Belvedere Golf Club

Designed by Scottish architect William Watson in 1925 and set amid the rolling highlands above Lake Michigan in Charlevoix, Belvedere is a strategic, walkable course celebrated for its original green complexes — among the finest surviving examples of Golden Age design. Three of its holes were featured in George C. Thomas's seminal 1927 book Golf Architecture in America, and the course has hosted the Michigan Amateur over 40 times.

Belvedere Golf Club traces its origins to the summer of 1925, when ten members of the Belvedere Club — formerly the Charlevoix Home Association — resolved to build a golf course on the highlands of the Supernaw and Hooker farms along Marion Center Road in Charlevoix, Michigan. They retained Scottish-born architect William Watson, who had studied at the University of St. Andrews before emigrating to America in 1898. Watson had already built a distinguished portfolio that included Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, Olympia Fields in Chicago, Interlachen Country Club, and The Olympic Club in San Francisco. He had been spending summers in Charlevoix since 1914, serving as the Professional in Charge at Charlevoix Golf Links (now Charlevoix Golf Club), and knew the northern Michigan terrain intimately. Watson surveyed the property and laid out the tees, bunkers, and greens by the start of 1926, then turned construction over to the Lavern A. Miller Landscape Company. With five teams of horses and 150 laborers, Watson transformed open farmland into a strategic, walkable course that embraced the natural contours of the site.

The course partially opened in 1926 and was fully completed in 1927. Watson also served as Belvedere's first club professional. The quality of Watson's design was recognized almost immediately. In 1927, golf architecture authority George C. Thomas featured three Belvedere holes — the 1st, 11th, and 16th — in his influential book Golf Architecture in America. The 16th, a short par four, has been called a distinguished short par fours in America. Watson's greens, built as raised platforms set into hillsides with strategic bunker placement and natural drainage swales, became the course's most distinctive feature. Belvedere quickly became a fixture in Michigan competitive golf.

The club hosted its first Michigan Amateur in 1930, won by Chuck Kocsis, and has since hosted the event more than 40 times, including a stretch as permanent host from 1963 to 1988. The 41st Michigan Amateur is scheduled for June 2025 as part of the club's centennial celebration. Notable winners include two-time champion Dan Pohl. The course also attracted legendary players for exhibition matches, including Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, and Tom Watson. Beginning in 2001, golf architect Bruce Hepner, a former associate of Tom Doak at Renaissance Golf Design and a specialist in restoring Golden Age courses, began subtle renovation work at Belvedere. A breakthrough came in 2016, when Watson's original 1925 blueprints were discovered during the demolition of a building in downtown Charlevoix. The plans revealed that the green complexes had been significantly larger than their modern footprints, having gradually shrunk over decades of maintenance. Under Hepner's direction and the stewardship of longtime superintendent Rick Grunch, the club undertook a comprehensive restoration completed for the 2017 season.

Greens were expanded to their original dimensions, closely mown surrounds were reintroduced, bunkers were repositioned to match Watson's original placements, and dormant hazards were brought back to life. The restoration earned immediate recognition. Belvedere climbed to No. 6 on Golfweek's Best Courses in Michigan and has appeared on Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest Public Courses and GOLF Magazine's Top 100 Courses You Can Play in the U.S. The club has also become a center for hickory golf, hosting events since 2006 including the U.S. Hickory Open in 2019 and The Hickory Grail in 2023. Belvedere celebrates its centennial in 2025 — a hundred years after Watson first walked the Charlevoix highlands and envisioned what remains one of his finest surviving works.