Not every great golf experience requires 7,000 yards and a cart with a GPS screen. The Short Course at Manistee National makes its case in under 1,100 yards, and it makes it convincingly.
Designed and built by a guy known online as u/maxwellrolls, a Reddit user who apparently decided that posting about golf courses was not enough and just went ahead and built one, the Short Course is a nine-hole layout routed through old-growth oaks and pines across the sandy terrain of northern Michigan. The land does a lot of the work. Stone walls from a long-gone farmhouse sit atop a ridge. Reclaimed railroad ties face the bunker complexes. A hundred-year-old oak stands its ground in the middle of all of it.

The greens are massive, which sounds forgiving until you start three-putting from 60 feet and reconsider your life choices. Yardage plays from a back tee of 1,044 yards down to 463 from the kids' tees, which means the whole group can play it, and the whole group will have something to argue about at dinner.

If you're making a run to Manistee National to play The Revenge or The Retreat, tack this one on. It won't take long, but it'll stick with you.