# The Best Golf Courses in Gaylord Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-gaylord-mi/ [The Course Rankings](/) Town Rankings / Michigan A golfer walking a fairway. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Gaylord calls itself America's summer golf capital, and for once the slogan is doing arithmetic rather than poetry: 17 courses sit in and around this Alpine styled town on the 45th parallel, most of them open to anyone with a tee time and a tank of gas. The product is northern Michigan golf in bulk: elevation, hardwoods, long light, and prices that stay sane because supply is everywhere. Ranking six of them means separating real design from mere scenery, which in Gaylord is harder than it sounds. The scenery is relentless. The design varies. The center of gravity is Treetops, the resort north of town where four of our six courses live and where the famous Threetops par 3 course made Rick Smith's name. One resort holding four spots on a town list invites suspicion, so we judged each Treetops course against the others and against the two independents without mercy. A couple of them did not enjoy it. ## 1Treetops Resort Masterpiece Course The Masterpiece is the resort's flagship and the biggest test in Gaylord: a course built to championship scale, with elevation changes that turn club selection into arithmetic and greens that punish the wrong tier without apology. It is the round visitors plan the trip around, and the one they talk about in the parking lot with the particular respect golfers reserve for courses that beat them fairly. The concession writes itself. The Masterpiece can feel like work. Cart paths climb, rounds run long, and a high handicapper can spend the day retrieving balls from places the architect clearly meant as scenery. We rank it first anyway, because in a town selling volume, this is the course with genuine stature: the hardest questions, the grandest ground, the test you would send a scratch player to without a disclaimer. ## 2Treetops Resort Premier Course The Premier is the counterargument to the Masterpiece, and plenty of returning guests prefer it. It plays a touch friendlier off the tee, flows better hole to hole, and gives a good player chances to score instead of merely survive. If the Masterpiece is the examination, the Premier is the game. That friendliness is also the ceiling. The Premier's hardest holes ask less than the flagship's hardest holes, and in a ranking that scores the golf first, less is less. Second at Treetops, second in Gaylord, and the course we would book for a mixed foursome without a second thought. ## 3Treetops Resort Signature Course The Signature was the resort's statement course of its boom years, the one built to be photographed, and it still delivers the most dramatic individual moments at Treetops after the Masterpiece. Big vistas, bold holes, a sense of occasion. A round here feels like an event in a way the Tradition, below, never tries to. What holds it third is consistency. The highs are high and the in between holes can feel like travel between attractions. Golfers who love it love specific holes fiercely, which is a compliment and a warning in the same sentence. Play it for the peaks. Just do not expect the whole eighteen to stand at that altitude. ## 4Otsego Resort Tribute Course The Tribute at Otsego Resort is Gaylord's independent voice in the top half of this list: a course across town with its own dramatic ground, long views over the Sturgeon River valley country, and a loyal following that predates the mega resort era. It plays big and scenic in the house style of northern Michigan, and its best holes hold their own in any company here. It finishes fourth on polish and depth. The top three simply stack more good holes in a row. But if you play only one course away from Treetops on a Gaylord trip, and locals will tell you to, this is the one, and the drive back through town at dusk is part of the payment. ## 5Treetops Resort Tradition Course The Tradition is Treetops' walkable, playable, lower key course, and it exists for a reason every resort town understands: not every round on a golf trip should be a four hour exam. It is the course for the second eighteen of the day, the round with your father, the game where the conversation matters as much as the card. Judged as architecture it is fifth, and it would tell you so itself. Judged as trip design it might be second. Rankings score golf, so fifth it is, with respect. ## 6The Pines at Michaywe The Pines anchors the Michaywe community south of town, a residents' course in the classic northern Michigan mold: pines, gentle ground, a neighborhood wrapped around the fairways, and a pace of life that does not care about your itinerary. For the people who live there it is not the sixth best anything. It is home golf, played in leagues and twilight nines all summer. For a visitor ranking Gaylord's golf cold, it finishes last on ambition and distinctiveness. The holes are pleasant rather than memorable, and the resort courses up the road simply offer more. Every golf capital needs courses where the locals actually live. The Pines is Gaylord's, and last on this list is a description, not an insult. Seventeen courses, and the town's real trick is that you can play a different one every day for a week and argue every night about the order. We have given you ours. Gaylord exists to argue with it. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.