Timberstone at Pine Mountain

Tue Sept 9, 2008

Today we are off to play TimberStone at Pine Mountain, where we will go from the Eastern Time Zone to Central and back to Eastern when we return.

TimberStone has a design credit of Jerry Mathews Design but it turns out that Paul Albanese was the team leader for Jerry Mathews before he started his own design firm and he had a strong hand in designing this golf course too. Interesting that I am playing two courses in a row of a designer I never heard of before. Having experienced these two vastly different courses, I know this is a designer that we will be hearing more about in the future.

It was a 45-minute ride from Island Resort and Casino to TimberStone at Pine Mountain. This course couldn’t be more different than Sweetgrass, even though it was designed be basically the same person. This is a mountain like course, with lots of elevation changes (310 vertical feet of elevation change) and tree lined fairways. There is no doubt we are in northern Michigan now. Number 17 and 18 are the most dramatic in the downhill area. #17is a par 3, with a stunning 120 feet of vertical drop and I would guess that #18, a par 5 playing almost 600-yards, has the same or more. These two holes have to qualify among the best finishing holes in golf,certainly in Michigan

The trees here that line many of the fairways are majestic and the boulders, strewn everywhere, especially along the cart paths add a real country glacial feel to the grounds. The trees that frame the fairways make it appear that the holes are much tighter than they actually turn out to be. Quite a visual trickery of the eye.

I played with Nile Young and Scott Sumner and Tom McChesney and we had a fun day- laughing all the way. Nile had a tough day at 97 but Scott and I both shot 87, which was good for a course I have never seen before and Tom shot 85. Is it tough here? The slope from the tees we played (not the furthest back) is 144 now that’s plenty tough. www.timberstonegolf.com