Arcadia Bluffs Golf Course

Few courses in the American Midwest command attention the way Arcadia Bluffs does. Opened in 1999 and designed by Warren Henderson and Rick Smith, it sits on a dramatic stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline in northern Michigan, where the bluffs drop sharply toward the water and the wind arrives with little warning and no mercy. Golf Digest has ranked it among the top public courses in the United States for years running, and it consistently appears on national lists of the best courses you can actually pay to play. The design leans heavily on the natural topography — wide, rumpled fairways carved through dune grasses, greens perched at the edges of the bluffs, and views that stop you mid-swing if you let them.