Course Review: Stonebridge Golf Club
By Tom Lang
Stonebridge Golf Course in southwest Ann Arbor was ranked the No. 8 public course in metro Detroit last fall by the Detroit Free Press.
It was a good call.
Despite living in metro Detroit for 30 years, I had never seen the course until early this May, when on a reconnaissance mission with three other golfers planning to host a charity event there in August.
It will be a good event.
Stonebridge is the Arthur Hills design set within the confines of a housing development. But the good news is it’s not confining. The houses are pushed back away from the playing area quite well, so as to not be intrusive on a majority of holes.
The fairways are wide and inviting off the tees. Playing the 6,000 yard tees, this 18 handicapper made it around quite well, sans the terrible day of chipping and putting (that said, the green complexes were partially responsible). Most greens had one or two flat ‘perches’ for challenging hole locations, and if your approach shot/chip didn’t find or stay on said perch, putting was a harder test of skill on the remaining undulating surfaces.
The par 3s were a workout. Even from the almost forward tees, two of them were 170 yards long. No. 4 is a gorgeous par 3 over the corner of a small lake. Then No. 6 has the tees set in a wide-open area, but on the way to the green things get very tight with sand bunkering and trees shrinking the gap immensely.
Hole 11 is a very unique par 4 with a 90-degree turning dogleg right. Following the cut fairway makes it almost 400 yards long, but just for fun I chose to layup the drive short right, which left only 145 to the green, over some water. The trade off is if you follow the fairway longways, you are hitting it to a skinny green that is very deep as to allow many club choices. Yet coming from the side like I did, the green is very thin ‘front to back’ (think Augusta National’s No. 12; wide but almost no depth). My ball wouldn’t hold the skinny green from that angle and trickled over and into the rough.
No. 14 might be my favorite. It’s pretty, and pretty tricky for the second shot. The par 5 turns right at about where most player’s drives would land. From there on in, the very wide fairway gets narrower due to a lake extension that you cannot easily see encroaching the fairway from the left, with the right side guarded by very large bunkers. The run up to the green is probably the skinniest section of fairway on the course.
A creek runs through the entire property, coming into play many times. And if you like watching small airplanes, the front nine is in the landing pattern of the local air strip. Lots of small and homemade planes to entertain the eye from below.
Maybe that’s another reason for terrible chipping and putting.
