Golf History: Treetops helped establish northern Michigan as a golf destination
By Mike Terrell

The first time Harry Melling took his family to see the "up north" ski resort he'd just bought near Gaylord, they didn't know whether to laugh or cry, according to his daughter Michelle Melling, who was a teenager at the time. Today she is vice-president of Melling Resorts International.

"He came back to our condo at Shanty Creek and said, ÔI've bought a resort up north.' We loaded up the station wagon and drove over to see it," Michelle Melling recalled. "We had visions of Shanty Creek in our head, and what we saw was this little ski area with only a few run-down buildings scattered around the bottom and a couple of T-bars. Well, we didn't know what to say," she laughed. "Dad had a vision that the rest of us couldn't see. He could see the potential for this little ski hill becoming much more."

That was the birth of Treetops/Sylvan Resort and, of course, the rest is history. Harry Melling, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1999, took the small ski hill and turned it into one of northern Michigan's leading golf and ski resorts, and helped establish the region as a national golf destination.

When he purchased the 179-acre ski area in the spring of 1983, he wasn't thinking about building a golf empire. At the time he owned Melling Tool Company, a highly successful automotive parts manufacturing business in Jackson. "I was looking for a new challenge," he would later say. "Our goal at the time was to run a successful ski resort."

Owning a ski resort certainly represented a change for Harry, who grew up in the family automotive business. He started working for his father and grandfather when he was just 12 years old. At the time the company employed 16 people. By the time he had become president in 1975, Melling Tool Company had grown to 70 employees. He was 39 when he purchased Sylvan Knob. Today Melling employs over 1,000 people in enterprises that include warehousing and distribution centers in Florida, Tennessee, Colorado and California, a NASCAR racing team based in North Carolina, radio stations, as well as the tool company and Treetops.

The ski resort opened for business as Sylvan Resort in December 1983 with 11 downhill runs and a couple of chairlifts. The popular Ale Haus Lounge--now the Fairway Grille--opened at the same time, followed by the completion of the Horizon Room Restaurant adjacent to the Ale Haus. The 40-room Sylvan Inn opened in 1984. By 1985 Harry Melling realized that if the resort was ever to reach its full potential, it had to remain open year around, according to longtime General Manager Nick Aune.

The Monument at Boyne Mountain and The Bear at Grand Traverse Resort had just opened and Arnold Palmer's Legend was being built at Shanty Creek. Those three resorts along with Treetops--independent of each other, but collectively--ushered in a golf course construction boom that would follow for the next 15 years, making Michigan the leading golf course-producing state in the nation.

At the point he decided to construct a golf course, Melling wanted the best golf course architect in the world, so he hired Robert Trent Jones, Sr. to create the Masterpiece. The course became synonymous with the resort when Jones, looking over the area where the course was to be built on the property, remarked that "you can't see anything but treetops."

The name stuck and the resort became known as Treetops/Sylvan Resort, later to become simply Treetops. The name Masterpiece came about as Jones, standing on the elevated sixth tee, after the course was finished, looked out and said, "This is my masterpiece." What else could you name it when one of the most renowned golf course architects in the world had just called it his "masterpiece?" At the same time he hired a brash young golf professional working at a club in Texas by the name of Rick Smith, who went on to become the "swing doctor" for many touring pros, to head up his new golf course operation. Repeatedly honored as one of "America's top 100 teachers" by Golf Magazine, Smith has worked with some of the best golf pros in the world including Phil Mickelson, Lee Janzen, Jack and Gary Nicklaus, David Duval, Vijay Singh, Rocco Mediate and many others.

Twenty-three at the time, the four-time Michigan PGA Teacher of the Year still spends his summers at Treetops as vice-president of golf operations. "At the time Robert Trent Jones, Sr. was building a course in Houston where I was working, and I heard he was also building a new course in northern Michigan. Knowing the area, I was interested," recalled Smith. "Harry and I met over a pizza and pitcher of beer and forged a business partnership and friendship that's endured all these years. He was not only my business partner, he was my friend. I really miss him. He gave me a wonderful opportunity and allowed me the freedom to grow as a person."

Smith joined the staff before the Masterpiece was finished in 1987 and when it opened, the accolades rolled in for Melling's dream. The golf course was an instant hit with the golfing public and so was the affable Smith who helped establish Treetops as not only a destination to play golf, but also a place to come for top-flight instruction as he set up one of the first golf academies in the state. It put Treetops on the map as Michigan's newest four-season resort.

"There's never been a time in the resort's history where there has been a lapse in expansion and improvements," said Aune, who started working for Melling in 1990. "Some of our best decisions and ideas started out on cocktail napkins during afternoons on the deck of the Ale House over a cigar and a beer."

Tom Fazio's Premier course and Smith's Threetops, a par-three course, opened in 1992, followed by Smith's Signature course a year later. "The early 1990s were a busy time. More new courses were opening every year and golf was booming in northern Michigan. Harry instantly recognized that we needed more course offerings to attract the golfing public," Smith said. "The Jones course wasn't an easy course to play, but that was the way the courses were built in the 1980s. So, we knew we wanted to build a more playable course for our next venture."

Smith looked at several different golf course architects, including Pete Dye, but finally settled on a relatively new course designer by the name of Tom Fazio, who was voted Architect of the Year in 1990 and 1991 by the American Society of Golf Course Architects. "He hadn't built a course in Michigan at that time, but courses he'd built elsewhere had a very playable reputation," said Smith. It remains the only Fazio-designed course open to resort play in the Midwest. Threetops came about after Smith returned from Augusta in 1990 and told Melling about the new par-three course at The Masters. He liked the idea and told Smith to proceed. "I had looked over some of our property where I thought it would work, and asked him if he wanted to look it over," Smith said. "He said, ÔNo, go ahead and build it, and I'll play it with you.' That was my first course."

For the last two seasons and again this year, Threetops plays host to the ESPN Par-3 Shootout. Golfing greats Raymond Floyd, Phil Mickelson, Lee Janzen and Jack Nicklaus have attempted to tame what has been called, "The best par-three course in the United States." With a total purse over $500,000, and a $1 million bonus for every hole-in-one, the play takes place during an August afternoon and appears on national TV that night. This year's contestants will be announced at a later date.

The fifth course, the Tradition, that opened in 1996, was another Smith design. Built as a walking course it was also a departure from the norm. "It's a wonderful course to walk and play. It's not overly taxing, it was designed for a slower, thoughtful game of golf," Smith said. "The idea was to bring back the relaxing tradition of caddie golf."

Treetops today boasts over 260 guest rooms, a 10,000 square-foot convention center, 81 holes of golf, and three times has been a recipient of the Silver Medal awarded by Golf Magazine to what are considered the best golf resorts in the United States. The resort remains in the Melling family with Michelle acting as vice president of resort operations and her brothers, Mark, as CEO of the parent company Melling Tool and Matt as vice-president.

Situated on close to 4,000 acres, there's plenty of room for future development, but no plans are currently on the drawing board for expanding the resort, according to Aune and Smith. "Dad's dream, he once told me, was to own a golf course for every day of the week," said Michelle. "We're missing a weekend." The man who wanted to be known as simply Harry, to his employees and friends--not Mr. Melling--left a long and lasting legacy on the northern Michigan golf scene. As much as anybody, he helped to focus the attention of the golfing world on northern Michigan. Thanks to him and a few other resort pioneers that we'll look at in future issues of Michigan Golfer, the region has become a national destination for golf.