# The Best Golf Courses in Bellaire

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-bellaire-mi/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Michigan


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bellaire is a small town that sits in the middle of a chain of lakes, and in summer the lakes win most arguments about how to spend a day. Golf is the counteroffer. The courses here were built on ski hills and along a river, which tells you most of what you need to know: this is northern Michigan resort golf, played in short sleeves for about five months and talked about for the other seven.

That shapes the ranking. Nobody flies to Bellaire for a championship test. You come because the water is cold and clear, the evenings are long, and the golf, at its best, uses the land instead of fighting it. We score the golf first, then the day around it, then what access costs you in money and hassle. By that measure the river beats the mountain, which will annoy people who like their golf with a view and a cart ride up.

## 1Shanty Creek Resort Cedar River Golf Course

Cedar River is the Weiskopf course at Shanty Creek, and it is the one round in Bellaire that feels like it belongs exactly where it stands. The Cedar River runs through the property, the holes work through woods and along the water, and the whole thing has a quieter pulse than the resort's headline acts. Weiskopf's public work tends to give you options off the tee and then ask a real question on the second shot. That is the right kind of golf for a lake week: interesting at 7 a.m. with coffee, still interesting on the third playing.

The concession is access and occasion. Cedar River does not have the Legend's drama, and if you only have one round and want the photograph, you will pick wrong by our lights and pick the mountain. Fine. But day after day, this is the course Bellaire golfers would keep, because the variety holds up and the setting never has to shout.

## 2Shanty Creek Resort Legend Golf Course

The Legend is Palmer on a ski hill, and Palmer understood showmanship the way few designers ever have. You climb, you look out over the valley, and several tee shots ask you to hit a ball into a view that makes the target feel smaller than it is. As a piece of theatre it works. First-time visitors remember the Legend longest, and there is no point pretending otherwise.

What keeps it second is the other side of mountain golf. Elevation change is a thrill in doses and a tax in bulk. Balls that miss get punished by slope as much as by design, and the round can turn into a sequence of dramatic stands rather than a connected argument. Play it once on every trip. Just know the show is doing some of the scoring.

## 3Hawk's Eye Golf Resort

Hawk's Eye stands apart from the Shanty Creek cluster, a separate resort round south of town with its own following among locals who make the Bellaire trip every year. It plays through northern Michigan woods with enough movement in the land to keep tee shots honest, and it benefits from not being anyone's second course. It is the home game, not the spare.

Its ceiling is lower than the two above it. There is no signature conceit here, no river, no ski hill, nothing to put on a brochure cover. What there is: a solid, good looking round that regulars return to without needing to be sold. In a town of resort rotations, that counts for more than it should.

## 4Shanty Creek Resort Schuss Mountain Course

Schuss Mountain is the older, shorter companion in the Shanty Creek family, and it knows it. This is the round you book for the mixed group, the late afternoon nine that becomes eighteen, the day the lake lost and nobody wanted a five hour examination. It is pleasant, it is handy, and it asks very little of you.

That is also the ceiling. Schuss is a fine way to spend a morning and a hard course to argue for above fourth in its own town. Every ranking needs a course like this at the bottom, doing an honest job. The water is five minutes away, and Schuss never pretends it outranks the water.

Bellaire golf ends the way Bellaire days end, with the light going long over the lakes and somebody suggesting one more nine tomorrow. Cedar River is the reason that suggestion sounds smart.

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