Boyne Highlands - Arthur Hills Course

The Arthur Hills Course at Boyne Highlands (now Highlands Harbor Springs) is named for its designer and stretches to 7,312 yards from the Brown tees as a par 73 through densely wooded northern Michigan terrain, with wide, bunker-dotted fairways that narrow toward the greens and hole 13 — played from atop a ski slope — serving as the course's most memorable signature.

The Arthur Hills Course at Boyne Highlands Resort in Harbor Springs, Michigan is one of four championship courses at one of northern Michigan's largest and most established resort destinations — a layout that Hills designed in the mid-1990s on the rolling, heavily forested terrain of Emmet County, adding his characteristic design vocabulary to a resort whose golf history dated to the 1960s and whose ski culture had defined Boyne's identity for decades before the golf expansion of the 1990s. Arthur Hills, whose Ann Arbor-based practice produced more than 200 courses during his career and whose particular expertise in wooded Michigan terrain made him the natural choice for a northern Michigan resort commission, designed the Arthur Hills Course to move through the deep woods, scenic wetlands, and impressive hilltop terrain of the Boyne Highlands property. The first nine holes opened in 1995, with the full 18-hole course completing the resort's expansion to a four-course destination.

Hills's routing at Boyne Highlands reflects the design principles he applied consistently across his Michigan commissions: wide fairway landing areas that invite confident driving, large bunker complexes that define the visual character of approach zones, and narrowing approaches with green complexes whose contours reward precise shot selection. The topographic drama that the Boyne Highlands property provides gives the Arthur Hills Course its most memorable sequence. The 11th hole begins a three-hole ascent to some of the highest ground on the course, with the 13th tee offering what the resort describes as among the top views in all of northern Michigan golf — a panoramic vista from one of the highest points in the Lower Peninsula that places the course within the dramatic landscape of the Emmet County highlands.

The downhill par-5 13th, played from this elevated position with the panorama behind and the descent ahead, represents the kind of terrain-responsive hole design that Hills's style consistently produced when the property gave him the topographic material to work with. The broader Boyne Highlands context gives the Arthur Hills Course its operational character. The resort offers four championship courses — the Moor (1963), the Donald Ross Memorial (1988), the Heather (1966), and the Arthur Hills Course — plus the companion Boyne Mountain resort across the Boyne River valley.

The multi-course destination model that Boyne has developed over six decades gives golfers the variety of playing experiences that support extended stays, with the Arthur Hills Course providing the most recent addition to the established Boyne Highlands portfolio. Golf Digest and other national publications have consistently recognized the Arthur Hills Course among the finest resort courses in northern Michigan, confirming Hills's design quality on the Emmet County terrain. The combination of the wooded fairway corridors, the wetland features that add environmental character and strategic interest, and the hilltop moments that exploit the property's dramatic elevation changes gives the Arthur Hills Course a northern Michigan identity rooted in the specific landscape that makes Boyne and its environs among the celebrated golf destinations in the Midwest.