Welcome to the June 2026 Golf Up North Newsletter
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Yes, I know I am on Repeat!
I feel like every newsletter lately starts with me staring out the window wearing a sweatshirt. I am sitting here in late May wondering if summer accidentally skipped Northern Michigan this year.
The weather is still NOT cooperating so that I can golf as much as I want. My first full summer of retirement was supposed to involve unlimited golf and maybe a slight sunburn. Instead, I have golfed maybe six times and at least four of those rounds felt more like survival training.
I love golfing, but icicles hanging from my nose just does not make for an enjoyable day on the course.
Poor Guy, league started May 7th and he didn’t have a warm league night until the 28th. I may have mentioned before that one of his buddies takes him to league and I pick him up so he can enjoy himself and have a few beers.
I have been sitting in the clubhouse waiting for him because even with my winter jacket and gloves I was still freezing my butt off.
Nothing says “golf season” quite like watching league night while dressed like you are waiting for snowmobile season to open. ☃️
I started writing this the Friday before Memorial Day and I keep hearing rumors that warm weather is headed our way next week. At this point I will believe it when I see people wearing shorts without looking uncomfortable.
Right now I am sitting in my house refusing to turn the thermostat to 72 degrees in May while also sitting here with goosebumps on my arms. Midwest stubbornness is a real thing.
We are going to try to get a round or two in this holiday weekend, fingers crossed.
Still Seeing Improvement Over Last Year
I mentioned my weight loss last month and the improvement in my drives and fairway shots that I saw the first two times out. I am happy to report I am still seeing improvement in pretty much every area of my game. The only explanation is weight loss.
My youngest grandchild, when he was around four or five, once made a comment to his Dad about how big my butt was. Now, I do have Italian in me, and we are known for our ample bottoms, so this was not exactly shocking news to me. Thin or heavy, my posterior has been the butt of jokes for as long as I can remember. See what I did there? 🤣
When I first started golfing and took lessons, one of the things the pro kept talking about was using your hips in the swing. To this day I still do not fully understand what that means. I used to joke that with my hips I should be driving the ball 250 plus yards.
Extra weight does not equal more power
Turns out carrying around extra weight does not actually help generate power. Honestly that feels unfair because I really thought I was building momentum.
The heavier I got, the shorter my drives became. The more weight I lose, the longer my drives get. I am now getting close to consistently hitting 150-to-175-yard drives which for me feels like joining the LPGA tour.
One thing I am noticing now is my 3 wood is going almost as far as my driver some days, which honestly pairs nicely with my drives. My irons are still a work in progress, but there is definite improvement there too. Right now the biggest struggle with my irons is distance control.
My 7 and 9 woods, which I use in place of irons a lot, are suddenly becoming a problem too. Not because I cannot hit them, but because now I can.
I am overshooting greens constantly.
Nobody warned me that improving at golf would involve searching for my ball over the green instead of twenty yards short of it.
My 7 wood is no longer my 75-to-100-yard club, and my 9 wood is no longer my 100-to-125-yard club. Apparently, I now have to relearn my entire game like some sort of middle-aged golf rebuild, which feels especially rude considering I was already firmly in middle age when I took up golf in the first place.
Another benefit is elevated tee boxes and greens are no longer a challenge, and my back does not scream at me nearly as often. I am excited to see how my game changes now that I seem to have more control, more stamina and surprisingly more strength.
Once that hot humid air settles in, I am pretty sure I will be absolutely crushing it. Or at least I will sweat confidently while trying.
Mother’s Day Golf
I think I have mentioned before that before I became a golfer, Mother’s Day usually meant driving up the peninsula to enjoy the cherry blossoms and ending up at the driving range at a local golf course.
My kids would always ask me what I wanted for Mother’s Day and I always answered the same way, peace and quiet. If you know my kids, you understand.
My first husband quickly figured out that keeping the kids occupied while I sat on a bench outside reading a book was exactly what I meant. I would occasionally attempt to hit a golf ball, usually driving it about ten feet or bouncing an iron off my own foot before returning to the bench where the book was patiently waiting for me.
I loved watching everybody have fun, mostly getting along and knowing I would not have to cook dinner later.
Fast forward to now and I am a golfer. My first husband has passed away, the kids are adults and all have children and/or pets of their own to spend Mother’s Day with.
My belief has been that Mother’s Day belonged to the moms with little kids, not the moms with grown kids. I had my years of breakfasts in bed, homemade cards and little handprint gifts. I told my kids that now it was time for my daughter and daughters-in-law to enjoy their turn
So for the last decade Mother’s Day has usually meant golfing with Guy or quietly enjoying the elusive peace and quiet.
Not this year.
My youngest asked if I wanted to golf the Saturday before Mother’s Day. Of course I said yes. Then he reached out to his siblings to see if anybody else wanted to join us.
The Virginia kid obviously could not make it, but the other three all said yes. Two live nearby and my youngest in Southeast Michigan drove north to golf with us.
What a treat it was getting to golf with three of my four kids.
I golf regularly with my boys, including the Virginia kid when he is home or I am in Virginia, but I had never golfed with my oldest and only daughter before. As you may remember she golfed for the first time in Gatlinburg last fall, but she was not on my team then.
This time I got to share a cart with her and watch her golf. Since she is a lefty, I mostly left the coaching to her brother who helped her in Tennessee.
Behind us we had another foursome with Guy, one of my daughters in law, my soon to be son in law and one of my grandsons. Both groups played scramble format and sadly the Fancy kids and Mom did not win.
But honestly that did not matter at all.
I had an absolute blast even though it was hovering around 50 degrees, which in my world is still legally winter.
At one point my local son, who lives less than a mile from the course, ran home at the turn and brought back a blanket for his wife because she was freezing. That right there is Northern Michigan golf romance.
I have mentioned before how lucky I feel to have children who still invite me on vacations, out to dinner and onto the golf course. I try to always say yes because you never turn down time with people you love.
Last month I talked about my support system, and this Mother’s Day just reinforced it all over again.
I really am grateful for the people around me.
Did You Know?
Cabbage is the term used for that deep rough that swallows golf balls whole and refuses to give them back.
This is the knee-deep stuff. The kind where you hit a ball into it and immediately reach into your pocket for another one because there is about a 90 percent chance you are never seeing that first ball again.
And honestly, sometimes finding it just creates a whole new set of problems.
Plenty of golf over the holiday weekend!
You guys, I am SO excited! The weather finally decided to cooperate over Memorial weekend, and I managed to golf three times. Once with my oldest son and daughter-in-law, once with Guy and then once more by myself on Tuesday after everybody else had to go back to work.
Retirement finally felt like retirement for about 72 glorious hours.
There really must be something to muscle memory because I played well all three rounds, but Tuesday may have been one of my best rounds yet.
I am sure perfect weather helped. Also, the two groups in front of me let me play through early on, so from holes 3 through 18 I basically had the course to myself. There was a little backup at the 9th hole, which is a par 3 and always seems to create a traffic jam. Hole 8 is a short little par 4, so everybody catches up there.
My drives and fairway shots were probably the best they have ever been. My irons still like to keep me humble occasionally, but even those were improving. And my putting? Absolutely on fire.
Almost every hole was a one or two putt except for the 13th.
Of course it was the 13th.
I had an amazing drive followed by an even better 3 wood that landed right on the green. Everything looked perfect. Naturally I followed that up with a three-putt bogey because apparently golf likes to remind you not to get too confident.
Still, I walked off the course with a 96 (second under 100 of the season so far!) and probably the biggest golf grin I have had in a long time. The other two rounds were a very respectable, at least by my standards, 103 and 107. Not bad for somebody whose entire golf improvement plan basically consists of just continuing to play and hoping my body eventually figures it out on its own.
Open for the Season
YAY!! As of today every Northern Michigan golf course is officially open for the season!
Well… probably.
There is still one golf mystery I cannot seem to get any real information about, The Mountain Flower Course at The Homestead Resort in Glen Arbor.
As far as I can tell, the course may no longer exist. But the strange part is nobody seems to know for sure.
It was a 9 hole course at the resort and as recently as 2023 it was still operating. Then they announced some course improvements and said it would be closed for 2024.
When I reached out in 2025, I was told it was still closed.
Now this is where things start feeling like some sort of Twilight Zone episode for golfers.
I have called both the resort and Manitou Passage, which was affiliated with the course, and the people I talked to had absolutely no clue what I was even talking about. I am assuming maybe the people answering the phones are newer and missed the whole Mountain Flower era.
Every time I ask if there is somebody there who might know something, I get a very confident sounding “no.”
At this point I half expect the course to only appear during heavy fog to golfers carrying persimmon woods.
So if anybody out there knows whether The Mountain Flower Course is eventually reopening or if it quietly disappeared into Northern Michigan golf history, let me know.
My daughter got Guy and me a round at Manitou Passage for Christmas, so I fully intend to investigate while we are there. I just need to figure out who to ask without sounding like the old lady chasing golf conspiracies.
Looking forward to golfing this summer with the Up Mid kid
Besides the Mother’s Day round, we currently have a Saturday in June planned. We have not decided on a course yet because we are still waiting to see who might join us.
With my daughter’s wedding coming this summer, the whole family will be together for a few weeks in July, both here and in the Upper Peninsula.
There will absolutely be golf involved.
We are already planning a pre wedding round in Marquette which honestly sounds like a pretty great way to prepare for a wedding weekend.
Quote of the Month
No matter how badly I play, this quote is always accurate.
Very true.
Although I would add that happiness is a day at the golf course with family, friends and occasionally even the people you normally avoid talking to on Facebook. 😊
This photo is from Guy’s and my wedding at the golf course back in 2018. A coworker put together this very questionable collage for my personal Facebook page and somehow it still makes me laugh every time I see it.
Not everybody in the photo was officially part of the family yet and the little guy with the watermelon had not even been born yet.
What really makes me laugh now is that most of the little kids in these pictures, except for the baby being held and the boy with the watermelon, are now teenagers or adults.
Time really needs to slow down a little.
Hoping we can finally get an updated full family photo at my daughter’s wedding in July.
Latest Blog
I have been very open about the fact that I am still a relatively new golfer and definitely not a great one.
But one thing I am good at is research.
I love asking questions, finding answers and figuring out better ways to do things. Whether it is discovering new places, new recipes or now golf, I tend to dive all in.
So when I took up golf, I paid attention to other golfers, watched tournaments, studied the pros, watched videos online and asked a lot of questions.
Then I did what I always do, I started making spreadsheets.
Honestly at this point I probably have enough golf notes and spreadsheets to accidentally qualify as a teaching professional.
I took everything I learned and turned it into a new article series called Golf Up North Fundamentals.
Golf can get complicated fast, but everything starts at the tee box.
The first article in the Golf Up North Fundamentals series focuses on the driver and covers setup, swing mechanics, ball position, stance, grip and follow through. Basically all the things I wish somebody had explained to me before I spent two years trying to murder the golf ball instead of swing at it.
One thing I am learning is that smooth and controlled usually works a whole lot better than swinging like you are trying to impress the long drive competition.
📍 How to Hit a Driver in Golf: Power Without Losing Control
Next month we move on to fairway woods, which for many of us are either our favorite clubs or the beginning of a complete emotional collapse.
Not much changes to my sign off from last month, mostly because the weather still refuses to cooperate. 😊
The snow is gone.
The warm days are finally starting to show up occasionally, almost like a courtesy appearance.
I am looking forward to a season of finally feeling warm again.
May you hit them long, straight and findable.
See you on the course!
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