Happy Father’s day! I usually try to avoid golfing on Father’s day because of the potential for slow rounds. But, I’m trying to stay on pace to celebrate my 1,100th course later this month.

I booked a tee time at Bella Vista Golf Course (course no. 1,096 for me) on Sunday afternoon to continue my journey towards another milestone course. Bella Vista seems to get good reviews and the tee sheet didn’t look packed after 2:00pm. So, I figured I’d give it a try.

Unfortunately for me – but probably fortunately for the course – the parking lot was packed when I arrived. The restaurant was slammed. A golf cart caught fire in the parking lot. Somehow my tee time got double booked so I joined a family of four. Complete madness. Thankfully, our front nine fivesome dropped to just a twosome on the back nine. Overall it took about 4.5 hours to play. Not terrible on Father’s day IMO.

Bella Vista is in Southern Michigan, not far from the border with Indiana. The course was designed by Ernie Schrock and seems to be a pretty typical layout for this part of Michigan. Many holes have a wetlands feel and much of the course plays through the woods.

I played the blue tees, or at least I thought I did! The scorecard has blue tees playing 6,532 yards and the black tees at 7,011 yards. It took me about four holes to realize the blue tee markers were playing the black yardages. Weird. I stuck with it, but Bella Vista turned out to be way more challenging than I hoped. The rating and slope are 74.1/136 from the black tees. 

What made the course so difficult are a number of tight tee shots. And, I mean there are some ridiculously narrow gaps here. The 4th, 5th, 9th, 11th, and 15th are all holes where straight tee shots are needed. The 4th and 11th are comically narrow. Stupid. There are quite a few forced carries and severe greens to deal with as well. Not the best course for your average hack.

Like most of the courses I’ve played in this area the last couple months, Bella Vista was in nice shape. The greens were fast and rolled well. The tees and fairways were lush. Thankfully, the rough was cut down and playable.

The layout at Bella Vista has potential, but the course definitely needs some trees removed to help the playability. It needs a short par-3 too. For $60 it is a good value and probably worth playing if you don’t mind losing some golf balls. However, if I lived in the area, I wouldn’t have much interest in returning until a couple holes are improved.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):