Golf Courses Near Harbor Springs
Harbor Springs sits in one of Michigan’s unusually dense golf regions; the local tourism bureau notes that Golf Magazine has ranked the Petoskey area No. 2 nationally for concentrated golf quality. For an autumn trip the right move is to narrow the choices rather than chase the biggest names.
First choice is the Donald Ross Memorial at The Highlands, about ten minutes from Harbor Springs. It is a strange idea that works better than it sounds: eighteen recreations of Ross holes from courses including Pinehurst, Seminole and Oakland Hills. Boyne has been systematically renovating it to make the replicas more faithful; the recent work includes opening up the Pinehurst-inspired first hole with large waste areas, and four more renovated holes came online in 2024. It isn’t a genuine Ross course, and there is no pretending otherwise. But for anyone interested in architecture it becomes a kind of playable comparative study. In October, surrounded by hardwoods, it belongs high on the list.
At the same resort, The Heather is the more historically important course. Robert Trent Jones Sr. designed it, and it is a substantial old-school resort course: 7,143 yards from the back tees, high slopes, large bunkering and the sort of demanding green complexes Jones liked. It is the course to pick if the question is simply which is the best serious golf course at The Highlands. The catch is that it is more conventional resort championship golf than the Ross Memorial.
The Arthur Hills course is the spectacular autumn option. It climbs much more dramatically through the property, culminating in elevated terrain with enormous views over the surrounding forest. That makes it visually extraordinary during foliage season, and also makes it the least appealing of these on foot. It is a cart course, not a walking round.
Crooked Tree, roughly twenty minutes south toward Bay Harbor, is a very good compromise. It sits high above Little Traverse Bay, with several holes running along the bluff and excellent views toward the water. Boyne currently operates it as part of its public golf system, with normal tee-time booking rather than requiring private-club membership. It doesn’t have quite the architectural personality of the Ross Memorial, but it may fit an autumn Harbor Springs trip better: woods, elevation, bay views, and less of the feeling of having gone to a giant golf resort.
Then there is Bay Harbor. If the trip wants one extravagant round, this is it. Arthur Hills built three nines—Links, Quarry and Preserve—and the Links/Quarry combination is the celebrated one. The Links runs along Lake Michigan bluffs; the Quarry moves through an abandoned limestone quarry before returning toward the lake. The scenery can be extraordinary, particularly with autumn light on Lake Michigan. The tradeoff is cost: Boyne currently advertises even late-day Bay Harbor rounds starting around $155, so this is emphatically premium resort golf. Worth playing once, but not worth building an entire trip around.
For something more modest, Chestnut Valley is the alternative to keep nearby. It is north and east of Harbor Springs rather than toward Petoskey, routed through northern hardwood country, and operates as a straightforward public course. It lacks Bay Harbor’s drama and The Highlands’ pedigree, but in October that may be part of the pleasure: local golf among mature trees without paying destination-resort prices.
One famous course that turns up in older recommendations is Harbor Point Golf Club, right in Harbor Springs. It is historically appealing—a short, old northern-Michigan course dating to the resort-colony era—but access is the issue. Its club character and access arrangements are quite different from Boyne’s public resort courses, and no trip should assume a tee time there.
The four-round shape of a trip, then:
- Donald Ross Memorial for architecture
- Crooked Tree for the best marriage of golf, foliage and Little Traverse Bay scenery
- Chestnut Valley for a relaxed, less expensive local round
- Bay Harbor Links/Quarry for the one splurge
On a single October round it would be the Donald Ross Memorial rather than Bay Harbor. Bay Harbor supplies the bigger photographs; the Ross Memorial gives more to think about afterward.
The other advantage of October is that northern Michigan resort golf tends to become much better value once peak summer demand disappears. Late-season rates and closing dates are not consistently published across these courses, so no particular October date should be treated as guaranteed far out.