Kingsley, Michigan and Hobart, Tasmania probably don’t have a whole lot in common. After all, they’re separated by nearly 16,000 miles and approximately 30 hours of flight time. Starting this fall, though, the two towns will share at least one commonality: They’ll both boast golf courses designed by esteemed golf architect Mike DeVries – someone who not only calls northern Michigan home, but who also cut his teeth on local greens and fairways.

Growing up in the Frankfort area, DeVries wasn’t part of a golfing household. While his dad found his way to golf later in life, neither parent played golf when DeVries was a kid. His grandparents and uncle were big golf enthusiasts, though, and soon, DeVries was tagging along with them to Benzie County courses like the Frankfort Golf Course or the Crystal Downs Country Club.

At 14, DeVries got his first golf job, helping out Crystal Downs pro Fred Muller with whatever he needed. Some days, that meant working in the pro shop; other times, it meant time in the bag room or working out on the grounds. Then, the business got a new superintendent, Tom Mead, who pulled DeVries out onto the 18-hole private course full-time to help restore its declining grounds and greens. 

“And so, every morning of summer, throughout high school and college, I was up 5am, going out to the golf course and cutting cups, raking bunkers, mowing grass, whatever they needed,” DeVries says.

It was his first taste of golf course design – though, it would be a while before DeVries entertained the notion that something like that could be a career.

“I remember, as a kid, I’d draw these imaginary holes for the Crystal Downs course, just doodling as kids do,” DeVries tells The Ticker. “But I didn’t really think of [golf course design] as a profession. I knew there were people who did that kind of thing for a living, but the industry was super small, and there wasn’t a formal education for it. The closest thing was landscape architecture, which is just a lot broader.”

DeVries ended up majoring in business at Lake Forest College in Illinois, then went to work for a sporting goods company after graduation. But the call of golf – and of northern Michigan – was too strong, and DeVries soon returned to his old stomping grounds.

Fast-forward to today and DeVries is a world-renowned golf course architect who has had a hand in projects all over the globe. Most recently, he and his business partner Mike Clayton designed 7 Mile Beach, a public course in Tasmania situated on the scenic shores of Tiger Head Bay (pictured, right). The course is set to open is first holes for play this fall.

DeVries credits northern Michigan’s surprisingly vibrant golf community with giving him a leg up in the design world. Shortly after moving back, he found himself apprenticing for soon-to-be famous golf architect Tom Doak, now an industry legend who has half a dozen courses ranked among the top 100 in the world, according to Golf Magazine.

“Tom Doak was building High Pointe Golf Club [in Williamsburg], and Tom Mead had left Frankfort and was the project manager at High Pointe,” DeVries says. “Tom Mead brought me in, and I ended up going to work for Tom Doak for two and a half years.”

DeVries helped Doak on major projects like the Legends Heathland course in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and the now-shuttered Wilderness Valley course in Gaylord – and picked up a lot of knowledge along the way.

“[Doak] was always open to me suggesting something, or asking questions, or exploring why an idea might work or not work,” DeVries says.

The apprenticeship period spurred DeVries to chase after a career in golf course design, and he ended up going back to school, earning his master’s degree in landscape architecture from University of Michigan.

Locally, DeVries is perhaps best known as the designer of the Kingsley Club, a private 18-hole, 400-acre golf course first opened in 2001 – and recognized, like some of Doak’s courses, as one of the 100 best courses in the U.S. by Golf Magazine. But he is also currently advising on a preservation and restoration project at Crystal Downs – a full-circle moment, given that Crystal Downs is perhaps the course where DeVries fell in love with golf design in the first place.

“The reason Crystal Downs is so great is that I've spent thousands of days there, and every day I'm on the property, I see some subtle nuance that's a little bit different than the last time,” he says. “It could just be the angle of the sun and seeing a ripple in the ground, or it could be watching my playing companion hack a shot out of the weeds. I think having that experience and seeing all those nuances up close, that affects how you design, because you're trying to create an experience that's similarly unique for somebody else. And if you do that, that's super successful, whether the course ends up on some list or not.”

DeVries’ return to Crystal Downs isn’t the only full-circle moment he’s had with local golf lately. Another is the resurrection of High Pointe, which Doak has been working to bring back to life alongside new owner Rod Trump. A third is the potential expansion of the Kingsley Club. While DeVries isn’t professionally involved in either of those projects, he’s excited to see all the energy around local golf – especially coming off far-flung projects like 7 Mile Beach and Cape Wickham, another oceanfront course he helped design in Tasmania. It’s a reminder for DeVries that, in his line of work, deeply fulfilling projects can be found in many shapes, sizes, and places.

“My job is that I go to cool places, I meet interesting people, we work together in a creative environment, and then I get on a bulldozer and I build stuff,” DeVries laughs. “It’s a super fun life.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously identified the Frankfort Golf Course as the site of Mike DeVries' first golf job, and stated that he met two key mentors, Fred Muller and Tom Mead, while working there. DeVries actually worked at Crystal Downs Country Club, as did Muller and Mead. The story has been corrected to reflect these details.