Willow Wood Golf Course Review

Willow wood
Portland, Mich
Grade: C+
Teacher comments: Some interesting gaps in interesting ownership, but somehow I had to shrug it off.

Close to the Grand River near Portland, between Lansing and Grand Rapids, Willow Wood sits on an interesting piece of land. The front nine is wooded and hilly; the back nine is flatter and more open. Streams, swamps and ponds determine the landscape.

The clubhouse is located on a small ridge overlooking much of the grounds. The first is set and away from the clubhouse; the ninth and eighteenth play back uphill.

Despite its relatively modest length of 6,138 yards, Willow Wood has a big feel, especially on the front nine. The holes there lead away from the clubhouse, with the fifth green being the farthest away before winding back to the bend. The back nine is only slightly more compact, with ten through thirteen within sight of each other before turning back and away from the center.

Still, despite all the wanderings and modest elevations, I found it to be a very manageable hike.

With seemingly a lot of land to choose from, architect Jeff Gorney found quite a few locations for interesting holes.

My favorite of these was the 338-yard par 4 fifth. The hole runs uphill, bends straight along a ridge and then ends on a green at the edge of that ridge.

Since the hill slopes steeply around the green, it might as well be on a peninsula surrounded by water.

My tee shot stuck too short and too far to the left, leaving me with either a layup to the left of the green on the fairway or a heroic shot to that peninsula. I tried the heroic shot, fell a bit below the green and had a very uncomfortable steep uphill out of dense prairie grass.

It was a bit like trying to splash a shot out of a pond.

The fifth flowed back into a neat hole: the sharply downhill par 4 sixth.

These two holes are far from the clubhouse, and not near any other holes, so I assume Gorney saw the heights and decided he had to add this one, even though it was tucked away at the far end of the course.

Several other holes had what I thought were clever uses of ponds, streams and hills. Notable are the ninth – a winding uphill par four – and the tenth, which plays up the same hill as the ninth.

That said, I found the routing confusing at times. Or maybe it was just the cart paths. I wondered several times where to go.

Willow Wood is a par 71 with three sets of tees, with the backs at 6,238.

I played quite well at Willow Wood and regularly consulted my Garmin watch for distances to pesky hazards and fairway bunkers in the lines of play.

The conditions on the day I played were mixed. The greens were in good condition, but the fairways were just okay, with some bare spots.

Overall though, I thought the course felt a bit rough. I sound like a broken record if you’ve read some of my other reviews, but there were a lot of places where a chainsaw would do wonders in cleaning up the edges and play lines.

It was probably just bad timing on my part, but maintenance had recently sent a gang of mowers to clean out the native grass between some holes and just let them rot in piles. I would actually have preferred if they had left that grass standing; they offer nice contrasts with the fairways and lines to aim along. Prairie vegetation is preferable to matted stakes.

The strange thing about Willow Wood was that – despite some interesting individual moments – it left me feeling ambivalent as a whole. There’s nothing wrong with it; I certainly don’t regret playing. The price was appropriate. But as I typed into my notes app immediately after playing: meh.

I can’t put my finger on it. This was a difficult review to write. It could be a certain disconnect in the routing or in the coherence of the holes. It may be a bit of a lack of defining character.

I have no doubt that Willow Wood has many local fans. I apologize to them. It just wasn’t for me. As a final grade, I give it a C+ instead of a C or C- to compensate for my own doubts.

The Willow Wood golf course review was first published on GolfBlogger.Com on February 21, 2026 from notes and photos from a round played in the summer of 2025. For a list of all of Golfblogger’s golf course reviews – and specifically Michigan golf course reviews, follow the link.

A photo tour of Willow Wood follows.

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