The Bear Golf Course — Local services in Acme Township

Un-Bearable pace-of-play. I had a morning tee time and I thought that a course as esteemed as the legendary Bear would maintain a swift pace-of-play. I thought wrong! Unlike other top-tier courses, the carts do have GPS, making it impossible for the clubhouse to monitor pace-of-play. The entire round was spent waiting 5+ minutes each tee shot while the group in front of us shanked their drive and second shots, looked for them, and then paced-off every putt. Rangers came by and did nothing. My golf app said that it took nearly 5.5 hours to complete the round. It is completely unacceptable for a round to take this long, especially at a quality course like the Bear.

There is no excuse for not maintaining the pace-of-play. Golfers who fail to do so should be banned for life from the course. Pete Rose got banned from baseball for betting on baseball, and slowing down the pace-of-play is a far more egregious offense than throwing a few bucks on a game you are playing in. In all seriousness, I had longed to play for the Bear and was excited for my tee time. I played the front nine well and struggled on the back nine as the slow pace-of-play got even slower. I left the course disappointed and am unlikely to...

Was really looking forward to staying here. But Melanie from customer service needs to be retrained. I wanted to cancel my reservation, but Melanie recommended rescheduling rather than canceling. I said I'd prefer to cancel all 3 room rather than reschedule if possible. She put me on hold to talk to a manager. She came back and told me she'd have a Manger call me back. 1 hour later, she calls back, stating they "were" only able to cancel 1 room and I would lose the deposit for the other 2 rooms. I told her in that case can we just reschedule for a later date if you're only able to cancel 1 room. She lead me on to asking which dates I would like to reschedule and we went through a couple days dates in September and in July. She put me on hold again, and can back to tell me I CAN'T RESCHEDULE BECAUSE THE RESERVATIONS WERE ALREADY CANCELED AND CANNOT BE TRANSFERED NOW. ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!??? SHE SAID THERE WAS NOTHING SHE COULD DO AND THAT SHE WAS THE ONLY ONE THERE, NO MANAGER WAS AROUND, AND THAT I COULD CALL BACK TOMORROW. HOW IN THE WORLD IS A GORGEOUS RESORT RAN WITH NO MANAGER...

My wife and I played it on 8/20. Living in Michigan we heard many great things about it. Yet, we were able to check it off our courses that wanted to play list, without saying we would come back. We did catch it on a rainy day. We did catch it when a Bachelor party took over one rain delayed hole and clogged up the course. With those excuses though, we were still unimpressed. Before the round my wife went through the pro shop and saw little to offer women. Once the round was over, in the early evening, following the rain delay the pro shop was locked. For the amount of money we paid, we had higher hopes. Maybe it is a better value on other days and times of the week. Garbage containers seemed full and tee boxes had no places to put broken tees. It did have many port a potties, so that was a plus. Just a lackluster experience, where it seems unlikely to make the trip up to Traverse City from Genessee County...