# The Gaylord Golf Guide

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/gaylord-mi-golf-guide/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Guides / Michigan


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gaylord calls itself America's summer golf capital, and the number behind the slogan is 17 courses in the area. For once the marketing undersells the logistics. This is a small town in northern Michigan where you can base in one place, play a different course every day, and be back for dinner without a heroic drive. The season is short, the daylight is long, and everybody in town understands why you came.

Base at Treetops. The resort holds four of the anchor courses on this trip, the Masterpiece, Premier, Signature, and Tradition courses, and clustering matters more in Gaylord than pedigree does. Play the Masterpiece Course as the anchor round. It carries the resort's flagship name for a reason, and a trip built around it gives the week a center. Put it on the first full morning, when you are fresh enough to appreciate a big course in the northern woods rather than just survive it.

## Build the week around the cluster

The Premier and Signature courses are the next two rounds, in either order, and they are where the Treetops argument gets interesting. Groups split on them, which is healthy. Play one on day two and one on day three, keep score honestly, and let the argument run through dinner, because a resort with three courses worth arguing about is doing something right. The Tradition Course is the round to place carefully rather than prominently: arrival afternoon, when you have driven up from downstate or flown in and your swing is still in the car, or the morning of departure, when a friendlier test sends everyone home in a good mood. Using your easiest round as bookends is not a demotion. It is trip design.

Then add the par 3. Threetops, the resort's par 3 course, is where instructor Rick Smith made his name, and it is the best ninety minutes in Gaylord that does not appear on most itineraries. Play it in the evening. Northern Michigan summer light lasts, the stakes are low, the shots are short, and the whole group can play together without the slow bleed of a five hour round. Trips need one session like that, where the golf is pure contest and nobody is protecting a scorecard.

Leave the resort for the last two rounds. The Otsego Resort's Tribute Course and The Pines at Michaywe give the week its change of scenery, proof that Gaylord golf is a town wide bench and not a single property with good marketing. Play one of them midweek, when resort fatigue is real even if nobody admits it, and the other as the final round. Both reward the golfer who books them deliberately instead of treating anything off the main property as an afterthought.

Getting the most from Treetops also means resisting the urge to grade every course on the same scale. A resort week has jobs to do: one round to test you, one to argue about, one to loosen you up, and one to send you home willing to come back. Gaylord's depth lets you assign those jobs honestly instead of forcing the anchor course to do all four. That is a rarer thing in resort golf than another long par 4, and it is why the town keeps its summer regulars.

## Season, pacing, and the mistake

Summer is the season, full stop. Northern Lower Michigan golf runs on a short clock: late spring can be cold, early fall is beautiful and risky, and winter belongs to the skiers. Within summer, long evenings are the asset most visitors waste. Tee off mid morning, take the long lunch, and use the late light for Threetops or a second nine rather than forcing 36 holes through the heat of the day.

Access here is resort and public golf, the friendliest setup in this guide series, but tee sheets at Treetops fill in peak weeks, so book the anchor rounds when you book the rooms. The mistake is trying to sample all 17 courses in the area in one trip, turning a compact town into a driving tour. Gaylord's gift is density. Settle into one base, play the Treetops four in a sensible order, step off property twice, and save the rest for the return trip the town is quietly counting on.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.