Island Resort & Casino Comes a Long Way in Short Time
Celebrating 15 years of golfing excellence at Sweetgrass Golf Club
By Tom Lang
Slow and steady growth is a common mantra to business professionals and organizations.
In the case of Island Resort & Casino in the Upper Peninsula, exceptional growth and demand for golf has been their reality since the day Sweetgrass Golf Club opened 15 years ago. The demand was partially due to a golfing boom in lower northern Michigan that extended up into the scenic U.P.
In the short years since the Sweetgrass Golf Club opened on the site owned by the Hannahville Indian Community, just north of Escanaba, Sweetgrass Golf Club has:
hosted 11 EPSON Tour events
has won numerous golf awards for design, beauty and playability
ultimately ascended to the 2022 title of National Golf Course of the Year from the National Golf Course Owners Assoc
The resort has also created the very successful sister golf course, Sage Run, and expanded their on-site hotel towers to 454 rooms, the most in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula region north of Milwaukee.
All in just 15 years !
“Yes, it’s been on a rise for quite a while, and we hope to keep that going,” GM Tony Mancilla recently told me. “I’ve played Sweetgrass probably more than anybody, so it can be described as when you gain weight, if you see someone every day they might not notice it, but you wait a few years and it’s like, ‘wow, he got big fast.’ So yes, it has happened pretty quick and it’s pretty impressive when you frame it like that.”
The Hannahville Indian Community became a federally-recognized tribe in 1913, about 80 years after their ancestors, who escaped the forced relocation of the Potawatomi people to Kansas, first settled in the U.P.’s Cedar River region. After decades of struggles and as late as 1965, members of the community still had little money, had no running water and no electricity. If you said, ‘wow, what a change since then,’ we’d be forgetting that as late as 1984, what is now the large, financially successful and philanthropic resort was humbly referred to as a simple bingo hall.
Substantial changes began to happen in 1985. That is the year the Hannahville Casino opened near the Tribal Administration Center. It offered bingo and couple of card games in a pole barn. In 1987 the name was changed to Chip-In Casino, possibly foretelling of the future the game of golf would play in the resort’s special development.
More expansion came in 1991 at the present site with a new casino building and a 28-room motel. In 1997, a new Hannahville Medical Center opened when registered tribal members were at 611 living on the 5,000 acre reservation. Another 113 hotel guest rooms were added as well. From late 1998 to 2000, the Island Showroom, the Convention Center and the Island Resort & Casino RV Park opened.
A 2007 expansion of the 11-floor Palm Tower brought the total guest rooms to 326.
In 2008, Sweetgrass brought championship golf into the mix, and in short order demand was so high that since that time Sage Run was built a few miles away – and on New Year’s Eve less than 14 months ago, the latest hotel tower opening increased the total rooms available to 454.
“You see all this activity almost every day so it becomes kind of normal for us, to have all that going on,” Mancilla said. “Yet when you look back on it, you see there’s been a lot going on and a lot really has happened, it just might not seem like it does because you do it all the time.”
Designed by Paul Albanese, Sweetgrass features an open layout with some of golf’s most fun greens to putt (Redan, Biarritz, Island and Double-Green). Throughout the course, golfers will also come across a rich history of the Hannahville Indian Community, with holes named after traditional Potawatomi clans, villages, allies, medicines and symbols. The dedication to nature and the area’s heritage makes for a unique golf experience.
“There’s just so many ways to play the course,” Mancilla added. “You can walk right to the first tee (of the par 4) and take a driver and try to hit it to the edge of the green and get an easier birdie, or you can double bogey it if you don’t hit it straight. Now, I play it with a hybrid and make it a par hole and nothing higher. There’s so many different ways to play, and a lot depends on the wind.
“The golf course rewards good play. If you’re playing well, you’re going to make up strokes on a lot of people, and if you’re not playing well you’ll be punished. It rewards good play. There’s nothing tricky about it. Some might say they played well but they didn’t get any bounces. On this course, if you’re playing well, you’ll score. I think it’s fair.”
Mancilla’s last comments were mostly in response to how the EPSON Tour players discuss playing Sweetgrass. The tournament this coming June 23-25 is its 12th season and brings in 156 players from all parts of the world as they seek their tour card for the LPGA Tour. Local charity monies raised account for about one-third of the annual budget of the local YMCA.
The event has long been recognized by the players as one of their favorite events on the feeder tour.
“People come here from all over the world,” Mancilla said. “This is the most international event that we have in the area. And that includes the Green Bay Packers. It’s just so unique and brings us something different to support. When the players get here and park their car, they never have to get back in it for a week because everything is right here – the hotel, restaurants, the practice facilities and the golf course.”
Sweetgrass features masterfully crafted rockwork with a prairie links style. The course challenges with an island green on number 15 and a pair of spectacular waterfalls that greet golfers as they play up the twin par five 9th and 18th holes to an enormous, shared green. My one career hole-in-one is at Sweetgrass.
Green complexes like a Biarritz and a Redan, along with historic wood and iron bridges rescued from other areas in the state, are compelling design components and part of the story of the course – along with links to its Native American roots.
Sweetgrass has been ranked by Golfweek, GOLF Magazine and Golf Digest in various ‘best-courses’ lists.
“It’s my own philosophy and the Native American philosophy that we always try to make the design fit the land, and truly allowing it to reflect the principles of Native Americans’ respect for the land,” said Albanese, a Michigan transplant from east coast Harvard and now a Plymouth resident.
“This also worked as inspiration for stories to share throughout the course. We put some wooden posts in the side of a hill (along the fairway) that are representative of (the remains of) a fort, from the 1650’s,” Albanese said about one of the design elements at Sweetgrass. “And the green complex itself worked out very nicely to be a redan style green. And a redan is the French word for fortress.”
Mancilla is grateful for the massive expansion that’s taken place at Island Resort & Casino. But staying in place is not part of the plan.
“You have to start small, make your mistakes and work and get better,” he said in reflection of what’s transpired in the last few decades, which he has all witnessed in person. “And every year you add a little more to it.
“And we’re not done growing yet.”
