Bello Woods Golf Course Review

Bello Woods
Macomb, Michigan
Grade: D
Teachers’ Comments: Poor conditions and a pedestrian design.

Bello Woods offers 27-holes of golf in a parklands – woodlands setting. I played the Red and Gold nines.

The Gold nine is mostly wooded and often tight to the point of inducing golfer’s claustrophobia. Water (or swampy areas, as on the second) threatens on seven of the holes. There are also three tight doglegs, two of which are right angles.

The first on the Gold heads into the woods; eight and nine emerge to open fields. The entire routing is quite flat.

The Red nine is more open, and more enjoyable — or at least less frustrating. The first three holes are straight shots, and flat, but beginning on four, there is some elevation around by a creek running through the property, known by the unprepossessing name “Hart Drain.”

With the exception of one dogleg (the sixth), the holes are mostly straightforward designs. Water appears on seven of the nine holes, mostly on the edges, although on the aforementioned sixth, Hart Drain crosses the fairway.

I did not play the “White” nine, but it looks similar to the Red. I daresay that my opinion of the course might be higher if I had played the Red-White combination instead.

Greens complexes on both nines were relatively mild. A bogey golfer should be able to have a good putting day at Bello Woods.

My favorite hole was the fourth on the Red nine. From a slightly elevated tee, the line of play dips down, crosses a pond and then rises slightly to a level approach.

The hole has a slight dogleg right. Trees on the right fairway line threaten the tee shot. Too far left, and a hidden pond can cause trouble.

The green complex is not particularly noteworthy, but does have bunkers left and right with a short fall off the back.

In a nice bit of routing, five runs back parallel to the fourth, utilizing the same two ponds as hazards. The approach shot on five rises to the green, which is on the same knoll as the tee box for four — and also for six. One small bit of a hill, creating interest on three holes.

Bello Woods is not a member of the GAM, and has no course rating and slope on the scorecard. There are two sets of tees. On the Gold-Red routing I played, the Men’s tees are at 6, 155 yards.

Conditions on the day I played were not good. The fairways ranged from weedy and overgrown to sparse. The wooded Gold nine needed some major work with a chainsaw to push back the edges and allow the grass to grow. Some of those fairways were downright oppressive.

The greens were ok, though.

In the end, I can’t recommend a trip to Bello Woods without substantial evidence that conditions had improved. There wasn’t enough value in the design to overcome that handicap. That said, the price was right. If you’re in the area looking for some basic golf, Bello Woods might do the trick.

The Bello Woods Golf Course Review was first published November 20, 2025 from notes and photos taken on a round played in the summer of 2025.

Read all of GolfBlogger’s Michigan Golf Course Reviews.

A photo tour of Bello Woods follows:

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