For years the Island Resort and Casino golf trip had a rhythm to it. Sweetgrass out the back door of the hotel, Sage Run ten minutes down the road, a day trip to TimberStone or Greywalls if you booked early enough, and the casino floor in between. Good rhythm. Now there is a new beat in the middle of it, and it is the one I would tell you to play first.
The Cedar Course opened for limited preview play on August 7, 2026, on the Sage Run property in Bark River. It is nine holes, it shares the parking lot and clubhouse with Sage Run, and it is the third course Paul Albanese has built for the Hannahville Indian Community. The resort is now calling it 45 holes of championship golf. Fair enough. But the name means more than the hole count.
Why It Is Called Cedar
In Potawatomi culture there are four sacred medicines, and each one carries meaning. Cedar, or Kishki, is known for its protective and purifying properties. Sweetgrass and sage are two of the others, which is why the first two courses carry those names, and with Cedar the resort has completed the representation of the medicines that together stand for the connection to the earth. The fourth medicine, tobacco, gets its tribute in the Cedar Course logo. So when you tee it up here you are playing on a property where the golf and the land it sits on are telling the same story, which is a rare thing on a casino golf trip.
It also gives you the best piece of course management advice you will get all week. Take your medicine. When Cedar hands you a bad lie or a bad angle, take what the course gives you, get back in position, and move on. The Golden Age architects built their holes to reward that kind of thinking, and Albanese did the same here. The real story is what he did with the ground.
A Blend of the Other Two
The Island courses have always had two distinct personalities. Sweetgrass is the gentle one, a prairie walk with fescue and big template greens that you can enjoy on your worst ball striking day. Sage Run is the one with bark and bite, a drumlin ridge you play straight over with a 147 slope that punishes wandering tee shots.
Cedar splits the difference. It has the soft, gentle beauty of Sweetgrass with just enough of the subtle rawness of Sage Run, built on gentler ground next to the Sage Run front nine. Albanese said it may be his favorite site of the three, and the resort's general manager has already gone on record saying it could end up their finest course. That is a big statement about a nine hole warm-up track, and after walking it, I do not think he is wrong.
The whole thing is a love letter to the Golden Age of architecture. Not a copy of anybody's course, but a set of holes built on ideas that the great architects of the 1910s and 1920s came up with, adapted to a piece of Upper Peninsula ground.
Three of Everything
Here is the first thing you notice on the scorecard. Three par 3s, three par 4s, three par 5s. Par 36 from around 3,445 yards at the back. It is a little nontraditional and it gives you a great variety of holes in nine, which matters when this is the round that gets you loose for the other two courses.
There are no water features. Not one. Wayward shots will not find a watery grave here. That does not mean your golf balls are safe. There are spots where a shot sprayed into the fescue will have you hunting, and there is a big waste area on the second hole that swallows anything mis-hit to the right. But for the most part Cedar is wide, playable, and forgiving off the tee, and it lets the greens do the defending.
The Holes
The first is the Bottle hole, borrowed from National Golf Links, and it plays straightaway with strategic bunkers left and right that narrow your options the farther you hit it. Pick a side, commit, and ease into the round.
The second is where you find out this is not a pitch and putt. It is a par 5 with an elevated second tier of fairway held up by railroad ties, a nod to the sleepers at Prestwick in Scotland. The play is to aim for the top tier on the right. Big hitters will be tempted to go after the small green in two, and here is your word of warning: the waste area protects everything short and right, and the green is tiny. The smart play is to lay back to the elevated tier, hit a soft wedge into that little green, and take the birdie the way Albanese intended.
The third is a short Double Plateau hole with a green that sits on two levels. Get on the right one.
The sixth is the best hole on the property. A par 5 with a Sahara style bunker to carry and a boomerang shaped green inspired by Alister MacKenzie, with the fifth at Crystal Downs as the obvious reference. A boomerang green means the putting surface bends around a bunker like a horseshoe, so the pin position changes the entire hole. Front pin, go for it. Back pin, you are hitting a wedge over sand to a sliver of green and putting from the wrong wing is a three putt waiting to happen.
The seventh is a par 3 with a squarish green that will remind you of the sixth at Augusta National if you have been lucky enough to walk it. It is a big green with distinct sections, and it is easy to be on it and nowhere near the hole.
The eighth is the drivable par 4 inspired by the tenth at Riviera, which is the most copied short hole in golf for good reason. You can drive it. You can also drive it into a spot where up and down is nearly impossible. The green sits at an angle and the bunkers are placed to make the aggressive line look better than it is. Lay up with a hybrid to the correct angle and you have a wedge and a real birdie look. Pull driver and you have a story.
The ninth is where you take your medicine. Church pew bunkers run down the right side, straight out of Oakmont, and a proper punchbowl green waits at the end. From the tee, long hitters will look at that row of bunkers and think carrying it is possible. Trust me on this one. Play out to the left. A safe drive up the left side leaves you 150 yards or less into the green, and that is all you need.
If you push one right into the pews, take your medicine and punch back out to the fairway. Do not try to be a hero from the sand. If you catch a good lie, or you are feeling overly heroic anyway, play it long and let the punchbowl backstop bring the ball back toward the center of the green. That is what the punchbowl is there for. It is the kind of finish that makes you want to walk back to the first tee and go again, which at nine holes you can actually do.
Where It Fits in the Trip
This is the perfect way to come in hot. Drive up, check in, and instead of sitting around the hotel until tomorrow's Sweetgrass time, head to Cedar for a quick nine to shake off the car ride. It is also the right call for the closing round before you head home, or for that day when 36 is too much and 18 is just not enough. On a buddy trip that means one more bet on the books.
Logistics for planning. Sweetgrass sits at the base of the hotel and casino. Sage Run and Cedar share a clubhouse about ten minutes down the road. TimberStone is 50 minutes west in a different time zone, and Greywalls is an hour and a half north.
How to Play It Right Now
For the rest of 2026, Cedar is a preview experience. Tee times are limited, they are booked online separately from any golf package, and the preview rate is $45 a player. If you are on a stay and play this fall, you can add it on your own. As of September 2026 that means limited availability, so grab a time when you see one. Beginning in 2027 the course will be fully folded into Island's golf packages, which should put it on the Perfect 4-Some and stay and play menus alongside Sweetgrass and Sage Run.
What Is Coming
Nothing is announced, and the resort will tell you the same thing, but there are plans on the table to expand Cedar to a full 18. There is also a short course routed and sitting in the coming soon column. Given the land available next to Sage Run and the reception the first nine is getting, I would not bet against either one.
If you are reading this beyond 2026, call the reservation specialists at Island Resort and ask what the current landscape looks like. The answer may include more holes than the nine I just walked you through, and if it does, you heard it here first.
