The Restaurant at Shepherd's Hollow

"A THING OF BEAUTY is a joy forever," waxed Keats. Especially when you can play golf on it. On 350 acres of rolling, wooded, and some would say blessed, land 30 miles north of Detroit, Arthur Hills took a less-is-more approach to what he called "as good a piece of inland property as I've ever seen for a golf course." The parcel set aside for golf was leased from the Colombiere Center, a park-like retreat for the Detroit province of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order of priests. It seems that divine providence was responsible for the 160-foot elevation change and wonderful mix of hardwoods (including four types of oaks), but it was the priests who planted the pines. Hills shoehorned the holes into the site's ridges, valleys, and woodlands, producing a 7,236-yard, par 72 layout that more closely resembles the wilderness courses in the northern Michigan than it does metro Detroit area courses. No two holes are alike, each occupies a roomy corridor, all are faithful to the rise and fall of the terrain.