Bahle Farms: The Heart of Beautiful Leelanau County

New owner is the youngest in Michigan at age 25

By Tom Lang

Crosley Duckmann is like many Chicago-area natives whose family would venture north for many years to spend summers on the peaceful Leelanau peninsula that juts north from Traverse City.

Duckmann, now at age 25, decided this summer he would stay in Michigan permanently.

The driving force behind that decision was also like many avid golfers’ dream – potential ownership of a golf course. His young business career came to a crossroad this year and merged perfectly at a time the family owners of the Bahle Farms Golf Course were ready to sell, and Duckmann was ready to put his college studies in business information systems and accounting to good use in an environment he loved the most – golf and northern Michigan.

“Every day we go to bed and say, ‘today was a good day,’ even if something goes wrong, we still feel that day was good,” Duckmann said. “My overall happiness with life has definitely increased by moving up here.

“I knew I was going to have to work hard and spend longs days and long hours, and I was ready for that, and it was as I expected. The ongoing operations is still a learning experience every day. There’s something new we’re coming across and scrambling to figure out and it just makes us ready for the next time.”

The ‘us’ Duckmann refers to is his girlfriend, marketing and events director Melissa Obis, plus about a dozen staff that stayed on from the previous ownership and a couple new people. His father, an accountant, also helps with business advice. He said thankfully the staff had a ton of background knowledge, and their availability has helped avoid the pitfalls other businesses across Michigan have experienced with a lean 2021 workforce.

“The biggest thing was keeping the employees from last year. If we didn’t have that we would have been hurting and struggling to find people for sure.”

Duckmann played competitive high school golf and stays very active in the sport today. He wants to draw from his experiences that made him the most grateful as a golfer himself.

“Knowing what I’ve liked and what I found to be a positive experience on other golf courses, I’m then trying to recreate that here to give golfers a positive experience,” he said. 

“We’re not trying to pack the course at maximum capacity. We want everyone to have that unique experience out there. We could do 8-minute tee times and fully pack the course, but then people get cranky about slow play and waiting to make shots. We have 12-minute spacing to allow the groups to feel almost out there by themselves, to have a unique experience on the course.”

Covid-19 cut back or eliminated weddings and large gatherings at most golf course properties nationwide, but Duckmann and Obis hope to bring those events back in 2022 after a season getting their feet wet in golf operations. They have a unique element with a large cherry orchard on site that could make a great outdoor venue, and the extra revenue the harvest supplies is a huge bonus to maintaining the financial bottom line.

Playing the Course:

Not long after the sale to Duckmann was completed, Obis sent out a news release when I was covering the Michigan Open at Grand Traverse. It allowed a short trip over to Leelanau to which I published a short story in the July edition. This is a paraphrase of some of the comments I made mid-summer that still hold very true:

There is always hesitancy when someone in marketing or in the media uses words like ‘breathtaking views’ or ‘incredible vistas’ to describe any golf course destination.

With that fair warning I can honestly say a course I’ve never heard of before, fits those exact descriptions – the 20-year-old Bahle Farms Golf Course – nestled on high ridges of central Leelanau County. Of the courses I have played in Michigan, this little-known course is easily in Michigan’s top 5 courses of those laid out across so many drastic elevation changes and rolling hills.

The tee boxes at No. 10 and 11 (cover photo) are easily 100 feet above the fairways below. They are the most severe drop offs on this course and the photos from the tee boxes look like they are taken by drones – but literally every hole except the par 3 Hole No. 4 over a pond and No. 13 (which cuts through the heart of a cherry orchard) is built on land that goes uphill or downhill or crosses sharp valleys – while many have slanted fairways along the way. 

To call it naturally rolling countryside is an understatement.

“Every single hole is designed in a way that they aren’t the same to any other,” Duckmann said. “Our elevation changes are magnificent. It’s very beautiful out there, and you get not only great views on the course but of the surrounding county as well. You get big, huge, long views of forest areas and orchards (and of Suttons Bay).” 

If players are looking for fast and challenging greens, this course is the one to try tackling. Greens are quite the challenge for a few reasons, in part because many putting surface sections along the outer edges fall toward false fronts or greenside sand – ultimately making the putting surface much smaller than it looks when trying to land approach shots. Pin placements are a key factor on whether the average golfer scores well or not.

I was paired up in mid-September with two metro Detroiters who were giving Bahle Farms a first try. Both men said they liked the course, loved the views and the scenery, but also agreed the pin placements can be a huge factor with all the undulations.

My favorite stretch of three holes is 10-12. No. 10 kicks off the back nine from the highly-elevated tee on the par 4 that goes back up to a slightly elevated green. No. 11 is a huge drop off par 3 to a large green, but the view from the tee over the valley can be districting, in a good way. No. 12 is a long par 5 that slowly climbs back uphill to reach the level of the 13th hole, which cuts through the cherry orchards.

Any golfer that wants a true ‘Northern Michigan’ experience with grand views and a challenging up and down golf course layout – this is one you’ve got to try.

More information found here.