Inside Frontier Club, a new Gil Hanse course taking shape in Ann Arbor's backyard

About a half mile from his GPS destination, Gil Hanse’s interest was piqued. He had gotten a call from one of Frontier Club’s founders, James Housler, about a 350-acre parcel outside Ann Arbor, Mich., which timed nicely with Hanse’s upcoming trip to Oakland Hills Country Club. Now he was driving through Lodi Township, and he loved what he saw.

“I’m driving in and I was passing all this beautiful, rolling, heaving farmland,” Hanse said. “I kept thinking, ‘I hope that's it.’ ‘Oh, I hope that's it.’ ‘I hope that's it.’ You know, because I wasn't quite sure how far I was going until the gate where I’d meet them.

“Then when we got out on the property, we kind of got into the wooded sections and it was a little bit more difficult to tell. And then we popped out into one of those big fields that I was hoping it was, and it was. And then we popped out into another big field that I hadn't seen before that had all these big rolls.”

Hanse agreed with the assessment from Housler and co-founder Scott Kovanda that their land would be perfect for golf. Seventeen of the 18 holes, Hanse recently told Frontier Club’s 50 founding members who assembled for a meeting, were waiting to be discovered. Frontier Club is golf’s latest destination club, and construction is slated to begin later this year.

This former farmland became available late last year to Kovanda and Housler—long-time friends and Michigan natives. They were driving around the land and couldn’t shake the idea of building a golf course—which will sit about 10 minutes from the Big House, the University of Michigan’s famous football stadium.

The property features two prominent ridges with a valley in between, plus other ripples and folds, plus a water feature that Hanse used for the routing. Hanse gives credit to Ben Hillard, one of his design partners, and Russ Myers, the firm’s director of agronomy, for nailing the layout.

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“I don't know that I've ever said this before,” Hanse said, “but as you’re doing a routing, there's always a point where you occasionally second-guess and ask, is that the right decision, or should we have gone in that direction or you know, was that the right green site or should we have picked that one?

“I think [Ben Hillard] said it to me at one point, as we were finalizing the routing, he said, ‘I think we got everything we could out of this site.’ I mean, I think we really maximized the potential.”

Asked for any comparisons to the land or the vision for the course, Hanse said his team has called it a “smaller-scale Crystal Downs Country Club,” referring to the legendary Alister MacKenzie and Perry Maxwell design that tops our rankings of the Best Courses in Michigan and is #15 on America’s 100 Greatest Courses. In terms of presentation, Old Elm Club in Illinois also matches Frontier Club a bit with a routing that utilizes rolling topography and meanders into flat valleys and back into the interesting land.

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Kovanda and Housler pointed to what they felt was a void in the private club scene in southern Michigan, with many great country clubs but not a true destination club like those that continue to attract strong interest around the country such as The Fall Line in Georgia, Golf Digest’s Best New Course in 2025, or Ohoopee Match Club, also a Hanse design and former Best New winner. Frontier Club has an impressive list of founding members and is partnering with leaders in the industry to bring this project to life, including former USGA President Fred Perpall, whose Beck Group is designing the cottages and clubhouse.

It’s clear Frontier Club has the potential to be the next great destination club as Hanse has said he and his partners continue to find themselves in “pinch me” mode with the great places they’ve worked in recent years.

“I know, in my heart of hearts, this will be one of the most special places we’ve ever built,” he said.

For more info, visit the club’s social media pages (@FrontierGolfClub).