In less time than it takes to swing a club, most golfers can name
a number of the best courses in the New World: Pine Valley, Merion, Seminole,
Augusta National, Shinnecock Hills, Oakmont, Cypress Point, Pebble Beach.
If the list doesn’t happen to include Crystal Downs, it should.
Sure, it’s not the oldest, longest or best known, but it certainly is one of the
best. Just a few miles north of the quaint fishing-tourist village of Frankfort,
Michigan, lies a tracks that should be on, or near the top of, everyone’s
must-play list.
Crystal Down’s architectural pedigree lists Alister MacKenzie and
Perry Maxwell. Its natural topography is sand dunes. The person responsible
Crystal Downs Walkley Bailey Ewing. Born in 1901 in Grand Haven, Michigan,
Walkley and his brother Burke were introduced to the wonders of the Michigan
shoreline by their mother.
Twelve years later, in 1926, Ewing purchased options on the two
farms that occupied the land. He called upon Eugene Goebel, a park and landscape
architect from Grand Rapids, to design a nine-hole course. As fate would have
it, MacKenzie had recently finished work at Cypress Point and was heading east
to sail back to England. The Brit had no great desire to delay his plans long
enough to have a look-see, but Ewing was a born salesman.
The longer MacKenzie and Maxwell spent traveling in the
sand-covered hills, the more intrigued they became with the possibilities for
golf. Nine holes were open by summer’s end 1929. In spite of the stock market
crash that year, Ewing wanted the second nine built. He accomplished this by
putting together a syndicate comprised primarily of members who believed in the
dream of a first-rate course. By 1932 the entire MacKenzie-Maxwell 18-hole
course was open. It is the same course, in the same order, that is played
today.
