and The Loop Deliver—Even In a Relentless Downpour

There are times when you’re more than comfortable waiting out torrential rains from the comfort of a clubhouse, maybe picking at some sweet potato fries and sipping an IPA, your back to a fire as you dry off whatever got wet (everything) during round one.

And then there are times you’ve traveled some 1,200 miles to northern Michigan to play the 32^nd-best public golf course in America, you have exactly one five-hour window to make it happen, and you’re anxiously staring at a radar screen with colors that match the fire.

For us, the former quickly turned into latter, and at some point, no lightning to be found in the area, our group of 15 decided we must put soggy spikes to turf or risk not playing Forest Dunes at all. That’s what we did, opting to trek out in damn-near flood conditions that lasted a good four or five holes until the rain downgraded to merely steady. On the first hole, I nearly lost my ball in the fairway.

A few holes later, a playing partner decided it wise to putt from the fringe through a puddle rather than chip a wedge that risked kerplunking in the middle of it. Even with a whale of a stroke, it skittered to a stop in the standing water.

Once you got out of survival mode, and eventually we did, you could take in Tom Weiskopf’s masterpiece in all its glory. The conditioning is just about as pure as you’ll find. Shot-making is at a premium, even as the twists and turns are mostly subtle. You’ll absolutely need to execute off the tee. But more than anything, the greatest compliment our group gave it, and one that surfaced organically in separate conversations, was that it called to mind the experience of Bandon Trails—each hole its own adventure, many of them secluded by the massive pines, an ode to nature as much as to golf. Of course, the back 9 opens slightly from the pines, becoming more rugged in the process, hence the “dunes” piece of the course’s name.

I learned the hard way that the length of the signature 17^th doesn’t preclude you from carding something gross. A blocked tee ball settled in a waste bunker amid plots of fescue. A fatted second shot to an elevated green surrounded by the gnarliest of grass landed right in that scum. I was elated to find my ball, less so when the first hack went nowhere.

Separated by about 100 yards of parking lot, The Loop is something entirely different. It’s links-style golf, with massive undulating fairways and slope-y greens and green surrounds. The tee boxes are just tossed down in the middle of all that fairway. Carts meander across the sandy terrain rather than parallel to it, which gives a weird sense of, oh I don’t know, freedom? You’re reminded that you’re really just hitting a ball across a very large field, and it’s easier to detach from the mental noise and figure out how to get the thing from one place to the next. It is very fun.

Our second trek around the property started to fire the imagination. On one hole, a playing partner called me over for a look at his situation 20 yards in front of the green, where a mound short-right meant he’d have to take a wedge upstairs to the back-right pin, which is the shot I stupidly suggested. He had more brains, scooting something low that rode a steep mound left of the green to a stop 10 feet from the cup.

And that’s before we talk about the main quirk of the place, that you can play it in two different directions. Our suspicions were raised coming in, wondering whether it was the real deal or mostly a gimmick. Not everyone in our group appreciated the wide-open nature the same, but I’m a sucker for links golf, and I don’t know if I had more fun in Michigan than during our two rounds at The Loop. You could choose your own adventure on the way to the green, and then try to surface some imagination to traverse the slopes and get your ball in the hole.

All in all, it does feel like you’ve left Forest Dunes having played three completely different courses, even if the style of two of them are quite similar.

The closest we came to sunlight at the Dunes.

Forest Dunes with our group of 15 may have posed a logistical issue—particularly in the downpours—if it weren’t the staff’s accommodating attitude. The issue, at least partly our own doing, was that we’d shuttled in from Arcadia Bluffs and been dropped off at the doorstep at Forest with 15 sets of clubs, 15 suitcases, 15 golf travel bags, 15 dudes. While we’d chosen on-site accommodations, we had not considered that those on-site accommodations were in the form of two cottages that, while right on the course, were at least a half mile from the clubhouse via roadway—nor that the resort doesn’t have a true shuttle system. How were we to navigate getting all those bags back home and all those bodies back to a fast-approaching tee time at the Bootlegger short course? For that matter, we had two more days on property.

As for the short-term concern, a couple of guys hopped back in with our cross-state shuttle drivers and did the lord’s work of transporting and unpacking all those suitcases and travel bags while the rest of us stretched and prepared (see: hit the bar) before our serious stakes on the short. It took some rearranging of bags past dusk to match where folks were staying, some walking the pitch black quarter-mile between cabins with roller bags in tow. The next day, when the heavy rain hit between a drizzly morning round at The Loop and afternoon at the Dunes, there was nothing quick or easy about getting back to the cabins for a change of clothes.

All this is not to gripe, and not to discourage your staying at the cottages, which, all in all, proved a very acceptable setting to crush copious amounts of post-golf pizza (the clubhouse offerings more than get the job done—FD ‘za forever), put a few bucks on the line over cards or dice, and play a high-stakes game of how-many-drinks-will-impact-my-golf-tomorrow. It’s merely to encourage some consideration of these logistics, to talk them through with Forest Dunes as you plan your trip, or to opt for renting a couple of your own Sprinters. For us, in a very much appreciated show of kindness for our large group, the resort offered rides in our greatest times of need.

All in all, Forest Dunes was an elite-level stop. The par 3 offers endless, barefoot fun. The contrast between Dunes and The Loop—plus The Loop’s switcheroo party trick—provides a significantly greater variety of golf than you’d find at your average, two-track single resort. And the remote-Michigan locale gives you license to truly unwind and steer into the experience.

Of course, we would’ve preferred the golf gods send down a little better weather. Some laughter spread across our group when on our final day, as we waited outside the pro shop to board a shuttle to the airport, the skies parted and for the first time in three days we experienced sunlight.