Skip to main content

Utility

  • Admissions
  • Exploring Grad School
  • Current Students
  • Community Impact and Engagement
  • Faculty + Staff
  • Alumni
Give
Intranet
Report Sexual Misconduct
Home

Main navigation

  • Academics
    • Master of Science
    • Master of Landscape Architecture
    • Doctoral (PhD)
    • Dual-Degree Programs
    • Graduate Certificate Programs
    • Undergraduate Program
    • Courses
    • Online Learning
  • Research + Impact
    • Sustainability Themes
    • PhD Profiles
    • Student Research
    • The Centers, Institutes + Initiatives
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Labs
  • Prospective Students
    • Why Michigan?
    • Application Information
    • International Students
    • Financial Aid + Tuition
    • Visit Campus
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Admitted Students
    • Exploring Graduate School
  • Student Services
    • SEAS and PitE Student Center
    • Career Services
    • Financial Aid
    • Academic Advising
    • Student Organizations
    • Student Development
    • Forms, Handbooks + Policies
    • Quick Links
  • News
    • Community Highlights
    • In the Media
    • Stewards Magazine
  • Events
    • Co-Sponsorship Form
    • Submit Event
    • Admissions Webinars
    • Gallery
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • SEAS Values
    • Collective Impact Committee
    • Leadership
    • Demographics
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Administrative Departments + Staff
    • Facilities + Locations
    • Community Impact and Engagement
    • Art & Environment Gallery
    • COVID-19
    • Land Acknowledgement
    • History
    • Email Sign-Up
Search search icon

Utility

  • Admissions
  • Exploring Grad School
  • Current Students
  • Community Impact and Engagement
  • Faculty + Staff
  • Alumni
Give
Report Sexual Misconduct
search icon Search

Alumni Stories

Image
seas neon sign
  • Admissions
  • Exploring Grad School
  • Current Students
  • Community Impact and Engagement
  • Faculty + Staff
  • Alumni
    • Get Involved!
    • Alumni Stories
      • Share Your Story
    • Strategic Alumni Network
    • Contact Us
    • Submit a Class Note
    • Alumni Career Services Resources
    • Stewards Magazine
    • Update Contact Info

Alumni Menu

  • Admissions
  • Exploring Grad School
  • Current Students
  • Community Impact and Engagement
  • Faculty + Staff
  • Alumni
    • Get Involved!
    • Alumni Stories
      • Share Your Story
    • Strategic Alumni Network
    • Contact Us
    • Submit a Class Note
    • Alumni Career Services Resources
    • Stewards Magazine
    • Update Contact Info
back to all alumni stories

Alumnus designs golf course ranked #24 in the world

Image

Mike DeVries grew up golfing with his family at Crystal Downs Country Club in Frankfort, Michigan. Through those early experiences, DeVries developed a love for the game that extended beyond just playing.  Today, DeVries owns and runs DeVries Designs, a golf course design firm based in Traverse City, Michigan. DeVries’s company is based on the philosophy that “successful design is directly related to sustainable ecosystem planning and management.”  

Owing to DeVries’s excellent reputation, Australian golf writer Darius Oliver contacted him about the possibility of designing a new course. The course would be located at Cape Wickham on King Island, off the coast of Tasmania.  “Cape Wickham has a unique combination of dunes, cliff, ocean, and beach, which posed a sensitive environment...to work with,” DeVries says. He accepted Oliver’s challenge.

DeVries designed the Cape Wickham course in response to the breathtaking landscape, starting along the rocks, moving inland, and then returning to the ocean’s edge to end along the beach. All 18 holes are completely integrated into the landscape. The course opened in October 2015 and has already landed the number 24 spot in the world for best golf courses by Golf Digest - an exceptional honor in the golfing world.   Good design is “bigger than one great hole,” DeVries says. “You have to look at how to fit all 18 holes together. They have to have rhythm and flow and work amongst themselves like an ecosystem. If you strip an ecosystem of its parts, then you don’t have the system.”

Photo courtesy of Larry Lambrecht.

seas logo
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability
Dana Building
440 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
(734) 764-6453
Email us
facebook
twitter
instagram
linkedin
youtube
flickr
planet blue global impact logo

Footer

  • Contact us
  • Intranet
  • Contact Web Team
  • Email Sign-Up

© 2025 The Regents of the University of Michigan | Privacy Policy

Produced by Michigan Creative