A Giant Barn Foiled Drives on This Golf Course for Decades

Dundee — Imagine teeing up at the first fairway on a perfect July day. You hit your first drive dead-on with the most beautiful arc you’ve had all year. It’s going, going, but then suddenly ricochets 30 yards back into the neighboring fairway.

That’s because there’s a giant barn in the middle of the course. Up until 1983, this was a common scenario for golfers at the Dundee Golf Club.

Originally known as the Doon-A-Dee Golf Club, the course opened in 1964 after Don Helser developed it. The 9-hole course, sitting on about 80 acres, was once a farm. Jesseniah Dorr Stowell was the original owner of the farm and is likely the one who built the barn on the first fairway with hand tools in the 1800s. By 1924, Stowell’s daughter Julia was advertising the farm for rent, after inheriting it from her deceased father. She died in 1955.

The soil is full of white sand, making it ideal for golf. Don Helser bought the land in 1961, developing it by tearing down the farmhouse and any other obstacles to golfers. But the big barn remained on the first fairway to store club equipment. The Monroe News later referred to it as a barn “which stood almost defiantly alongside the first hole.” In 1965, Eugene and Eileen Flynn bought the golf club.

Dan Flynn is the current owner of the club. He is the youngest of five boys and was 9-years-old when his father died in 1971 and left Eileen to raise the children and run the golf course. Dan has lived on the golf course his whole life and shaped it into what it is today. His mother died in 1989. In our conversation together, it was clear he felt his family identity was tied to the course.

Flynn told me he tore down the barn in 1983 during spring break of his senior year. An artist sketched the structure and used some of the wood to frame it and hang it in the clubhouse.

Today, there is a giant sandpit where the barn used to sit. When I saw the pit was cutting into the fairway quite a bit, I thought anyone who may have sliced right would have smoked it.

Monroe County has several 9-hole golf courses that look as if they were in a Michigander’s backyard. Courses like Cherrywood in Lambertville and Quarry Ridge in Ottawa Lake have similar environments to the Dundee Golf Club. These places are perfect for beginners. There is a friendliness that comes with the 9-hole courses similar to a mom-and-pop diner: If you go more than once, the owner will likely remember your name.

I visited the Dundee Golf Club with my 4-year-old son. Patti Flynn, Dan’s wife, greeted us and gave my son a popsicle. When I sat down with Dan, he kept talking to my son in between my questions. I asked if he had a son planning to take over the business, and he said he had three daughters, none of whom were going to inherit it.

“If it wasn’t for Patti, I couldn’t have done this,” he said. “It’s not a 9-5 job.”

Dan tore down the barn not only to help golfers feel better about themselves on a par 4, but because he wanted to make the course professional, despite being only 9 holes. Being only a twice-a-year golfer, I loved how clean the course was. It had a beautiful simplicity. He told me he was excited that lots of young people are golfing now. I think it gave him hope his course would be around awhile.

Before we left, Dan Flynn wanted me to drive my son on a golf cart. We walked over to one, and then he asked, “Do you golf?”

I said I occasionally did with my dad.

“Come up some time,” he said. “I like seeing families come and play together, especially since my dad died when I was so young.”

He walked back, and I took my son for a spin through some trees at the back of the property and pointed out the black squirrels scurrying through the grass, along with the gray and fox squirrels. We both bounced and enjoyed the ride.

I won’t pretend to be a golfer. It’s a rare leisure sport for me. But any leisure, whether baseball, golf, or hunting, is built on the foundation of fathers loving sons and doing what they love with their boys. A game is better enjoyed generationally.

So when you visit the Dundee Golf Club to play your nine, bring your children. Teach them to love what you love.