Island Resort & Casino (Upper Peninsula) Names New Golf Course, Provides Project Details

(HARRIS, Michigan) – The second golf course that Hannahville Indian Community is building as part of its Island Resort & Casino will be called Sage Run, and like existing Sweetgrass, the name pays homage to Potawatomi tribal tradition.

“We selected sage because we wanted to highlight another of our four traditional tribal medicines – along with cedar, tobacco and sweet grass,” says Tony Mancilla, Island Resort and Casino General Manager and a tribal member.  “The word ‘run’ in the name references the 10 holes that traverse significantly downhill on the course.”

Mancilla and course architect Paul Albanese – of the golf course architecture firm Albanese & Lutzke that designed and is constructing the new course – say Sage Run is progressing well.

“We’re planting nine fairways in mid-August through early fall, and the other nine next spring as soon as we can,” says Mancilla.  “Our goal is to have a soft opening in Fall 2017 and a grand opening in 2018.”

Albanese also designed Sweetgrass, ranked one of golf-rich Michigan’s finest via Golfweek’s “America’s Best Courses You Can Play” program.  He is excited by the course design overall and specifically as pertains to the drumlin running through Sage Run. A drumlin is a glacially formed geographical formation typically shaped as an elongated oval hill.

“Our goal was to use the drumlin so that golfers interact with it throughout their round,” says Albanese, a Harvard graduate who has designed and helped build courses worldwide. “We’ve been able to do that by routing down the drumlin in a number of places, and they’ll be really dramatic holes we believe players will enjoy immensely.”

Mancilla too believes Sage Run will impress golf enthusiasts, and he says it’s an ideal complement to Sweetgrass.

“Sage Run will provide an amazing ‘wow factor’ – there isn’t a weak hole on it,” he says. “It will be a resort-style course with Sweetgrass being more of a championship-style design. Golfers who play both will experience two very different designs with very different terrain. Whereas Sweetgrass is a prairie-style course with rolling, fescue-lined fairways, Sage Run is 75-percent tree lined with holes running up and mostly down the drumlin.”

Sweetgrass is host course of the Island Resort Championship, a Symetra Tour “Road to the LPGA” tournament.

Some of Sage Run’s more noteworthy design aspects include furry-edged bunkers, a number of short par-4’s – some with blind shots to greens that can be reached by tee shots carrying past the rise in front of them – and single-row irrigation, which elicits changing turf as it nears fairway edges and into the rough.

“When we discussed what style and character we wanted to create at Sage Run, we used Royal County Down as our original inspiration,” says Albanese, referring to the acclaimed Northern Ireland golf club that is rated among the world’s finest. “Sage Run will have that kind of rough and tumble appearance, with lots of earth tones, browns and tans – it's what the landscape calls for.”

Albanese & Lutzke’s construction manager at Sage Run is Michael O’Connor. O’Connor has an impressive, deep resume that includes helping build some of the country’s most iconic courses including at Kiawah Island.

Additional information: http://www.sweetgrassgolfclub.com/ or call 877-ISL-GREEN.