BENTON HARBOR, MI – The Jack Nicklaus Signature design course at Harbor Shores Resort has been named the 2024 Michigan Golf Course of the Yr by the Michigan Golf Course Affiliation (MGCA).
“I believe this is without doubt one of the greatest honors a golf facility can obtain within the state of Michigan,” stated Josh Doxtator, PGA Common Supervisor on the resort. “Harbor Shores has been the catalyst for the neighborhood and honors like this proceed to show that time and inform our story.”
Jada Paisley, government director of the MGCA, stated the affiliation is thrilled to announce Harbor Shores because the course of the 12 months. The award honors a member course that meets 4 standards: Distinctive traits of the course; distinctive high quality of possession and administration; excellent contribution to its neighborhood; and important contribution to the sport.
“Harbor Shores embodies all the traits of the award,” Paisley stated. “The golf course, by way of its growth on reclaimed land, involvement with the PGA Tour Champions, the onsite First Tee program and extra has fostered a vibrant neighborhood hub the place folks can come collectively {for golfing}, socializing and occasions whereas supporting charitable causes that profit the broader neighborhood.”
Harbor Shores has served as house to the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship each different 12 months beginning in 2012 and working by way of its last 12 months this previous Could, and in August it hosted the 2024 Michigan PGA Skilled Championship.
Doxtator stated the resort is greater than only a host of championships. “Harbor Shores has been dedicated to the neighborhood since 2010 and earlier than when the imaginative and prescient first began, and it has been served with an important golf course, the revitalized a part of the neighborhood, been a giant a part of Whirlpool’s charitable efforts, created a First Tee program that serves so many children on-site, and extra,” he stated.
The award-winning Nicklaus course is a part of a seaside, golf and residential waterfront neighborhood, and the design options golf holes on 4 various terrains – parkland, sand dunes on the lake, woodlands and wetlands alongside the Paw Paw River and Ox Creek.
The event of Harbor Shores, which opened in 2010, made nationwide information by reclaiming deserted industrial and polluted land as a part of a non-profit effort. It helped to revitalize the world and supply financial progress and persevering with growth. Harbor Shores is a not-for-profit facility, and a portion of charges collected assist preserve the world’s path methods and seaside at adjoining Jean Klock Park.
The course was honored in a number of finest new course rankings in 2010 and has been honored as environmental leaders by the Golf Course Superintendents Affiliation of America. In 2023 it was named to Golf Digest’s biennial checklist of America’s 100 Best Public Programs.
Whereas golfers play, they’re welcomed on the tees of every of the 18 holes by a sculpture/devoted show honoring every one of many main championships gained by Nicklaus. The legendary golfer and designer additionally boosted the advertising and marketing of the course when he answered a problem by fellow golf legend Johnny Miller and made a 100-foot putt on the dramatically undulating No. 10 inexperienced throughout a grand opening spherical (Champions for Change occasion) that additionally included Tom Watson. Video of the putt stays well-liked on the web.
Doxtator, who has been on the resort since 2019, stated he believes Harbor Shores gives a premium expertise when his group, together with PGA Head Golf Skilled Jackson Davison and Superintendent Matthew Volrath, executes the plan.
“Now we have constructed a workers that’s devoted and welcoming and all the time attempting to make every golfer’s expertise memorable,” he stated. “The golf course does its half as the one Jack Nicklaus designed course with holes on the shores of Lake Michigan. We’re 90 miles from Chicago. The Inn at Harbor Shores, the event of condominiums on website, being concerned in the neighborhood are all a part of it. It’s a spot that we will speak about, but it surely should be skilled and then you definately understand it’s a highly effective instance of the impression golf can have.”
About Harbor Shores Resort
Harbor Shores Resort, host of the 2024 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, is the premier golf, resort, and seaside vacation spot and waterfront communities in Southwest Michigan positioned simply 90 minutes east of Chicago in Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, Michigan. Greater than 75 years in the past, Benton Harbor turned a booming industrial city. Throughout World Battle II, international house equipment chief Whirlpool Company remodeled its vegetation and factories into F.D.R.’s arsenal of democracy, manufacturing parts for fighter planes. The city then developed right into a vibrant manufacturing heart within the Fifties and 60s solely to see all of it disappear over the following twenty years.
Harbor Shores and the event of the Jack Nicklaus Signature Design signaled a turning level in Benton Harbor’s historical past. Golf was the core part of the event on the shores of Lake Michigan and the Paw Paw River and stands as a outstanding testomony to a imaginative and prescient made potential by $900 million in strategic investments, a collective set of initiatives with collaborating neighborhood leaders and organizations, allled by the Whirlpool Basis and its benefactor Whirlpool.
The award-winning golf course winds by way of quite a lot of terrain together with wetlands, riverside and hardwood forest and provides gorgeous views of Lake Michigan from lakeside holes. The 550-acre residential, golf, leisure and waterfront neighborhood options world-class facilities, together with a marina village and river stroll, city heart with eating places and outlets, well being and health heart, deep water marina, the four-star Inn at Harbor Shores resort and spa, golf villas, miles of leisure trails and rivers, and acres of parks and inexperienced area.
Go to www.harborshoresresort.com. Or https://boynegolf.com