Forest Dunes (The Loop - Red)

The gently undulating nature of the property is such that there are no pronounced elevation changes, making it the perfect place for Tom Doak of Renaissance Golf Design to fulfil a career-long wish to design and build a layout that could be played in one direction or the other, depending on how a golf club wishes to set it up on any particular day.

Our regular contributor Paul Rudovsky visited Forest Dunes in June 2018 and blogged as follows:

“This was my second visit to this resort. I was here in July 2014 to play the original course by Tom Weiskopf (opened in 2002), which I really liked. The land at Forest Dunes has had some rather interesting owners through the years, including William Durant, one of the founders of GM, the Detroit Partnership and the Michigan Carpenters Pension Fund.

After years of losses, the Pension Fund sold the property in 2011 to Lew Thompson, an entrepreneur who made a fortune in the long haul trucking business. Thompson first built a nice lodge on the property (Forest Dunes is located in a fairly remote part of northern Michigan) then he went looking for various ways to expand its golf offerings.

Tom Doak has long been interested in building a “reversible” course and Thompson gave him the opportunity five years ago. By 2016 “The Loop” at Forest Dunes had opened, featuring the counter-clockwise Red Course and clockwise Black Course. The advantages are obvious…offering customers two very different courses on one piece of land with the maintenance of one course.

Naturally, only one course can be opened at a time so Forest Dunes plays the property as the Red on days 1, 3, 5 etc. and as the Black on days 2, 4, 6 etc. Guests no longer arrive at Forest Dunes for a one day visit; they now tend to stay for 2-4 days to play all three courses. Mike Keiser’s theorem proved again.

So on this day I played the Red and enjoyed it a lot. Fairways and tees are fescue which, if you have the right climate, is the best firm and fast playing surface. Fairways are wonderful wide corridors but players need to hit to a particular area off the tee or the shot to the green becomes very hard.

The best hole in my opinion is #12 and hardest is the par five 9th (at least for me). Greens are very interesting but not “crazy” putting surfaces… they are difficult to read, important to understand but playable. It’s a very easy property to walk, one that really challenges players, and the land is rumpled, with a fair number of greens sloped front to back (which almost has to be the case on a reversible course).

One interesting question that needs to be sorted out in future years is whether The Loop gets rated as two separate courses or one?

Several reversible courses and partially reversible courses have been built – look out for more in the future. It requires the right land form and a very bright creative architect to make it work…it does here at Forest Dunes, and the next day I played it clockwise.”

We asked Tom Doak for his thoughts on whether or not the Black and Red configurations at The Loop should be ranked separately and this was his response:

“When the course opened all of the magazines asked if it should be rated as one course or two; my feeling was that it is one course with a lot more variety than most! Rating the two independently strips both of their essential being, since the whole point is to play both ways and contrast them.

I knew that it would be difficult to decide how to rank the course… You are free to do whatever you want, but if you think of the rankings' purpose as to help identify which courses you'd like to visit, I think most people would consider them together rather than separately.”

After lengthy deliberation we finally decided to separately list each course. Largely because you have to pay and play twice to experience the Black and Red. You can't play both courses on the same day, although Tom told us that; “on months with the 31st they've been having a better-ball event where you play one way in the morning and then the other after lunch.”

The club markets both courses separately and each is individually named and contrasting in look, feel and strategy. The only common denominator is the ground on which they both play. So we figure they are two separate courses.

We therefore made a mistake by not listing both courses in our 2018 Best In State rankings for Michigan. So we've added the Red course as a GEM until we re-rank Michigan in 2020. In the meanwhile, if you've played both courses which one do you believe is best?

According to Tom: “I really don't feel there is much between them. The Black has a hard start and gentler finish; the Red the more conventional softer start and tough finishing holes. The Black's #4 and #12 make better use of certain features than their counterparts, but you could say the same for #4 and #8 and #11 and 12 Red. When they first opened I asked the pro shop to keep track of people's preference, not between Red and Black, but between their first round or the second in the opposite direction. A large majority prefer the course they played second, whichever it was.”