Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club

Arcadia Bluffs occupies a bluff above Lake Michigan on the northwest Lower Peninsula of Michigan, between Frankfort and Manistee. Rick Smith and Warren Henderson designed the original course in 1999, drawing on the natural dune-and-bluff topography to build a routing that visitors consistently describe as the closest American approximation to a true Irish links. Holes one through four play along the bluff edge with the lake visible left, then the routing turns inland through second-growth forest for the middle stretch, then returns to the bluff for the closing two holes. The bluff drops two hundred feet to the lake, and several holes carry exposure to the Lake Michigan wind that visiting golfers underestimate on their first round.

The course plays around 7,300 yards par 72 from the championship markers, with fescue rough and a slope in the upper 130s. The eleventh hole is the routing's most-discussed piece: a 540-yard par-5 along the bluff with the entire left side exposed to lake and air. The third hole is a 425-yard par-4 with the lake as the entire left-side boundary. Smith and Henderson built fescue throughout the corridors and left it tall outside the playing lines, which gives the routing the visual fingerprint of a Scottish links rather than a Midwest American course.

Arcadia Bluffs opened a second course — the South Course, designed by Dana Fry in 2018 — that plays as a heath-style routing inland from the bluff. The two courses share a clubhouse and a single property, and visitors typically play both in a 36-hole day. Caddies are available at the resort; carts are permitted but walking is encouraged.

The Lake Michigan shoreline gives Arcadia Bluffs a longer playing season than the inland northern Michigan courses, but the wind picks up reliably in the afternoon. Late June through September is the prime stretch, with golden fescue color through September into early October. Frost shuts down early tee times through May and after the first week of October.