Inspired by a neighboring classic, this Michigan masterpiece combines the best of worlds old and new
Somehow, you just know that when a private club lies at the end of a rural dirt road, it’s going to be something special. In the case of Kingsley Club, that road might as well be a yellow brick one. Because the course it leads to exhibits a wizard’s touch.
Kingsley opened for play in 2001 on 400 acres of ferociously hilly grassland and forest in northwest Michigan. Some of the club’s members come from nearby Traverse City, but many hail from much farther away and make the journey to Kingsley as if it were Oz itself. Waiting for them is a modest clubhouse with a covered terrace overlooking the exacting (and, for onlookers, entertaining) 9th hole, exemplary practice facilities, three rustic-but-cushy four-bedroom cottages, and a hellhound of a course that they’d travel to by broomstick if they had to.
Kingsley is often mentioned in the same breath as nearby Crystal Downs—and not without reason, since its creator, Mike DeVries, grew up playing and working at that Alister MacKenzie/Perry Maxwell-designed classic. You can see echoes of Crystal Downs in Kingsley’s eclectic array of naturalistic green sites and bunkers and in its minimalist design. But it’s a bona fide classic in its own right, with a mix of Golden Age features and site-specific surprises spread out over valleys, hills, and ridges that make it an arduous layout to walk and a heroic quest to score well on.
The story here is a tale of two nines in which tilted, slanting, and cockeyed lies are the central characters. The opening nine is routed over open ground that gave DeVries the opportunity to frame broad fairways with tall fescue grasses. On the second nine, maples, oaks, and beech trees join with tall white pines to give many holes a more secluded and intimate feeling. The plot twist common to both lies in the course’s perilous greens, to which hitting approach shots calls for local knowledge bordering on encyclopedic, and upon which two-putting becomes mission improbable. You’ll have the option to play the ground game often here, as the fairways were seeded with tight fescue in the manner of a true links. Why? DeVries has the answer: “If you can choose the best turf in the world for golf, why wouldn’t you?”
The stage is set at the opening hole, an uphill-then-downhill-then-uphill-again par five where the tee shot must be played left, right, or over a bunker complex that’s the Principal’s Nose writ much larger. At the deep, back-to-front sloping green, you get your first taste of what firm and fast means at Kingsley: rock-hard and lightning-fast. Just 6,900 yards from the tips, it’s not a long course. But its array of daunting shorter holes makes its total yardage misleading. The aforementioned 9th plays just 165 yards at its longest from either of two teeing grounds positioned at adjacent compass points to a kidney-shaped, two-tiered, tabletop green with deep bunkers and steep falloffs on three sides. At hole 13, players may be dreaming of eagle putts when they see that it’s a 292-yard par four featuring the course’s largest green. What they may not know is that the green has a bowl in the back-right that can bring double-bogey into play quickly if the drive or approach shot is steered in the wrong direction. Every hole at Kingsley presents similar challenges, whether it’s a murderous bunker, an anxiety-inducing precipice, or a Machiavellian green eager to mutilate your scorecard.
If you get the chance to play Kinglsey, you’ll feel as if you’ve traveled over the rainbow. But for club members, there’s truly no place like home.
