Crystal Downs
First comment: WOW! This course is just plain spectacular! It is set up on a bluff overlooking Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan in Frankfort, Michigan. This is very small town on the Southern Peninsula and not all of kind of place that you would expect to find a course like this.
The fairways are often mounded and will result in many uneven lies. But this also makes the course different every time you play it. The rough is just plain brutal. About 10 yards off the fairway is nasty, thick heather similar to that found on many links courses. The green are EXTREMELY fast and contoured. Local knowledge of the greens is very important on your approaches, pitches, and chips.
The entire front nine, plus holes 10 and 18 are set up in a links
style -- mostly open and heavy gorse guarding the fairways. Holes 11 through
17 are most typical of what you would expect to find in a Michigan hardwood
forest. Most of the front nine is visible from the clubhouse. Here is a panoramic
picture that I spiced together from two different photos. I made two different
versions of the picture -- one with the routing of the visible holes and one
without.
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With Routing
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Without Routing
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Here is a link
to a similar web page about the OSU Scarlet and Grey Course. This course was
also designed by Mackenzie but he died four years before the construction was
started.
Crystal Downs Scorecard
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Blue rating: 73.6/138
White rating: 72.6/135
Gold rating: 69.6/128
Red rating: 73.7/135
