Editor’s note: This article was published in Grand Traverse Scene magazine’s Summer II 2025 issue. Pick up a free copy at area hotels, visitor’s centers, chambers of commerce or at the Record-Eagle building on Front Street. Click here to read GT Scene in its entirety online.
“I shot a 98 the other day and a buddy asked me how that happened. I told him I missed a three-footer for 97.”
The golfing industry is alive and well in northern Michigan. Just try to a) make a tee-time between now and Labor Day, and b) look at the (slightly over-inflated) price tag to play 18 holes of punishment, not to mention lose even more money in lost balls, bets, a new driver after windmilling the current one into the creek on #7, and dental bills from grinding their molar enamel down to the roots from four-putting the last hole.
People from all walks have made this “lifetime” sport one of the area’s bread-and-butter industries, so it’s interesting to look at the demographics, which can be broken down to those who love and deserve to play, and those who should bowl, ride unicycles, or test parachutes… anything but golf.
Golfers who love the sport appreciate tradition, the athleticism required, and exercise it provides; they love the sound of a perfectly struck ball and the ker-plunk when the ensuing putt bends right in the heart of the cup. They dodge sprinklers to get in an early nine, and never cancel when God’s sprinkler calls for an all-day soaker. They greet opening day in the coldest of temperatures, bear the muggy, dog-days of mid-summer with a smile and plenty of water, and shoot out the porch light of the local greenskeeper in October when he aerates the greens in preparation for the season’s last day.
They often played as a junior, even in high school or college for some truly talented souls. These golfers are also walking contradictions, knowing that the best medicine after a poor shot is to put it behind them yet convinced that a quiet but intense, profanity-laced tirade that fuels a festering anger on the walk to the following hole will no doubt add 15 yards to their next tee shot. They’ve hit just enough great shots to make a pro envious, believing they’re one good round away from joining the tour. They respect the rules of the game with an almost religious reverence for etiquette but will simultaneously tackle someone like a cornerback if they step in their line. And when hitting the ball extremely well, they’ll wear the same clothes, down to the socks and underwear, and even miss work and family events, for a chance at breaking par. These are good, honest, God-fearing, hopeful, neurotic folks who can’t get enough of the sport.
The second group of golfers show up carrying more cans of beer than clubs. They are bachelor parties and work outings, and insist on bringing a speaker to blare music they just know everyone can’t wait to listen to. Some even look the part, as if walking directly out of the pro shop at Pebble Beach, sunglasses (and flat-brims) on backward, speaking every kind of modern golf-lingo buzzword and sporting a bag holding $5,000 of equipment with hopes of, at one point in their uncoordinated lives, winning a $2 Nassau against their buddies.
They throw clubs, talk in your backswing, and are as accurate tossing away trash as they are at putting. They play painfully slow but never let you go through, or hyper-quick and right on your heels, teeing off after you’ve hit from the fairway but before you’ve put the damn club away, having arrived at the course to play a game they can’t wait to finish in record time. They’re low handicapped, high handicapped, and actually handicapped. They haven’t hit a shot more than two-feet high all day yet stubbornly study their range finder and wait for the par 5 green to clear a quarter mile away… then chunk their divot farther than the ball. They use the foot wedge as a 15th club, count anything 10 feet and in as a gimme, and have no clue what white, red, and yellow hazard markers mean other than an opportunity to hit another shot (without penalty). And they, too, have hit shots that any pro would envy.
The truth is that anyone who’s ever played this great game has, to some degree, fallen into both categories. I’d tell you which one I’m in most often, but I need to focus on my next shot because, in the immortal words of Bill Murray, “I am about to become the Masters champion.”