last visit: 08/23/2026
Grand Beach is currently rated “B1” on the Albatrace Track Index

monday, august 31, 2026 | vince

I first visited Grand Beach a few years ago, on the recommendation of an Internet message-board friend. It’s a quaint little nine-hole course in the far southwest corner of Michigan, just across the border from northern Indiana, and right down the road from Mike Keiser’s infamous Dunes Club in the town of New Buffalo.

My most recent visit came as a short morning excursion while on vacation with family in the nearby Indiana Dunes region. Grand Beach doesn’t take tee times, so I got out of bed early and made the roughly 30-minute drive across time zones (yes, it’s true) to arrive as soon as the course opened. It’s a peaceful place; I was first off, and had the course to myself for most of the round.

Grand Beach is a municipal course, owned and operated by the sleepy lake-town in which it resides; it’s also rich with history, having opened in 1912, originally as a 27-hole facility accompanied by the majestic Hotel Golfmore. The clubhouse and pro shop (which also functions as an ice cream parlor and the Grand Beach town hall) is a fairly modern building, but the course itself remains largely untouched. A few bunkers have been lost or rebuilt, and a significant overgrowth of trees makes things feel claustrophobic at times, but the topography and the routing are largely exceptional.

Tom Bendelow first laid out the course, and I’m not sure if the sequencing of holes has been changed over the years, but Grand Beach’s “claim to fame”, a notable quirk, is that it finishes with a pair of back-to-back blind par-threes. The opening par-four also features a blind tee shot, and between the fourth and fifth holes, you’ll encounter a semi-blind drive and approach.

Two other holes worthy of note are the short par-three second and the par-four sixth. The former, barely stretching past 100 yards, almost plays across the back edge of the first green, and features a tiny two-tiered putting surface perched on a knob. The latter, teeing off adjacent to the neighborhood playground, is reachable for most, but a few large trees in the middle of the fairway and the corner of Golf Road must be negotiated along your way.

In the future, I hope to write more about Grand Beach, but for now, know that it is inarguably one of the finest hidden gems in the Midwest, if not the United States as a whole. The loss of holes, shrunken greens and overgrown trees are unfortunate, but the course still retains more charm than any modern venue I’ve visited.

Grace, peace, and craic on!