Michigan Golf Journal May 2020

DeVries Designs Leading Edge Golf Golf Magazine Top 50 Clubfitter in North America (517)253-0960 legolfshop.com 2805 Jolly Rd Ste 260 Okemos, MI 48864 Right across the street fromOkemos High School M-F 10-7PM Sat 10-6pm Course Review: Kingsley Club DeVries created a masterful layout on beautiful rolling hills, and the result appears that he had his most fun shaping green complexes. Several greens are elevated tabletops with testy run offs for approach shots and chip shots that are even the slightest offline. But the design is balanced with a good number of greens that are bowl shaped as to push shots that are well offline back onto the green. The first, fourth and fifth greens show off this feature the most. Very few mis-played greens will feed balls into bunkers, rather just into steep greenside run offs. Shots that go into bunkers are earned by golfers’ mistakes. Like so many course designs, if golfers keep their ball in the fairway the layout is very playable. This well- below average golfer was able to shoot 3-over par on the front nine, a new career low at the time. But when the northern winds picked up later in the round, all havoc broke loose on the scorecard. One playing partner described Kingsley Club as playing Arcadia Bluffs but without Lake Michigan as a backdrop. Another made a similar claim – that if you picked up Kingsley Club and could drop it onto the Bandon Dunes property along the Pacific Ocean in Oregon, it would feel very natural with the rest of the Bandon designs. MGJ