Hawk Hollow Hosting 111th Michigan Amateur Starting Monday
Here are some notes and quotes as Michigan’s top golfers head into the 111th Michigan Amateur Championship, to be played June 27 – July 1 at Hawk Hollow, outside of East Lansing:
Defending champ Patrick Sullivan of Grosse Pointe and U-M, has turned professional and isn’t returning to defend the title.
“The golf course requires shot-making maybe more than some of our sites, and there is not as much distance available, although the yardage is pretty close to what we usually play,” said Ken Hartmann, director of competitions for the Golf Association of Michigan. “You have to keep the ball in play because there is trouble out there, and if you are not careful it can jump up and get you quickly. Someone who can drive it straight and keep it in play has an advantage I think, and maybe that brings in some of the guys with more experience to battle against the college golfers. Like Nate Clark (DeWitt) and Mike Anderson (Northville), who have won the GAM Mid-Am, or Ryan Johnson (Bloomfield Hills), one of our former Amateur champions. We expect a great championship on a great course and we will have a great champion in the end.”
Past champions in the field include Johnson, the 2015 champion, Greg Davies (2006) of West Bloomfield, Doug Hoey (1991) of West Olive and three-time winner Steve Maddalena (1980, ’90 and ’95) of Jackson.
Max VanderMolen of Richland, the GAM’s 15-and-under Junior Boys Player of the Year in 2021, is the youngest qualifier this year at age 14 (record is age 13), and he heads a group of junior players who made the field, including 15-year-olds Vibhav Alokam of Ypsilanti, Parker Stalcup of Lake Orion and Brian Tillman of Chelsea.
Terry Kildea, who works in marketing and promotions for the Eagle Eye Golf & Banquet Center’s collection of five courses, and also has served as a GAM rules official for several years, calls the par 3 holes the meat of Hawk Hollow. “All four of them have a wide variety for hole locations, and the distance and the location of the holes can be a separation point in scoring,” he said. “It’s a group of really good holes. You can birdie every one of them and in heart beat you can double bogey every one of them. I really feel that anybody who plays them even par in the two rounds of stroke play will be in or near the top 10 going into match play.”
The Jerry Matthews-designed 27-hole facility is a traditional parkland-style course built in 1996 and cuts through 500 acres of tree stands, wetlands areas and ponds. It has been rated 4 ½ stars out of 5 by Golf Digest and has been listed in the magazine’s top 200 Places to Play.
The course has hosted a U.S. Senior Open qualifier in recent years, as well as a GAM Women’s Mid-Amateur and the Atlas Trophy Matches.
