TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — An 18-hole Modular Advantage Mini Golf course was recently designed and installed by Adventure Golf & Sports (AGS) at the 188-acre Lake Arvesta Farms in South Haven, Michigan. The course features a variety of obstacles inspired by the crops and land of west Michigan from beach balls, driftwood, a blueberry harvester, firetruck and a lighthouse, to farm implements and crates used for transporting fruits to a garden hole with vegetables planted on all sides of the hole. The course also features a “buried building” on one mini golf hole that recalls the shifting sands that buried the Michigan shoreline town of Singapore in the late 19^th century.

The course design was inspired by a color rendering of a mini golf course designed by owner Brian deBest hanging in his current office for over 25 years. The rendering was of a proposed mini golf course he and a partner had proposed for downtown South Haven that never materialized. However, acreage deBest originally purchased for his lawn maintenance, excavating and landscaping business to mine sand for a housing subdivision, was eventually repurposed for a water park that grew into a sports complex.

At Lake Arvesta Farms, the mini golf course joins a sizable aqua park with giant water slides, floating obstacle courses, cable wakeboarding, kayaking and paddle boarding, along with 12 pickleball courts (3 indoor, 9 outdoor), the longest Disc Golf course in North America (54 holes), shuffleboard, ping-pong, air hockey, corn-hole, bounce houses and trolley rides as well as a concession stand and full restaurant / bar.

“I said, ‘If we’re going to build a waterpark, it’s going to have a golf course on it,’” says deBest. “And when we started designing the waterpark, I wanted the golf course to be on a hillside so when you’re at the waterpark or you drive in to the water park, that is the backdrop of the facility. I had the concept but I didn’t have the initiative to do it on my own. That’s when I got in contact with Adventure Golf and Sports and asked if they would consider doing it. AGS said ‘we would consider doing it but we’ve never put one on a hillside before of that caliber and do you realize there are laws for handicap accessibility that play a role?’ And I replied ‘No, I didn’t, but I feel we have enough space and enough land that we can put it together. And that’s how we got to where we are today.’”

According to Adventure Golf & Sports (AGS), the Modular Advantage Mini Golf course they installed at Lake Arvesta Farms uses patented, high-density polyethylene modular interlocking panels that are permeable for fast and easy water drainage. The panels can create all the contours, undulations, water and theme elements historically seen on courses constructed using cement, but avoid the pitfalls of concrete construction like excavation that could require removal or damage of nearby flora and fauna, freeze/thaw cracking and water pooling that can cause slipping hazards.

“The mini golf course is on a big man-made hill that took 280,000 yards of clay to build,” says Brian deBest. “We have the capability of running cement trucks up, but it would have been

a lot harder. I know clay moves and I just like the concept that the AGS course was modular and it could flex and not crack. I’ve played several golf courses across the country to see what was right, what was wrong, and to get some ideas over the last 25 years. Cement cracks and carpet wears out. And they (AGS) told me ‘Use this modular course. The carpet (synthetic turf) doesn’t wear out as much because the water drains off of it and it can flex.’ What was intriguing to me was that, if we wish, we can always tweak it and move it around a little bit compared to pouring cement where it’s permanent.”

According to deBest, the course has several par 3s and par 4s and the holes are not all on the same elevation with some of the greens having a three-foot elevated change. There are faux sand traps on the course with a full waterfall that goes through the entire course.

deBest says “The bottom nine holes are handicap accessible. The greens are not green, they’re beige to look like sand and there’s no grass around them. It’s all beach-themed.” The themes include a sand castle hole, beach balls, lighthouse, buoys, kites, driftwood, sailboat, sandbox and the 18th hole of the course features a sand-covered building where the golf balls drop into the building to recall the sunken Michigan town of Singapore.

“Then when you go up to the top of the hill, we’re back to green holes,” says deBest. Hole themes include a fishing hole, crate hole building with a “live” roof, garden hole, farm implement hole, firetruck hole, old farm wheels, a South Haven-built blueberry harvester among a local variety of blueberry bushes, and an open-theme hole that invites players to suggest a theme.

“We wanted to expose our tourist guests coming from Chicago, Canadian cities and all over the country to the nature of west Michigan. Here, guests can play through rows of corn, Indian corn, green beans, strawberries, blueberries and other fruits and vegetables so they can see how that is grown. And we have a sign saying, ‘we use what we can at our restaurant so it’s farm to table.’ I wanted a lighthouse because South Haven is known for its lighthouse so we tried putting in different themes to portray what this area is like.

“We had the ideas for many years and I knew what I wanted for themes, but I wanted to make sure we put the holes in that weren’t too challenging but challenging enough to draw a crowd and that’s why Adventure Golf came into play because I just wanted those done right.”

deBest also saw the opportunity to promote his legacy landscaping business with the mini golf course as well. “Our office has always been about landscape, but we didn’t have a display area that showed off different types of stone, brick and material like that, and I just felt it was the way to tie our business and an attraction together….We did not sub-contract any theme elements for the mini golf course. All the retaining walls and walkways were built by deBest Inc. employees. And we used four different colors of Porous Pave for the walkways and we did it in different ways so we can use it as a tool to sell it… And we’re using different methods of retaining walls…We’ve actually got 27 different retaining walls (on the course) but they’re all different…Where else can you go to see such a variety of retaining walls at one place to choose for your own property?”

Although the course opened in 2024, deBest says, “We’re hoping for a great start in 2025. We’re known for a waterpark and that is an amenity to the waterpark, but we’ve got to do some marketing to reach people who are looking for mini golf to let them know what we have here. Not ‘come to the waterpark and there’s mini golf here.’ We’ve got to do marketing specifically for the mini golf to get our numbers where they need to be.”

And guest reactions last year? “Wow!” exclaims deBest. “We’ve had people that drive across the country to play mini golf and they say they’ve never played anything quite like it.”

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