High Pointe Golf Club

Tom Doak designed High Pointe Golf Club in 1989 on a piece of Williamsburg, Michigan Lower Peninsula land east of Traverse City — the architect's first original course design after his apprenticeships with Pete Dye and Tom Fazio. High Pointe represents the architectural starting point of Doak's independent practice, and the routing carries the minimalist design vocabulary that he would refine across the subsequent three decades at Pacific Dunes, Sebonack, Ballyneal, Streamsong Blue, and his other landmark projects. The original High Pointe routing closed in 2009 after ownership changes, and the course reopened under new operations in subsequent years with restoration efforts intended to preserve Doak's original 1989 architectural intent.

The course plays around 6,890 yards par 71 from the back markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. Doak routed the eighteen holes through natural northern Lower Michigan glacial-deposit terrain with minimal earthwork — the routing uses natural ridges, hollows, and creek corridors as architectural features. The signature pieces of Doak's mature vocabulary — small green complexes set on natural rises, wide fairway corridors that demand specific approach angles, and strategic-design decisions that favor positional play — appear throughout in their early form.

High Pointe Golf Club has operated under multiple ownership groups since 1989, and the access model has varied across the property's history. The course's status as Doak's first original design gives it particular significance in modern American golf architecture, and visitors come to study the routing as much as to play it.

Northern Lower Michigan climate compresses High Pointe's playing season into May through October, with the firmest conditions in August and September. Frost delays push tee times into late morning through May and again in October. The course closes through Michigan winter and reopens when the soil thaws — typically late April.