The Ones Who Know Us Best Will Always Matter Most
Being nostalgic is normally predicated on having enough time in life to actually long for things. Likely a byproduct of being raised in a house with curious minds and parents who wanted to know about those who came before them, I was innately sentimental about people and places long before I was old enough to miss either. I enjoyed the company of my elders at a young age and friends found it odd that I was inclined to sit in their kitchens talking to their mom or dad as opposed to the inane things we did for hours every day as frivolous kids. So it was by particular design that my pursuit of experiencing Crystal Downs, the current white whale, was going to include a visit with people who know me best, still.
Crystal Downs has been marinating in my mind for forty-plus years because of converging forces. Ben Crenshaw’s fascination with design began on his trip for the U.S. Junior with his dad to the Country Club at Brookline in the late ’60s. What he saw was something so unusual and invigorating that it set in motion a life spent playing the game at an elite level but also a passion and pursuit of seeing what was special. In the winter of 1994, I was playing holes late in the day at Seminole when he and his friend, Mickey Van Gerbig, rode up to the 17th tee in a rickety golf cart. Ben was playing Doral that week and rode up to see holes that inspired him and all these years later Ben, and his design partner Bill Coore, have been design consultants at Seminole as they have methodically reclaimed elements of Donald Ross’ design that had been lost over time. It was a standard practice of Ben’s to revisit special places while on the road playing and seeking out those he had yet to see. It was his first visit to Crystal Downs playing with long-time professional Fred Muller, while being in the state to play the old Buick Open at Warwick Hills, that set-in motion my interest in it as well. His comments that became public about the sleepy Alistair MacKenzie and Perry Maxwell design in Frankfort, Michigan also began a wave of momentum that led Crystal Downs into a place among the intelligentsia of golf that had been dormant for decades.
Crenshaw’s comments coincided with my first trip to Northern Michigan to the vacation home of a dear childhood friend, Peter Kiernan. I was immediately taken with the long summer evenings, the enormity of Lake Michigan, and a slice of America uncorrupted by commercialism and concrete. For nearly four decades I had Crystal Downs tucked away as merely a thought and over time a growing desire to see the virtually untouched MacKenzie design and the modesty of a place that time and care had preserved, still. I reached out to my friend Tom Coyne, the wonderful writer and one of the driving forces of the “The Broken Tee” society. Tom has a sensibility and affinity for the game that is infectious. He makes friends, writes about those encounters, and subsequently connects people to each other through the game. He was my connector to Michael Huget, the President of Crystal Downs. A Michigan man, through and through from his academic work in Ann Arbor as an undergraduate to his residence since, Go Blue. Michael indulged me and we had our date, July 10th at 11:20 AM. With my time secured it was now time to let the Kiernan clan know that I would be in the area and would love to see any and all of the Kiernans who may be in nearby Leland.
Summer retreats are a fascinating study of nurture and nature. Kids go where they are brought and then they grow up and make their own choices, but great memories make choices for all of us. Why would I not return to places that gave me joy and reconnect with those I shared the joy with? Generations of families have those places that are passed down across the country and the Kiernans have Leland. From their three children, Chris, Peter, and Kathy to now their clan of kids, three generations spend weeks at a time doing things they’ve done for five decades as a family, still. Dick and Jane are the parents of a dear friend who always supported me, and my parents did the same for their son Peter. It was front and center in my mind that I would be visiting them on my journey to Crystal Downs at the time of the anniversary of my dad’s passing. Dick, Peter, Dad, and I played many rounds together including a college spring break trip to Sawgrass and the stadium course. That trip included a heated argument about how many presses were won and a Dan Jenkins sighting at a Ponte Vedra restaurant. Nobody could quite understand my infatuation with seeing an older sportswriter in person. Jenkins wasn’t just a sportswriter, he was a kingmaker and the author of the funniest golf book ever written, “Dead, Solid, Perfect.” The Kiernans were and are a comfort for me and time with them would make the Crystal Downs trip far more complete.
I flew into Traverse City and gazed out the window on our descent to see the countryside void of population and a sense of returning to a place that felt healthy. The Cherry Capitol airport is an aberration amongst the vast majority of places we all fly in and out of every day. Those arriving appear enthused and those leaving look refreshed and revitalized. The 45-minute drive to Leland was a shot of B12 from the rolling hills and signs for Sleeping Bear Dunes to the quant hamlets dotting the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Front yard art dealers to cherry orchards replaced the concrete jungles that are most of our everyday lives. I did something I normally don’t do and that is listening to music. From Classic Rock and E Street Radio to the Coffee House, I was letting my mind get still. Instinctually when we seek solitude and find it our mind drifts to the things that really matter to us. People. I was headed to my people.
To describe the Kiernans lakefront home is to ask you to please affirm that you’ve seen “On Golden Pond” with Henry Fonda and Katherine 
Hepburn. Now 88 and 84 years old, Dick and Jane are the essence of lives well led. Their home has the creature comforts down to the rotary phone in my room with the twin beds to photos of kids and grandkids through the decades dotting virtually every inch of every wall. Jane’s wood-paneled Grand Wagoneer is adorned with every college sticker of every prep school, and college every single kid ever attended. It is a timepiece that reminded me that time is not just our greatest commodity it’s really the only one that matters. Sunsets on Lake Michigan in July are suspended and our dinner looking out on the lake consisted of seven adults with relationships spanning lifetimes. It’s hard not to be nostalgic when one of the houseguests is a high school classmate whom you haven’t seen since the late 80s. You don’t just catch up; you tell your life from essentially high school on. I made some downright dumb decisions as a kid, harmless but dumb, and several of them were brought up over our two-hour dinner conversation. People remember more than they realize, and memories flood the zone, still. Lamenting the challenges of our children and the “attention economy’ of Snapchat and Instagram made for a spirited discussion on how things were less anxiety-filled back then. One thing none of us did over the course of two hours was look at our phones. I went to bed exceedingly grateful for what I had then and most importantly what I still have.
The hour’s drive from Leland to Frankfort, Michigan was emotional for me. I said goodbye to lifelong friends, and I was en route to a place that was mythical in my mind after all the years of pondering it and reading about it. Highway 72 West was a reminder that some of America’s getting progress are places that don’t progress beyond what they’ve always been. Red barns, silos waiting to be filled with the summer harvest, and country roads not obliterated by a relentless parade of travelers. Why I had tears cascading down my cheeks was likely a convergence of many things. Having a clearer mind from a life of recovery to a fuller heart that permitted the thoughts and feelings to flow again after years of being numb from alcohol and its effects on all things that matter. The tears were not indicative of something being wrong with me, conversely, they indicated to me that I am more well than I’ve been in years. I felt like Jerry Maguire after he thought he had signed “Kush” barreling down a desolate road pounding his hand on the steering wheel and listening to Tom Petty’s Free Fallin. Gratitude is powerful.
The entrance road to Crystal Downs is a 3/4 mile climb up a winding road between a dense collection of trees that don’t allow for views of the golf course. Outside of getting a quick glimpse of the fifth hole out the right-hand side of the car that was the only taste of what awaits. The pro shop is a campy building that includes a small sitting area for a sandwich. The clubhouse is the highest point of the property and it’s a refined space used for dinner and has sublime views of Lake Michigan. From a large window in the pro shop, you can gaze out onto the front nine and what you see is a canvas of constant movement. I don’t expect you to indulge me going shot for shot because the 5 Clubs mantra is that “It’s the time, not the score,” but further I am a firm believer that no one cares what you shot. What I do believe in are holes that concoct a recipe that conjures thoughts and produces fun. Crystal Downs by every indicator and supported by those versed in the MacKenzie design doctrine firmly believe that the Downs is the purest examination of what was originally intended by Mackenzie and Perry Maxwell. Tom Doak is responsible for some restoring of features and Mike Devries has regularly lent his expertise and a lifetime of institutional knowledge of the golf course to methodically refine those things that are always in need of personal touches. Devries’ history goes back to his youth including the first birdie he ever recorded on the 6th hole. The greens are mesmerizing from their size, tilt, and rumples and ridges that make them in the aggregate as interesting as any I have ever seen. I did not anticipate the unrelenting movement and rolling and rollicking nature of the fairways and the 30 mph winds were a perfect way to experience the Downs. The first green has a pronounced tilt from the back right to the front left and my second shot to one from the left rough reached the back portion of the green and retreated to the front left pin leaving me four feet for an opening birdie. Not to worry, I displayed who I am at my core, just a garden variety chop and I didn’t touch the hole as my meek putt weakly passed the hole on the pitiful side. The holes are routed in a sublime meandering from one direction to the next. If my group had allowed me to spend the rest of the day walking back and forth on the fifth hole, I could have studied it for hours. The ridge that runs through the center of the fairway appears like the back of a mammoth rhinoceros that you must choose which side of the back you want your ball to run away from. The three sister bunkers, the giant oaks that frame the hole, and the enormous fairway bunker that also serves as a framing feature for the 17th hole make the fifth hole one of the finest examples of what design can be. The scab bunkers on the sixth hole are extraordinary. The kidney-shaped punch bowl green on the seventh is dramatic in its presentation and all three holes play in different directions, and none of them plays in excess of 351 yards. The par 5 eighth climbs from the tee to the green and its fairway is a series of waves that roil from start to finish.
I did not expect the type of scale you experience on the opening nine holes. The land that Grand Rapids resident Walkley B. Ewing discovered on a hiking trip up the east coast of Lake Michigan in 1926 is profound in its ascending and descending nature. MacKenzie and Maxwell take the golfer across the full spectrum of what contour on a golf course can be. The rolling waves of the first 11 holes are then replaced by a stretch of holes from 12 to 16 that feels slightly tilted and cambers back and forth. The birch trees that serve as protective cover of bunkers down the right-side holes 12 and 14 are wonderful features you rarely see and the 15th green on a hole called “Little Poison” has a repelling quality that deserves careful study of how to build a challenging green that is maintainable. The 17th hole plays to 301 yards and has it all. When we reached the tee, the wind was howling 35 mph and the narrowness of the fairway is offset by the open air you feel once you reach the green as you look across the entire front nine below you. The countless shades of brown, tan, and green of the grasses mixed with the colors of the wildflowers made the ground conditions as natural as anything you’d see in the British Isles. Use every club, make choices off the tee depending on yardage and angles, and trust lines and your caddie on the greens.
I had great company on a glorious summer day on one of the world’s special golf courses that remains what it was intended to be from the outset of the club’s founding in 1927. Crystal Downs has never had any ambition to be anything more than what they have always been. One of the most ambitious things any club can aspire to do is simply continue to retain what made them special in the first place. More or bigger is most times just more and bigger and usually at the expense of something more valuable, originality. I got so much out of my 24 hours in northern Michigan. The Kiernan family remains what they’ve always been for me, loving and supportive. Crystal Downs is one of the finest and most fun golf experiences one can possibly hope to have, then and still.