Tom Lang wrote an article about Mike with a closer look into Greywalls and Diamond Springs.
"Like many golfers, course designer Mike DeVries of Traverse City is a huge fan of legendary designer Dr. Alister MacKenzie...DeVries grew up in Northern Michigan's Frankfort area, home of MacKenzie's masterpiece at Crystal Downs."
DeVries sits down with Feed the Ball to discuss the wonderful provocations of Pete Dye, the devastating effect of higher green speeds, working long summer days at Crystal Downs, the “billion” holes that existed on the Cape Wickham property, which hole at Wickham he thinks is one of the coolest in the world, working with a young Tom Doak, the skills of Tom Fazio, not being a member of the ASGCA, owning one of the rare original Sand Hills t-shirts, and the person to whom he’s passing the crown of “most underrated architect.”
Sometimes the hardest skill for an architect to master is restraint. The tendency is to put design more features than less when laying out a hole or a course. In some ways, golf course design follows the adage "less is more."
Kingsley Club in Northern Michigan is a modern marvel of minimalist architecture. Architect Mike DeVries moved only 30,000 yards of cubic dirt to construct the course. That's a fraction of a normal course. The minuscule amount is jawdropping when compared to Whistling Straits which moved over 1 million tons of earth! Kingsley's sandy soil and fescue fairways promote firm and fast conditions and highlight the natural land.
Golf course photographer, Jacob Sjoman, wrote an article about his recent trip to Cape Wickham.
"Cape Wickham Links was finished late in 2015 by American golf architect Mike DeVries and Australian golf writer Darius Oliver. It was ranked the 24th greatest golf course in the world by Golf Digest (U.S.) in 2016. As a newcomer, it’s very rare to receive a ranking that high, and the course was one of the real highlights in our golf trip."
Siwanoy’s 6th hole is noted as a typical short par 3 Ross hole on the Golf Channel by Brad Becken, board member of the Donald Ross Society, during 2017’s Design Week on the Morning Drive show. This is a high honor, since the greensite was actually moved and rebuilt in 2014 during the latter phases of the course’s restoration by Mike DeVries, one of only four greens on the course that are not original Ross greens.
Happy Thanksgiving!
DeVries joins Todd Eckenrode on this list as “Architects Most Likely To Become Household Names Soon”...
"Tucked just west of Highway 131 that you take from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo is a little gem of a public course that you might not have heard about. But locals know the deal, just $30 on a weekend with a cart, is as good of a value as you'll find in the country for a quality, fun golf course." --SH
Andy Johnson, from The Fried Egg, wrote this in their latest newsletter...
"Last week I checked out Kingsley Club in Northern Michigan. Set on a magnificent property, architect Mike DeVries moved very little dirt. The routing emphasizes the great aspects of the property. Here is a video of Kingsley with Mike talking about how he routed the memorable 2nd-6th holes."
The Pilgrim's Run Golf Club in Pierson, Mich., only has three par 3s as well. It became a par 73 when architects Kris Shumaker and Mike DeVries made the 10th hole a short par 4 instead of a par 3. Four par 4s shorter than 330 yards from the blue tees make up for that missing par 3, providing ample opportunities for birdie, including the dramatic 322-yard, risk-reward finishing hole...
King Island, Tasmania, Australia, Mike DeVries/Darius Oliver, 2015
Without a doubt the most spectacular-looking of our Top 100 rookies, Wickham wows with an opening stretch of seaside headland holes, three par 3s that skirt the sea and a "Cape"-style 18th that demands a bite-off-as-much-as-you-dare drive over Victoria Cove. Typically buffeted by strong breezes, Wickham compensates with wide landing areas.
101. Quail Hollow, Charlotte, N.C.
102. Crooked Stick, Carmel, Ind.
103. White Bear Yacht Club, White Bear Lake, Minn.
104. The Country Club, Pepper Pike, Ohio
105. Country Club of Fairfield, Fairfield, Conn.
106. Lawsonia (Links), Green Lake, Wis.
107. Atlanta Athletic Club (Highlands), Duluth, Ga.
108. Wykagyl, New Rochelle, N.Y.
109. Oak Tree National, Edmond, Okla.
110. The Kingsley Club, Kingsley, Mich.
111. Gamble Sands, Brewster, Wash.
112. Canterbury, Cleveland, Ohio
113. Kapalua (Plantation), Maui, Hawaii
114. Wannamoisett, Rumford, R.I.
115. Colorado Golf Club, Parker, Colo.
Golf courses undergo renovations all the time. But a true restoration of an elite, Golden Age golf course is special.
The definition of the word restoration is to bring back into existence or to reestablish. For a restoration there must have been quality in existence already – something to go back to; an innate and organic beauty that is long forgotten but subliminally apparent and silently shouting to be let out of its cage.
After fifteen years of twists and turns, Sunningdale unveils a stellar new course...
Art exists in many forms; paint on canvass, sculptured marble, a majestic building. It exists as dance and music and food. Art can be ever present and fleeting. And it’s not always a thing of beauty that inspires, delights and uplifts. It can be confrontational, disturbing, emotionally challenging. So too golf for all the same reasons, is an art form...
Golf Digest has ranked Kingsley at #4 and Greywalls at #10 this year among the best golf courses in Michigan! See the full list here...
Mike DeVries grew up golfing with his family at Crystal Downs Country Club in Frankfort, Michigan. Through those early experiences, DeVries developed a love for the game that extended beyond just playing...
Mike DeVries of Traverse City is not far removed from what some are calling his crowning achievement in golf course design...
World-ranked designs and high-profile restoration projects being recognized
Traverse City, MI - Mike DeVries, principal partner in DeVries Designs, Inc., a golf course design firm based in Traverse City, Mich., has project-by-project built a reputation as one of the leading minimalist architects of this generation.
In the most recent Golf Digest highlighting the best new courses, Architecture Editor Ron Whitten wrote about new courses focusing on “fun and playability” and that “they represent the trend that many architects are embracing: build for the masses, not the elite players.”
DeVries’ recent work on Cape Wickham Links on King Island, Tasmania, Australia, is evidence of Whitten’s declaration. The project made its debut in 2016 at No. 24 on Golf Digest’s World’s 100 Greatest Courses.
“Golf should be fun, isn’t that why we play?” DeVries asks. “If someone says they had fun playing a course I designed that is the highest compliment I can receive. At Cape Wickham, the weather is quite variable and the wind can really blow at times, so it was paramount that we employed very wide fairways to accommodate golfers of all skill levels.”
The design at Cape Wickham accommodates with significant amounts of short turf surrounding them and providing multiple shot and club options (putt, pitch, chip and run, flop, hybrid bump and run, etc.) for recovery play when golfers miss the green.
“The fun greens and fairway width enables playability in all conditions for everyone, yet strategy dictates certain angles to certain pins for optimal scoring – this challenges the best players to think their way around the golf course while permitting the average player to have fun playing all kinds of different shots,” DeVries said.
He worked with consultant and co-designer Darius Oliver to create a classic minimalist design that flows through spectacular dune areas and along the coastline of the Bass Strait. All 18 holes provide views of the ocean with eight holes running along the coast and offering some of the most spectacular golf views in the world. The view of the Cape Wickham Lighthouse next to the course draws comparisons to the view at Ireland’s Old Head.
The spectacular coastline at Cape Wickham is in fact so dramatic that it could have easily overshadowed the golf. It made the routing of the golf course the most important aspect of the design, and DeVries and Co. did not disappoint.
“Good routings have a rhythm to them that creates an ebb and flow to the round, with stretches of strong holes interspersed with some easier ones, lending balance to a course and psychologically challenging golfers to stay on task,” DeVries said. “It could be argued that the best golfing ground is away from the coast but we utilized that to full effect starting on the coast, going inland, back to the coast, inland, and finishing on the coast with a climactic hole along the beach.”
Whitten clearly agreed and eloquently penned in the 100 Greatest article that the routing at Cape Wickham is “heart-pounding, starting along rocks and crashing surf, moving inland but not out of the wind, returning to ocean edge at the downhill 10th, pitch-shot 11th and drivable par-4 12th, then wandering into dunes before a crescendo closing hole curving along Victoria Cove beach, which is in play at low tides.”
As for DeVries’ work on restoration projects, he leans on his expert knowledge of MacKenzie, Ross, Tillinghast, Raynor and other classic designers. It has helped him recently with wonderful restoration projects in the New York region at Sunningdale and Siwanoy.
“Siwanoy and Sunningdale have good ground, great original architects, and engaging memberships,” DeVries said. “Like many older clubs, they had lost some of their original design intentions through typical changes like tree planting, shrinking greens, irrigation, and well-intentioned but possibly ill-advised renovations, usually in the form of “modernizing” the course.”
DeVries was able to bring back the original intent of these classic courses by removing trees, expanding greens, remodeling tees, bunkers and fairway lines and upgrading irrigation to provide the strategy and fun shot-making that are the hallmarks of these courses from the early 20th century. DeVries feels those qualities are truly never out of style and, as a result, both are wonderful, fun courses to play every day.
With more than 35 years in the golf business, including growing up near and working on the renowned MacKenzie classic Crystal Downs in northern Michigan, DeVries has developed an impressive hands-on approach to creating minimalist designs, including shaping his own greens and bunkers, working with owners and construction teams to develop environmentally sensitive golf courses, and paying attention to the details with a “less is more” attitude of designing courses that fully integrate with the landscape.
His award-winning projects include the previously mentioned Cape Wickham, as well as Kingsley Club (#21), and Greywalls (#77) on Golfweek’s Top 100 Modern Courses in the USA.
His classic course restoration projects include Meadow Club (Alister MacKenzie), Siwanoy County Club (Donald Ross), Sunningdale County Club (Raynor, Travis, Tillinghast), St. Charles CC in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Ross/MacKenzie), Pelham Country Club (Devereux Emmet), and Jockey Club in Buenos Aires, Argentina (MacKenzie).
