WILLIAMSBURG, Mich. – Tom Doak was a newcomer as a solo golf architect when he planted his first flags in the ground near Traverse City at High Pointe Golf Club, which opened in 1989. Now he’s finding help from another industry newcomer in bringing much of the course back from the dead.
Just 26 years old when he built High Pointe, Doak spent 60-plus hours a week shaping the layout that climbed a hill through dense trees. To this day – after dozens of courses built, several of them among the most highly regarded in the world – High Pointe’s greens were the only of his putting surfaces he shaped entirely by himself.
The following decades weren’t kind to High Pointe, which despite having achieved a relatively high level of acclaim was shuttered by its former owners after the 2008 season. It was less a statement on the design and more a sign of troubled financial times and a lack of interest by the owners. Doak had moved on to bigger and better projects, establishing himself as one of the best modern golf architects. But the Michigan resident always maintained a soft spot for his first layout, the front nine of which was converted into a hop farm.
And while High Pointe failed as a daily-fee business, interest in the layout never ceased. Fans of architecture often speculated on a resurrection of Doak’s first course. There were still holes on the ground.
Enter Rod Trump – no relation to the former President, a question asked so frequently that Rod clears things up early in conversation. An investor who has found success largely in tech sectors, Trump wanted to buy a golf course and get into a new business he believes he will love. Aside from working capital, he has provided a seemingly boundless reservoir of enthusiasm after partnering with Doak to revive High Pointe as an elite national private club.
“Anybody that’s a fan of golf architecture who’s heard of this story, becomes instantly captivated by it,” Trump said. “I think Tom has … I don’t want to call it a cult-like following, but people who like Tom, they love Tom. He is exceptionally authentic, and he is who he is.
“I guess we’re all dreamers in a way. The more I got into it, the deeper I went. It has proved to be an even more compelling story than I believed it would be.”
Big dreams and major commitment
Rod Trump was a baseball player as a boy, and he didn’t take up golf until college. He fell hard for the sport, but it wasn’t his career. His investment career allowed him access to some of the best courses around the world, and his interest grew in possibly obtaining a course.
In recent years he made offers on several courses, including Kingsley Club in Michigan not far from High Pointe, but those deals never panned out. He moved on to a project that he believes offers an even higher ceiling – quite a statement considering that Kingsley is rated by Golfweek’s Best as the No. 3 private club in Michigan and No. 25 among all modern courses in the U.S.
During a round in late 2021 at Pine Tree Golf Club in Florida, golf coach Adam Schriber asked Trump if he had ever checked out the abandoned High Pointe. That led Trump to a podcast by Fried Egg Golf, a popular media group led by Andy Johnson that focuses on golf architecture. The podcast included Doak speaking about the potential of a revival at High Pointe, and Trump was intrigued.
He tried calling Doak but didn’t connect right away. “Here I am, a golf nobody, calling the great Tom Doak,” Trump said. So Trump sent Doak an email follow-up, and several days later they got in touch. Doak, who had fielded calls about High Pointe in the past, wasn’t convinced of Trump’s commitment at first, Trump said.
“When I first reached out to Tom and asked if he was really serious on that podcast, his response was kind of, ‘Well, yeah, but you’re the third or fourth guy to call me after that podcast aired a year, year and a half ago. I don’t really want to get my hopes up.’ ”
Trump was able to convince Doak of his seriousness, and the pair eventually formed a partnership.
“I had fallen in love with northern Michigan,” Trump said. “One of the neat things about this journey is the number of people I have met who share with me the story of the time they played High Pointe back in the day. So many people are connected to it in a certain way, and so many people are connected to Tom in a certain way. It’s certainly a unique story. …
“I decided long ago that whatever I was going to do next, I wanted to be real passionate about the subject matter and real passionate about the folks involved. And I was willing to work as hard as need be, based on what the overall project looked like.”
In 2022, Trump spent 62 nights in Traverse City to launch the project. In 2023 he rented a house to escape the constant hotel rooms, and he spent all summer in the area, visiting the course almost daily as construction and renovation moved along. Course superintendent Dan Lucas was hired away from Kingsley Club to oversee the grow-in at High Pointe.
But it wouldn’t be a complete revival of the old High Pointe. It couldn’t be. Half of the original course was buried beneath the hop farm. Doak had routed an additional nine holes that were never built on a parcel east of the main course when High Pointe first opened. Much of that routing on the far side of a crest will become most of the new front nine plus the closing two holes in the current iteration. The previous back nine, which still existed but was overgrown, will be restored and renovated, serving as Nos. 8-16.
If Trump is concerned about reviving a course that already failed, he isn’t showing it. He said his projected costs for the project are $24 million. Trump is the majority owner and has brought in a handful of smaller investors, and Doak owns a stake.
“We believe the area is primed,” Trump said. “The terrain is great, a completely sandy site, and we all know how talented Tom is. And this is an example of him bringing his passion to the table. What do all the great places in golf have in common? They always start with a great golf course.”
The new private club will operate with an invitation model, and Trump said he already is ahead of projections for building a small membership. He has no plans of including real estate on the site any time soon, and he said if houses ever are built, they will be set well back and out of view of the course. He said his focus is totally on the course. There are plans for cabins that can hold 32 players at a time. Founding memberships, which are refundable, come with a $250,000 initiation fee and annual dues capped at $5,000 for life. There are other membership levels, including a limited number for locals.
Traverse City isn’t a big town, with a population of less than 16,000. The area is already home to two great clubs, Crystal Downs and Kingsley Club. What makes Trump certain that High Pointe can compete?
“You look at Florida in the winter, and how many great clubs are there,” Trump said. “There’s always a market for a premium product. And five months out of the year, Michigan has the best weather in the country.
“We don’t really want to be anyone else. We want High Pointe to be the High Pointe of golf. But we take inspiration from great places. Take little pieces of all the great spots and make them our own. That’s our goal.”
Trump plans for a few of the holes to be playable in 2024. The grand opening of the course and a new clubhouse is slated for 2025. In conversation, Trump seems so pumped at the prospect that it’s easy to imagine him out there now, hitting balls in the dirt as construction continues. He credits that to Doak.
“This is not my project; this is Tom’s project,” Trump said. “This was his first golf course, and he’s very passionate about it. It’s in the town where he lives, and it’s the only place where he ever shaped all 18 greens. I know how special it is to him and how special he will make it, and that’s one thing I don’t lose any sleep about. It’s always amazing working with someone who is ridiculously talented.”
Doak's hands-on approach
There’s one thing about which Trump and Doak are not totally aligned. The renovated High Pointe will feature new bent grass greens that will provide much faster putting speeds than with the original course. Trump said Doak had to soften a few of the contours on the greens on the preexisting holes, and he is adamant that his sophisticated clientele prefers fast greens that roll around a 12 on the Stimpmeter. Doak isn’t so sure.
“Hopefully I’ll back him off that just a little bit,” Doak said with a laugh during an interview by phone from an airport on one of his frequent journeys to some far-off project around the world. “We still have plenty of contours in those greens.”
About the rest, the pair seems incredibly aligned. Trump said Doak has spent more time at High Pointe than at most jobs, frequently climbing onto the construction equipment himself. As with the first go-round at High Pointe, Doak is building the greens after practicing in New Zealand to reacclimate himself to operating a bulldozer.
“It’s fun,” Doak said of his work at High Pointe. “It’s a small dozer with an open cab, so I’ve eaten a lot of dust this summer. … I said years ago, I’m not the best bulldozer operator in the world, but I have a really good sense of when to get off the dozer because I have something that’s looking good.”
Doak frequently studies the best courses around the world, and he got his start as a professional working for Pete and Alice Dye, who weren’t afraid to manufacture interest in a golf course. And not just an architect, Doak is a frequent author and critic of golf design. In his first book, “The Anatomy of a Golf Course” published in 1992, he wrote that many of the world’s greatest courses were built by amateur or first-time designers. He cited Pine Valley, Merion, Oakmont, Pebble Beach and several others as examples. Does it hold true for his own first course, and can he recapture the magic instilled by the younger version of himself?
After all, High Pointe raised eyebrows among some players when it first opened. The combination of several difficult holes and the low-to-the-ground naturalistic design — which has come to be known by many as minimalist architecture — was nowhere near as popular in the mid-1990s as it is today. Would Doak do things differently now?
“The hardest part of the assignment for me is trying to get myself back in that mode, a second time around 30 years later,” Doak said. “That was my whole life when I built it the first time, and I didn’t mind being controversial at all. And I don’t really mind now. But the clients do, and I hear it more from them. They’re telling me to be more cautious about stuff, but when you have something really good, you can’t be afraid to build something really good because someone might make double bogey and not like the hole that day.
“When we first built the golf course, that client really wasn’t around that much when it was being built. When the first golfers started coming out and saying ‘That hole’s really too hard,’ or something, the owners listened because they weren’t part of it. I try to keep Rod out there enough, you know, so that if somebody is complaining about the 12th hole, he likes the 12th hole and he tells them … to get over it.”
Doak is particularly happy about the chance for one do-over at High Pointe. He never loved the 18th hole, which had to be redesigned on the original course because state officials changed a wetlands designation midway through construction. The resulting uphill hole forced players to carry water with their second — or sometimes third – shots.
This time around, Trump purchased several acres from the hop farm to give Doak more room, and the adjusted hole will allow players to more easily go around the water instead of facing a severe forced carry. It will now be No. 16 before the layout climbs over the crest of the hill for the final two holes.
“I’m really glad, because that hole was very much out of character with the rest of the golf course,” Doak said. “It was the only water hole, and it was very penal with a forced carry on the second shot, which is really hard for the average golfer. With the new routing, we changed where the old 18th hole starts, and now you’re hitting the tee shot over the pond. And we can get them on the right tee.
“I had tried to modify it on the old course, but starting where I did, it was inevitable we were going to have a problem. I’m really glad I was able to find a new way for that hole to work, because it was going to hold the golf course back in some people’s eyes.”
Doak also has tried to re-instill several of the shots from the High Pointe holes that no longer exist and won’t be rebuilt. He cited a centerline fairway bunker on the old No. 2, which he will mimic on the new No. 2. Same for the nasty pot bunker that hid behind the old seventh green, which will be simulated on the new No. 5.
“There were some really good things on the front nine that are now under the hop farm, and I’ve tried to take little pieces of those holes and fit them in on the new golf course,” he said. “… It’s been fun to see if we can fit some of those elements back to the new land.”
Doak can’t wait to play it. He’s built famous courses around the world, with Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Tara Iti in New Zealand and Barnbougle Dunes in Australia among the many to appear on best-of lists. But he lives in Traverse City. He would sometimes be spotted roaming the closed High Pointe.
“It felt like home to me, even though the golf course hasn’t been open in a while,” Doak said. “I’ve been in Traverse City since I built it 35 years ago. It’s important for me to have it back, and I think it will be good for the town, you know. And it will be nice to have one of my courses close to home. I’ve gotten to build some beautiful golf courses in other places, but it’s a long way to New Zealand to go and play them myself.”
He won’t have to wait much longer.
