It seems like every year I end up taking one trip I hadn't planned on at the beginning of the year. This is a very good thing, yet it's also challenging for me. I'm a meticulous planner, and taking a trip I didn't have as much time to plan for can stress me out. Luckily the trip I ended up taking to Wisconsin in October of 2023 was not as stressful or hard to plan as I had feared. The entire trip was built around playing in The Renaissance Cup, an annual gathering at a course designed by one of the greats, Tom Doak. My partner and I had last played in a Renaissance Cup in 2018, and we both jumped at the chance to play in another one. The trip ended up being full of surprises, both in Wisconsin and the Chicago area.
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| West Bend Country Club |
Day one of the trip began with a flight to Milwaukee and a drive to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kenosha Country Club was designed by Donald Ross and was a great way to kick off the trip. The routing, as always with Ross, is very strong, featuring a wonderful volcano-ish par three and a strong collection of par fours.
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| Kenosha Country Club, Par three 3rd hole |
I stayed in the Kenosha area for my next round on day one. The Club at Strawberry Creek was designed by Rick Jacobson, and is a links style course. I particularly enjoyed the mix of short and long par fours. Rick really understands flow in his designs, and they are always a ton of fun to play.
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| The Club at Strawberry Creek, Par three 4th hole |
I drove to the Chicago area after my rounds in Kenosha. I spent a couple days playing in the northern suburbs of Chicago. My rounds began at sunrise on day two at Chick Evans Golf Course in Morton Grove.
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| Chick Evans Golf Course, Par three 10th hole |
I made the very short drive to Wilmette for my next round on day two. Westmoreland Country Club was originally designed over a hundred years ago by Willie Watson, and was re-designed by AW Tillinghast and William Langford a few years after it opened. The course has been tweaked by Arthur Hills a few times. He did a good job preserving some of the best qualities of Tillinghast designs.
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| Westmoreland Country Club, Par three 13th hole |
I headed North to Winnetka for my next round. The Donald Ross designed Indian Hill Club was my destination. As usual, a strong routing from the master with an added interesting element of back to back par 3's at 9 and 10.
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| Indian Hill Country Club, Par three 13th hole |
The Donald Ross theme continued for my fourth round on day two. Northmoor Country Club has 27 holes, with 18 from Ross and nine from Larry Packard. Nine of the Ross holes were closed for a restoration by Tyler Rae, so I played the other two nines.
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| Northmoor Country Club, Par three 8th hole |
Believe it or not, after playing 63 holes of golf at four different courses, it was still only three o'clock. I didn't want to waste the daylight, so I called a nearby course I had heard great things about. Lucky for me, I was able to play Briarwood Country Club, designed by Charles Alison.
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| Briarwood Country Club, Par four 14th hole |
Day three of the trip began at sunrise again with a quick trip around the nine hole HeatherRidge Golf Course in Gurnee, Illinois. The course opened in 1975 and genuinely surprised me for it's great collection of quality holes.
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| HeatherRidge Golf Course, Par four 1st hole |
Libertyville, Illinois and The Merit Club was my next stop on day three. Local architect Bob Lohmann designed the course at Merit in the early 90's, and it hosted the US Women's Open in 2000.
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| The Merit Club, Par four 18th hole |
I stopped by the par three course at Weber Park for my next round on day three.
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| Weber Park Golf Course, Par three 4th hole |
My final round on day three was another classic Donald Ross course, Evanston Golf Club. The course continues to improve, as it will close next year for a restoration by the hot new Ross expert, Andrew Green.
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| Evanston Golf Club, Par four 5th hole |
The fourth day of the trip took place north of Milwaukee. West Bend Country Club, in the city by the same name, has a front nine designed by the golden age team of Langford and Moreau, with a back nine added by David Gill thirty years later. Kye Goalby renovated the back nine in 2008 to look and feel more like the Langford/Moreau front nine. He did a very good job and I thoroughly enjoyed this course. This is easily the most underrated course in Wisconsin. The elevation changes on both sides made for a thrilling round of golf!
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| West Bend Country Club, 11th green and 12th hole |
I headed to Sheboygan next on day four for a round at the Jack Nicklaus designed Bull at Pinehurst Farms. The course is brutally difficult, but also has some very good short par fours routed through the forest.
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| The Bull at Pinehurst Farms, Par four 7th hole |
I stayed in Sheboygan for my last round of the day at Pine Hills Country Club. The course moves up and down a large valley with the Pigeon River cutting through the property. Pine Hills was one of the highlights of the trip, and combined with West Bend, would make for about as good a 36 hole day of golf as you can find anywhere in the Midwest!
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| Pine Hills Country Club, Par three 7th hole |
The fifth day of the trip began about twenty miles west of Milwaukee in the town of Oconomowoc. The Club at Lac La Belle was recently redesigned by Craig Haltom and utilized some additional property to create three new holes not part of the original design. The new holes and the renovated holes fit together seamlessly, and the result is now one of the best courses in Wisconsin.
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| The Club at Lac La Belle, Par three 11th hole |
I headed about twenty miles south to Eagle, Wisconsin for my next round at Eagle Springs Resort. The course here has one of the most photographed volcano holes in all of golf, the dramatic 2nd hole, pictured below. The rest of the course is perhaps not as dramatic, but still very solid. Eagle Springs was ranked by Golf Magazine as one of the 50 best 9 hole courses in the world.
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| Eagle Springs Resort, Par three 2nd hole, one of the best Volcano holes in existence! |
Pace of play was very good during my morning rounds, so before my 2 pm tee time at a big course in Milwaukee, I had a delightful walk around the par three course at Hansen Park in Milwaukee.
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| Hansen Park Golf Course, Par three 4th hole |
The final round of day five was a course I hadn't played in 17 years. Blue Mound Golf & Country Club was designed by Seth Raynor. I played the course on a trip to Whistling Straits in 2007, and was excited to return because the course had undergone some restoration work by Bruce Hepner and some of the Raynor templates were improved significantly.
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| Blue Mound Golf & Country Club, Par three 6th hole |
I picked up my partner for our upcoming tournament at Sand Valley Resort and we made the drive west to Nekoosha, Wisconsin. Before we tackled the courses at Sand Valley, we played a warm up round at nearby Lake Arrowhead Golf Resort. We started out with the Lakes course, designed by Chicago area architect Dick Nugent.
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| Lake Arrowhead Golf Club(Lakes), Par four 15th hole |
Since we were first out on the Lake course, we had some time to check out nine holes of the Pines course at Lake Arrowhead as well. This course was also designed by Dick Nugent.
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| Lake Arrowhead Golf Club(Pines), Par four 6th hole |
For our final round on day six we were fortunate to be a couple of the lucky few that got to play all 18 holes at the Tom Doak designed Sedge Valley course at Sand Valley. The full 18 officially opens next Spring and a preview loop of ten holes had been available to resort guests for a few months. The course was designed by Doak as a tribute to the great heathland courses in the United Kingdom, and features a unique par 68 routing.
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| Sedge Valley, Short Par four 6th hole |
Our tournament, The Renaissance Cup, began on the morning of day seven at The Lido course at Sand Valley. The Lido is very unique in golf architecture as it is the exact re-creation of the original Lido course that was built on Long Island, New York in the early 1900's.
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| The Lido, Par three 3rd hole, Eden |
The Lido was originally designed by C.B. McDonald, and features all the wonderful templates that he and his associates Seth Raynor and Charles Banks incorporated into all of their designs.
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| The Lido, Par four 5th hole, Cape |
There is no denying the greatness of the new Lido course, and yet I found it very polarizing personally. It has the widest gap I've ever experienced between best and favorite-as in, it's absolutely one of the best courses in the country, but I don't have it in my personal top 100 favorite courses. The course is very difficult and the firmest and fastest course I've ever played, possibly too fast, which is something I've never said before.
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| The Lido, Par four 12th green, Punchbowl |
The last day of the trip began with an early morning round at Lido. On my third trip around the course I was finally able to exercise some demons on the two par five's on the front I had managed to screw up in my previous rounds.
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| The Lido, Par three 13th hole, Short |
I headed northeast to Stevens Point for a wonderful spin around Stevens Point Country Club, which was wonderfully redesigned by Craig Haltom in 2016. I had actually played nine at Lido with Craig the previous day, and got to tell him how much I enjoyed his work at another of his renovations, Lac La Belle.
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| Stevens Point, Par three 17th hole |
The final round of the trip was fittingly the other Donald Ross course in Wisconsin, Oconomowoc Country Club. I was surprised by the amount of elevation change at the course. It moves masterfully through some hills and valleys and really builds to crescendo at the end.
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| Oconomowoc Country Club, Par three 6th hole |
That's a wrap on my impromptu trip to Wisconsin. Considering that I had no idea it was going to happen three months before it began, it turned out even better than I imagined. Wisconsin is a state that is full of surprises and I can't wait to get back to experience more of it.
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SCORECARDS
