Brewing is big business throughout the US but perhaps no more so than Michigan. The Golf Road Warriors go in search of some superior brews . Big Buck Brewery offers an award-winning and handcrafted super premium line of beers complemented with a casual family dining experience, quality food, and excellent service.

At Treetops Resort, their Sports Bar is the place to congregate which we did and discovered even more delectablely drinkable beers.

“Which course, gentlemen?”

“We’re playing the Tribute at 10:40.”

Following a rain shower earlier in the morning, we were as soggy-headed after four straight days of golf as the weather. But that didn’t stop us from asking the girls about the course.

“It’s really nice,” the perky one with the colorful ribbons in her hair told us.

“If you don’t birdie the par-5 fourth hole, we have a pink cap for you,” said the confident 8-handicapper in the pink shorts. With emphasis, like she meant it. Nice.

I’ve been visiting northern Michigan for 25 years and thought I knew all the top public-access courses in these parts. Otsego Club & Resort, the oldest private ski club in the nation, has two courses: the Classic, a short, pleasant parkland test that dates to 1958; and the Tribute, a grand-scale test hewn from the wilderness by Rick Robbins and Gary Koch in 2001.

A genuine “sleeper” located 10 minutes from Treetops Resort in Gaylord, the Tribute was introduced with no fanfare and was scheduled as a “filler” course between the region’s better-known venues. Well under the radar and deserving of wider notice, the Tribute is a knockout. Set on 1,100 acres and stretching to 7,347 yards, this well-groomed test is bold and beautiful, its staggered tee boxes accommodating all ability levels. The greens are uniformly large and liberally contoured. The corridors, framed by hardwood forests and pinched by cedar wetlands, are wide. The bunkers are in all the right places, but not overdone.  The routing is a counterclockwise loop of non-returning nines that erases all reminders of civilization.

We are macho warriors, but we are sensible. We played the white tees at 6,256 yards, and it was all we could handle. Again, morning showers had softened the fairways. The course played long. REALLY long. Starting with the opening tee shot, it was clear that flat holes are a rare commodity at the Tribute. Also, nearly every tee is elevated, accentuating the majestic 30-mile views of the Sturgeon River Valley.

The par-4 third hole is the first of many where the panoramic views of distant hills needs to be savored and then set aside. We played the hole at 380 yards, and yet a pair of our drives finished in the vicinity of the green.

The third was a warm-up for the fourth. This is the one the cart girl told us about. The hole features a split fairway: a ball played to the lower, wider (and safer) landing area to the right effectively turns the hole into a three-shot par 5. The upper, narrower fairway to the left invites aggressive players to use the downhill slope to reach the green in two. Messrs. Kessler and Bedell, each a big hitter, had short irons in for their second shots after aiming their drives to the left.

While I enjoyed the hang time and the view at the fourth, I thought to myself, what goes down must come up.  We did our share of climbing on subsequent holes, but the excitement at the Tribute kept building. Otsego’s premier course has been awarded four stars by Golf Digest, but, let’s face it, we live an age of designer labels. It’s Jones this and Nicklaus that. It’s rare to see such a beautiful, well-strategized layout by a relative unknown and a former Tour pro not classed with Crenshaw and Weiskopf.

Robbins, a North Carolina-based designer, has good pedigree. His father worked with legendary LPGA star Peggy Kirk Bell and her husband, Warren “Bullet” Bell, as general manager at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club. Hound Ears Club in Boone, N.C. was developed by his father and uncles. Robbins himself learned the trade under Robert von Hagge and later worked as a senior design associate in Jack Nicklaus’ Hong Kong office. Like most golf architects, Robbins works extensively in China these days, but the Tribute remains one of the highlights of his domestic portfolio.

I believe courses should be judged on how much pleasurable excitement they deliver to all types of players. From any set of tees, the Tribute is a superb test of golf. It’s overshadowed by the region’s better-promoted courses, but it belongs on any golfer’s northern Michigan itinerary.

I hope to play it again soon. Someone who works there owes me a pink hat.

Bunker Mentality at Tom Doak's Black Forest.

When I played golf with Tom Doak a week before taking on his Black Forest Golf Course in Gaylord, Michigan, he warned that if I could get through the first five holes without blowing up, the rest of the day would prove much easier and I might post a pretty good score. But 7-5-4-7 is not my credit card PIN or the last four digits of my social security number: it’s the one par, one bogie, one double, and one triple that I recorded on the first four holes at Black Forest. The good news? I eked out a par on the 238-yard par-three fifth. So take that, Tom Doak!

Despite a higher degree of difficulty than a few things I watched performed on the balance beam at the Olympics this week, Black Forest proved a fun if testing day. Much of the trouble comes in the form of crazy lies even if you’ve delivered your ball into the middle of the fairway– most players don’t practice at ranges with up, down, and side-hill slopes, and so the shot demands here are just enough to transport you out of your comfort zone.

Number one also implies that positioning, even within the fairways, will prove crucial to success throughout your round– all three shots on the 524-yard par five must be delivered to the correct side of the fairway to ensure a clear path on the next shot. The hole concludes with possibly the world’s smallest crowned green, reminiscent of something built back in the 1920s by Donald Ross or Chandler Egan.

On number two at Black Forest I kill a drive from the white tee and still have 220 to the green– or actually don’t have it, as there’s not a club in my bag that will reliably meet that particular demand. But wait– more good news: a slope fronting the green means that on a dry day I might only need 190 in. The bad news? Black Forest has been over-watered within an inch of its life, making even medium-length holes feel like journeys out of The Odyssey. And even the easy holes still somehow prove difficult– like the seemingly straightforward 166-yard par-three eighth, where the subtle green is virtually impossible to read by anyone less than The Great Carnac. But this is difficult golf of the fun variety, and never seems unfair. You WANT to hit the shots the layout demands, you know you can, But sometimes you just don’t.

Black Forest is well named as the golf holes route gorgeously through the trees of a locale known as Wilderness Valley. Few signs of humanity are visible throughout the day, and the course seems to hunker miles even from the clubhouse (so no walking). And while we’ve been playing courses cut into trees all week here in the Gaylord area, this one does, in fact, seem darker and more foreboding. The trees seem taller, and you’ll swear they begin to close in on you when you’re not looking, like the Ents in Lord of the Rings.

As with real estate, Black Forest is all about location, location, location.

The par fives– of which there are three on the back– are a particular tribute to Doak’s design skills. From the white tees all are eminently reachable in two shots, but you may be better off hitting driver, seven-iron, seven-iron if having even a snowball’s chance at birdie is still one of your goals. On number ten, a mere 460 yards, you don’t even know from the tee that trees encroaching on the landing area conspire with other design elements and hazards to add difficulty. At number eleven, Warrior Peter Kessler banged a great drive into the middle of the fairway yet had no real shot at the green, which seemed to duck behind bunkering guarding the putting surface around an uphill corner to the left.

The golf course finishes strong with pars of 5-4-5, all reachable, but the mood changes because two parallel fairways at 16 and 17 separated by an unexpected lake open the viewscape and don’t quite fit with the rest of the holes.

Black Forest was an early Doak design, and despite its penal vibe, the craftsmanship and strategic values of the holes are clear indication of the architect’s skill. It’s like reading an early Hemingway novel like The Rites of Spring– while it may not be of Nobel prize quality, it’s a clear indication of the talent of the artist, and what he’s capable of producing in the future.

Long before he became a household name among the cognoscenti, designer Tom Doak built Black Forest at Wilderness Valley over 20 years ago.

There are better-known courses in Gaylord, ones with smoother greens and more expansive views. But Black Forest, Doak’s second design effort after now-defunct High Pointe, showcases the architect’s encyclopedic knowledge of classic holes drawn from British and American courses. Young Tom was ably assisted by Gil Hanse, a former design associate who has gone on to great successes of his own, notably the 2016 Rio Olympics design job.

Back to Black Forest. This traditional, broad-shouldered course meanders through nearly 400 acres of thickly wooded hills and valleys. The holes were carved from a dense forest of hardwoods and pines. The feeling is one of seclusion. This is a place for golf.

Doak, only 30 at the time, was still learning to dig his ideas into the dirt when Black Forest was built. I retrieved from my files a brief on the course he sent me in 1991. “Deep in the woods of northern Michigan, the Black Forest is a difficult but surprisingly playable layout,” he wrote. “The woods are thick as the name implies, but most of the clearings are comfortably wide for the average golfer. Instead, the main difficulties of the course lie in the rolling topography, the relatively small, sloping greens, and most of all the dramatic bunkering: in contrast to the grass-faced bunkers prevalent in modern design, the sprawling sand of Black Forest is a throwback to the style of George C. Thomas and Alister Mackenzie. The five par-5 holes (which include the first and 18^th) may be the highlight of this most original par-73 layout.”

You can take Doak at his word on all counts, but the “surprisingly playable” bit only applies to golfers prudent enough to play the white tees at 6,097 yards, as we did. At 6,688 yards, the blue tees are for low single-digit players, while the black markers at 7,044 yards carry course and slope ratings of 74.3 and 147, respectively. Even scratch players and professionals have their hands full from the tips.

Black Forest, like all the courses we experienced on the trip, played long. Personally, I believe the course is over-watered: Doak used ground contours as natural defenses on many of the holes, but these contours only work if the ground is relatively dry. The roll-out on most drives was negligible. (I calculated the effective playing distance from the white tees at roughly 6,400 yards).

Setting aside that peeve, Black Forest is a solid test of golf. When I spoke with club developer Dave Smith many years ago, he said he told Doak to build a course that would serve as a more challenging counterpart to the facility’s gentle Wilderness Valley course. Mission accomplished.

Among the more distinctive holes at Black Forest, and there are many, is the long par-3 fifth, which plays over a ravine to a hilltop green fronted by a fearsome bunker that measures 40 feet from stem to stern. From the tee, it looks like a sandy tidal wave. At the par-5 seventh, a penal cross bunker must be negotiated, while the short par-3 eighth calls for a forced carry over a ravine to a small, crowned green defended by an imposing network of multi-tiered, amoeba-like bunkers.

“In an era when nearly all new ‘great’ par 3s feature water, the eighth hole (in fact, the entire course) is a throwback to the days when bunkering and green contouring were the two key components of golf course design,” said Doak, no shrinking violet when it comes to assessing his own work.

Black Forest is often described as a “minimalist” design, and I doubt Doak and his team moved too much dirt, but the 80-plus bunkers sprinkled across this rugged layout are not of the wallflower variety. Neither are the greens. Players must contend, as we did, with hogbacks, swales and more than a few buried elephants built into the putting surfaces.

In his Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, Doak admitted that “I’m still suspicious of a course where I haven’t broken 80 yet…(m)aybe one day I’ll play a decent round here and I’ll feel better about the whole thing.” My guess is that Tom, a Traverse City resident, has broken 80 on Black Forest in the two decades since he built it and has derived great pleasure from conquering one of the fairest but toughest tests of golf in northern Michigan.

A few final thoughts on golf in and around Gaylord. Because this part of the state resides in the western limit of the eastern time zone, daylight is prolonged. Even in early August, it stayed light until 9:30 PM. Which is nice if you’re trying to squeeze in an extra nine or 18 holes.

Second, Michigan is located within a 500-mile drive of nearly half of the U.S. population and is readily accessible through several international and regional airports. It’s reputation as a convenient golf mecca is well-deserved.

Third, no place in the world produces more tart red cherries than Grand Traverse County. It’s noteworthy that every summer, more than 300,000 visitors converge on the “Cherry Capital of the World” to celebrate the National Cherry Festival. The cherry pies and jams produced here are out of this world.

Lastly, no trip to the region would be complete without a visit to Don’s Drive-In of Traverse City, a 1958 doo-wop throwback popular with locals and tourists alike. The shakes—order a black-and-white—cannot be drawn through a straw. Use a long-handled spoon. You’ll be humming oldies in no time.

Doak’s canvas was nearly 400 acres of native Michigan evergreen and hardwood forests to which he carefully added some of the most visually stunning bunkering and multi-contoured greens you will find anywhere. The combination of trees, sand, grasses, and elevation changes are a veritable feast for the eyes.

“This is one of the courses that you hardly ever see another golf hole. The course is ripped through some of the finest golf course property I have ever seen. You feel like you are secluded in a forest of golf holes that will go on forever,” described Dan Rusnak on GolfChicago.com. You won’t be hitting through tunnels of houses in a real estate development because there’s not a single house on the golf course site.

We have the hubris to call ourselves Golf Road Warriors partly because when most sensible middle-aged men would be content to play a single round of golf during the day and follow it with beer and a nap, we’re dumb enough to go play whatever other golf courses might lie within striking distance. So after a fine morning in the company of Rick Smith (well, not Rick himself, but his work at Treetops Signature Course), why WOULDN’T we chow down a tuna wrap in the clubhouse and turn back around to play the Fazio Premier Course. I mean, it was already right there. And so was visiting Road Warrior Terry Moore, who filled in for Peter Kessler for the afternoon round. We last left Moore on the Golf Road Warriors Scottsdale trip, with an injured wing that prevented him from showing off his golf prowess. I’m afraid there was no such problem at the Fazio.

The Warriors take on the par-three 4th hole.

Apparently local golf legend Rick Smith had a bit of trouble convincing Tom Fazio to come to Northern Michigan, but we were all glad that Fazio relented and designed a fine 6,832-yard treat at Treetops North.

The course opens with roller coaster thrills on a tiered, downhill ride of 431 yards. After an ordinary hole moves you along in the routing, number three ratchets up the excitement again with a great long uphill par four guarded by fairway bunkers to the left and two greenside sand hazards. The first par three comes at the fourth hole, where Tom Bedell was glad to be reminded that the Warriors play everything as a lateral hazard. This downhiller plays into a scenic, protected valley even though the wind was ripping in the trees above us on the tee box. I was glad to see that the short par-four fifth, at 313, managed to reward two bad shots of mine, but then punished me with a crazy green that seemed to fall off on one side faster than the housing market.

On number seven, simply hit 259 off the tee (but not 260, because the fairway ends there) and remember to take two or three extra clubs and not to go in the bunker short and left. Let me say it again: do not go in the bunker short and left. And if you do, you might want to let your family know that you’ll be home later than expected.

Complex. Green complex.

The real character of the course is delivered by the tremendous elevation changes on so many of the holes, which provide a great test not only of club selection, but of confidence. And as confidence is so often based on feeling like you’ve got exactly the right club in your hand, large drops and climbs off tees and to greens add an additional dimension to a round here. The other thing to keep in mind is to make sure you alight on the short grass, as balls missing the fairways by even a matter of inches may find themselves up to their top dimples in tall grass.

Water appears for the first– and only– time on the par-three eleventh, a sort of modified Cape hole over a lake with a deep green. Next up is a great risk/reward par five of a mere 485 yards that is particularly risky/rewardy if the pin is set around the corner on the back left. But that didn’t stop guest Warrior Terry Moore from reaching the green in two. The next par five, at sixteen, is like a geometry quiz, and all about the angles (okay, and the slopes, as well). Bunkers in several places suggest the right lines. The course finishes with a raucous 471-yard uphill far four– yes, I said “par four”.

If you’re not tired by now, the Golf Road Warriors may have an opening on their next trip.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Golf Course.

On every golf trip where you play a collection of courses there’s always one you’re not looking forward to as much– whether because of reputation or what you’ve been told about it by a friend (who may have just played badly that day), or because it just doesn’t have the cachet of the other layouts in your rota.

So when the Golf Road Warriors woke on the day we were scheduled to play The Tribute at The Otsego Golf Club, just a few miles from our home base at Treetops Resort, the mood was a bit muted. We sipped our coffee at breakfast as if the day ahead was filled with meetings. Kessler barely even finished his egg sandwich. Bedell only consumed a single order of the banana French toast. Maybe our funk was due to the fact that we’d be playing a track designed by Gary Koch and Rick Robbins rather than by Rees Jones, Tom Fazio, or Rick Smith. We hadn’t heard of the designers and so felt free to roll our eyes and imagine the worst.

Yet the moment we arrived at The Otsego Club and Resort and were greeted by two energetic girls who loaded our bags onto carts, and we walked into the gorgeously rustic clubhouse, we knew we were on to something. Founded as a private ski club in 1939, the property proffers the feeling of a deep leather couch that you can just fall comfortably back into (which, in fact, we did later, after a fine lunch in the dining room).

And then we saw the golf course itself, a sprawling beauty luxuriating across 1,100 acres of Sturgeon River Valley terrain unimpeded by houses or cell towers or virtually any signs of humans other than our golf balls flying against the horizon and the occasional moan issued by Brian McCallen following the flight of his tee shots. We soon began to get an idea of how good the day ahead was going to be.

The Golf Road Warriors played the course from the white tees at a somewhat short 6,256 yards, but the wind certainly made it play longer. If we could offer a single recommendation for improvement, it would be to add a set of combo tees, as the blue tees– at 6,733– would certainly have proven much too long for us on this day. At any rate, we enjoyed the challenges from the whites and played a fine match that was decided by the final putt on 18, when an unexpectedly steady Tom Bedell sunk a five-footer for the win.

After a couple of extremely scenic opening holes that were, well, quite open, the course turned truly interesting. We were somewhat befuddled by number four, a steep downhill par-five conundrum of 450 yards that offered two fairways: a lower and wider one to the right, a narrow upper route to the left. What we didn’t know was that if you hit it as long as Tom Bedell does, and went right, you’d punch right through the fairway into steep, difficult rough. Peter Kessler and I both chose the left route and had shots at the green in two– but mine was with a three-wood whereas his required an eight iron. I hit a stinger that disappeared for a long time as it flew over rough downhill toward the mostly unseen putting surface, then reappeared at the low end, leaving me with a lag of about 2,000 yards. Kessler stubbed his eight iron and the ball also vanished temporarily before suddenly materializing in the center of the green and rolling to pin high. Somehow we both ended up with fives.

The par-five seventh also stood out– on the third shot of this 535-yard epic, the fairway narrowed and pinched and curved toward a green guarded by a lake to the left. Faced with that approach you realize that the hole is all about positioning on the second shot–though you’ve already hit yours. The entire world seemed to tilt toward the hazard on the final approach.

You can see for miles and miles. But can you nail this downhill approach?

Our Otsego forest journey continued as we played across ravines and ridges, enjoyed 30-mile views of the surrounding wooded countryside, and negotiated clever challenges like the par-three ninth, requiring a five-wood hit to a green with an extra shelf that was on this day home to the pin. The par threes in general were strong and varied, ranging from 126 to 202 yards. The course closed with a short uphill par four with the pin set on a green that was mostly invisible, at least from where we were all approaching it from, and guarded by bunkers at the front and back and some tightly-mown chipping areas, which created a bit of havoc prior to Bedell closing out the match with his last putt.

Today the Golf Road Warriors took on Rees Jones’s Black Lake Golf Club, about an hour from our current digs at Treetops Resort. We drove there in high style in a Cadillac Escalade, provided by GM, that was only a bit larger than at least one of the par threes on the the golf course, and even smoother. And how appropriate to drive there in one of the most luxurious American-made cars in history, given that Black Lake is owned by the United Auto Workers, and part of a sort of resort camp opened in 1970 as a retreat and learning center where UAW members and their families could get together away from the normal strains of daily life.

We managed to find a few strains of our own on the workmanlike golf course that is consistently solid in every way if also just a tad uninspired. Number one at Black Lake presents a clean opening foray of 430 yards with bunkers at the landing area and the green. A good opening hole is one that provides a full look at the entire routing, and this one delivers. Number two introduces the theme of wetlands, which work to determine much of the strategy at Black Lake– it’s a 200-yard carry to the fairway from the back tees of this right-doglegging beauty. A long fade works well here– not coincidentally the specialty of burly Warrior Tom Bedell. In fact, we’ve seen him hit a long fade from the fringe around the green.

The par-three third hole.

Par three of another color– number 5.

Solid par threes appear at number three and number five, with completley different looks and shot demands– the first requests a mid-iron over wetlands to a raised green, while the fifth presents a maze of bunkers en route to a 206-yard challenge suggesting a well-struck hybrid and lots of air time. While course features generally accentuate the natural beauty of the site, Jones’s bunkering is in places overwrought, twisting into the kinds of shapes you might see on a microscope slide.

Snakey number six.

The operative word pairing on the 515-yard par-five sixth is: risk/reward– coming on the second shot, when you need to decide whether you are both close enough and man enough to curve a fairway wood with a perfect long draw to a green running beside a blue lake. The front side closes and the back side opens with back-to-back par fives– the former a gigantically long monster of nearly 600 yards, but the subsequent challenge a mere 518 with a portfolio of bunkers and a lake gathering together in harmony near the green.

Other great holes include the “Sahara” hole, number 14, which architect Jones “discovered” in a natural sand pit on the site. Nine tees provide more than enough options for you to find one that works– unlike Warrior Brian McCallen, who managed to find some sand to blast out of anyway (see below). You may also notice that golf yardage books like to use a lot of “parentheses.”

By late in the day you’ll have figured that the many perched greens are more reachable with half a club more than you think you need. Blacklake concludes with an uphill par five mined with bunkers and a green with many hidden assets that must be negotiated en route to the final cup.

Brian McCallen escapes the sand. Temporarily.