My TimberStone Odyssey – A Golf Masterpiece

Have you ever had “one of those rounds…”?

A round that almost makes you want to grab your poles and bury them in the sticks.

A place where no one will ever find them.

Except maybe the Gulf Gods… whose cruel sense of humor will have you coming back to this game like an enemy looking for a solution.

For me, that round was over last summer at the TimberStone Golf Course in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

And I want to be VERY CLEAR… the course is AMAZING!!!

It’s breathtaking…

AN ABSOLUTELY STUNNING PERFORMANCE in course design…

A design so perfectly and carefully etched into the UP’s Pine Mountain… you’d think Pan himself had a hand in creating it.

Instead, it turns out to be one of Jerry Matthew’s best works.

TimberStone is 18 holes of pure beauty and utter chaos… like a Greek tragedy.

But the only tragedy on this beautiful summer evening, during our epic UP Golf Odyssey to The Island Resort & Casino… was my golf game.

Let me set the stage.

I played crazy on day 1!

A 78 at Sage Run…

Followed by a 76 at Sweetgrass.

And how sweet it was to just bring it to Brian and Paul! SOOOOOO cute!!!

Maybe a little too sweet. Because when you start to taste the nectar of the golf gods… you start to think you belong with them on Olympus. You are seduced by the deception of the Sirens…

The thoughts they sing into your mind…

“You’ve got this golf game figured out. You’re so good!”

And if Sage Run and Sweetgrass were my sirens… then TimberStone was my sea cave.

Again, I can’t say enough how beautiful the course is. It is beautifully maintained and such a nice layout. But I was SOOOOO BAD in my head.

Which stinks because it started SO WELL.

A par on the first hole… a short par-4 where my 3-wood put me just outside the front of the green.

And then pars on the next two holes. Both fairly easy par-4s. The key word is RIGHT. Because if you can hit the ball straight at TimberStone, you can shoot lower than Hades (sorry, I’m in a Greek Mythology mood).

But alas…those damn sirens played on my ego. They sucked me into their cave of false confidence. They made me feel like I could tame TimberStone, and TimberStone had other plans.

After these first 3 amazing holes the ship started to shake.

A double on a routine par-3…

Finding the water at 5…

Then again at 6…

And then… I went with Pan to his forest for the rest of the round.

After even starting up to 3, I ended up with a 90 that felt like 290.

But I have to tell you…I can’t wait to go back. The challenge that TimberStone presents is genuinely enjoyable in a strange ‘stepping on Legos with your bare feet’ kind of way.

I mean, some holes are so unique and so amazing that it’s hard to write a sonnet about them.

Take, for example, the par-3 17th and par-5 18th holes.

The first has a vertical drop of 35 meters into an hourglass-shaped green. That’s fitting, because I could spend hours admiring its beauty,

And then you finish your round with another huge elevated tee box on 18. This gives you beautiful views of the terrain and features a two-tiered fairway split by rocks with an approach shot into a narrow green with water in front. Honestly, hole 18 encompasses the entire course: beauty surrounded by danger, surrounded by more beauty, surrounded by more danger.

Overall, TimberStone was one of the more challenging courses I’ve ever played and, in retrospect, that’s honestly what made the round so much fun. Golf is a perfectly imperfect game, and sometimes you need a course like the one at Pine Mountain to keep you humble, keep you working and keep you coming back for more.

Because I’ll tell you this…I want this SOB again!!! And next time I will be King of the Mountain!

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