100 Years: Clearbrook in Saugatuck
By Tom Lang
As we roll the calendar over from 2025 to ‘26, a special birthday celebration will soon take place.
Clearbrook Golf Club in Saugatuck will turn 100 years old.
Like most golf courses that have served for a century, it has many stories to tell. As best this piece of land can tell its tale, the property has had seven owners and gone through seven name changes (first named Liberty Links) – including when Jim and Candy Jeltema took the reigns in the mid-1980s and have since been the owners for the last 40-plus years.
Well, almost.
Officially the most recent and eighth owner of the course is local NFL quarterback Kirk Cousins, now with the Atlanta Falcons. The native Michigander’s family home is on the shoreline of Lake Michigan just a few miles away. Two years ago, Cousins and his wife, Julie, bought the golf course land but is leasing it back to the Jeltema’s to operate day-to-day, while they continue running the clubhouse and restaurant they still own separately.
When the Cousins’ built their home nearby, Kirk would make the two-hour round trip drive to The Dunes Club to the south to play golf – yet as much as he enjoyed the experience there, he didn’t like the extra time away from his wife and kids.
“That wasn’t very sustainable in the long term, so I started looking at options that were closer to home,” Cousins told me last spring. “Clearbrook isn’t a neighborhood course (with houses) which so many courses are. It has great history and a beautiful creek running through it. There’s some elevation change; there’s mature trees and it’s close to the heart of town on a great piece of property.
“I knew Jim Jeltema was getting to a stage in life he was looking to sell, and I had a feeling that if someone were to buy it, they would turn the land into condos… so to help Jim, and to keep the land a golf course for the next generations I thought we could step up and purchase it. That would give me a little bit of oversight on the home-town golf course in the years ahead when I’m done playing football and can be there more and to get to play golf more.”
Clearbrook Golf Club is clearly a special place.
Its location is very unique in having two holes (13 and 14) bordering I-196 – yet is only one mile from the quaint downtown of Saugatuck and just a hop, skip and a jump from Lake Michigan.
Clearbrook’s history makes it special, as well as two distinct nines that test every part of your game. The original front nine crisscrosses up and down and back and forth across a brook spanning over 2,000 linear feet trickling through the bottom of a moderately-deep valley below the clubhouse. Trees are plentiful but not intrusive unless you are way offline.
The back nine, which was added in 1969 per the design of Darl Scott, a superintendent by career who went on to develop Gull Lake View Resort. Clearbrook’s back nine is set more amongst the trees on the property. The fairways are tighter than the front, but again, not suffocating. My favorite 3-hole stretch on the back is the closing three holes of 16-18.
No. 16 is a par five that turns a little, twice, to a green approach shot guarded by water left. The 17th is a classy par 3 over a small extension of the same water found on 16, and it’s usually into the wind.
After a short cart ride to the par four 18th that’s located back on the original property, you will find a highly elevated tee box and a large pond looming at the bottom of the hill on the right. The tee shot requires a decision to layup left of the water and in front of the creek – making your second shot that much longer uphill to the finishing green. Or if you have a better-than-average drive you can clear the creek and have a shorter approach to the elevated green.
I’d say the signature hole is No. 5. It’s a shorter par 5 with an elevated fairway that at the end of the second shot drops off out of nowhere to a deep valley with the brook running through. It’s the obstacle to clear on your approach to the green. Even more challenging is the brook forks right in the middle of the action, leaving a few choices on open patches of grass. You might have to play it a few times to figure out the best choice of strategy.
There are three blind fairways on the course, and the greens are smaller than many golf courses, keeping it in line with classic layouts. During their ownership timeframe the Jeltema’s made some changes to every hole, ranging from just tweaking a couple bunkers to some complete green and tee do-overs with a bulldozer – all without changing the routing. Most of the major work was done to fix poor drainage.
Slowing Down:
It’s honestly hard to tell if the Jeltema’s are actually slowing down. At age 75 each, there seems to be no end in sight.
Jim is an MSU Agriculture graduate who worked in hospitality while attending college. He and Candy eventually were offered jobs at the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island and worked their way up to top executive positions, and for Jim that in part included running the golf course on the island. They bought Clearbrook to make a career out of their hospitality knowledge while working as their own entrepreneurs. They still live in the house on the edge of the golf course where they raised their children.
“My first look outside every morning, and my last look at night, is Clearbrook. It’s wonderful,” Jim said.
“I was never cut out to be a golf pro, but I was cut out for being a golf manager. When we spotted Clearbrook was for sale in the early 1980s, we felt it was a natural for the combination of golf and food and beverage hospitality experience that I’d had at that time for about 15 years. That’s why to this day our restaurant still out-sells the golf course.
“That said, the golf course is doing so well. We are so grateful, because I can tell you we had a lot of rough years, where golf just didn’t pay. But that’s not the case these days. Golf is popular, and I’m astounded at the number of young people flocking to this old golf property. It’s a phenomenon. I talk to the kids (golfers) and they’re good with it, and happy... with this classic old golf course.”
Jeltema said they are in the process of planning their exit while still implementing strong growth opportunities.
“Our staff are getting better and better at what they do and are more capable of taking over. Our family is becoming more available to be able to assist in future management. Kirk seems to be very pleased with the arrangement, and that our management works well for them. And there is talk about reinvestments, so we think our second century is going to be better than the first. I’m just not going to be here to see it all.”
In the meantime, the Jeltema’s continue to offer great food and beverages in the locally famous restaurant that resembles a supper club mixed with family atmosphere. Their summer seating is doubled when including the porch outside overlooking a very well-attended-to garden that treats the eye and adds a flair of total relaxation after a round of golf.
Cousins’ Future:
“If you were to tell me that I could play just the courses in west Michigan alone, that would be tremendous when you think about all the great golf courses, from New Buffalo all the way up to Harbor Springs,” Cousins told me. “There’s a lot of great golf and I don’t have the time, but I do the best I can, and over time, I’d like to chip away at the list.
“But I’ve got a few more football games to play and that kind of dominates the schedule right now, and golf tends to be on the back burner for the time being. When I retire, I would love for any Michigan golfer who reads this Journal to come out to Clearbrook and visit and say hello, and don’t be surprised if they see me out on the range or the golf course grinding on my game, because I fully intend to be spending a lot of time there in my retirement from football.”
More information found at: clearbrookgolfclub.com
