Willow Wood Golf Course Review

Willow Wood
Portland, Michigan
Grade: C+
Teachers’ Comments: Some interesting holes on interesting property, but somehow left me to shrug.

Willow Wood, close to the Grand River near Portland between Lansing and Grand Rapids, sits on an interesting piece of property. The front nine is wooded and hilly; the back nine is more flat and open. Streams, marsh and ponds dot the landscape.

The clubhouse sits on a small ridge overlooking much of the property. The first plays down and away from the clubhouse; the ninth and eighteenth play back uphill to it.

In spite of its relatively modest length of 6,138 yards, Willow Wood has a big feel, particularly on the front nine. The holes there wander out away from the clubhouse, with the fifth green being furthest away before meandering back to the turn. The back nine is only a little more compact, with ten through thirteen in sight of each other before turning back and away from the center.

Still, in spite of all the wandering and modest elevaton, I found it to be a very managable walk.

With seemingly a lot of land to choose from, architect Jeff Gorney found quite a few locations for interesting holes.

My favorite of those was the 338-yard par 4 fifth. The hole plays uphill, curving right along a ridge, then finishing on a green perched on the edge of that ridge.

With the hill falling steeply off around the green, it might as well be on a peninsula surrounded by water.

My tee shot got stuck short and too far to the left, leaving me with either a layup left of the green in the fairway or an heroic shot to that peninsula. I tried the heroic shot, fell a bit short of the green, and had a very awkward steep uphill lie out of dense prairie grasses.

It was a bit like trying to splash a shot out of a pond.

The fifth flowed back into another neat hole: the sharply downhill par 4 sixth.

These two holes are a long way from the clubhouse, and not near other holes, so I assume Gorney saw the heights and decided he had to include it, even if it was tucked at the far end of the course.

Several other holes had what I thought was clever usage of ponds, streams and hills. Of note are the ninth — a winding uphill par four — and the tenth, which plays up the same hill as the ninth.

That said, I found the routing confusing at times. Or maybe it was just the cart paths. I was unsure on several occasions where to go.

Willow Wood is a par 71 that has three sets of tees, with the backs at 6, 238.

I played pretty well at Willow Wood, regulary consulting my Garmin watch for distances to pesky hazards and fairway bunkers in the lines of play.

Conditions on the day I played were mixed. The greens were in good shape, but the fairways were just okay, with some bare spots.

On a whole, though, I thought the course felt a bit shaggy. I sound like a broken record if you have read some of my other reviews, but there were a lot of places where a chainsaw would work wonders on cleaning up the edges and lines of play.

It was probably just bad timing on my part, but maintenance had recently sent a gang mower through to clear the native grasses between some of the holes and just left them in piles to rot. I actually would have preferred they leave those grasses up; they offer nice contrasts to the fairways and lines to aim along. Prairie vegetation is preferable to matted piles.

The odd thing about Willow Wood was that — in spite of some interesting individual moments — as a whole, it left me feeling ambivalent. There’s nothing wrong with it; I certainly don’t regret playing. The price was appropriate. But as I tapped in my note app immediately after playing: meh.

I can’t put my finger on it. This has been a difficult review to write. It might be a certain disconnectedness in the routing or in the coherence of the holes. It might be a bit of a lack of defining character.

I have no doubt that Willow Wood has plenty of local fans. To those, I apologize. It just wasn’t for me. As a final grade, I’m giving it a C+ rather than a C or C- to offset my own misgivings.

The Willow Wood golf course review was first published on GolfBlogger.Com on February 21, 2026 based on notes and photos from a round played in the summer of 2025. For a list of all of Golfblogger’s course reviews — and particularly Michigan golf course reviews, follow the link.

A photo tour of Willow Wood follows.

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