Awesome tracks and a chill vibe combine to make Wisconsin’s Sand Valley resort a great golf getaway.

Golf Digest has made various attempts to identify fun golf courses, as if some common thread could be gleaned. We once polled panelists for their fun favorites. The top three were Cypress Point, Fishers Island and National Golf Links. There were common threads, of course: panoramic scenery along the surf, golf’s most precious real estate, exclusivity.

Edward Stimpson, the state amateur golf champion of Massachusetts, invented the measuring device that bears his name after watching the 1935 US Open at Oakmont, seeing Gene Sarazen putt off a green, and wondering how fast the greens were rolling.

Craig Haltom has completed another phase of a bunker restoration project he is leading on the Lawsonia Links course in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

Already known to Wisconsin golf fans, at the recent 2023 Chicago Golf Show, Illinois golfers got a first hand look at a portion of what created all the excitement over last year’s opening of the 27-hole putting course at Geneva National Resort, called The Dance Floor.

The Glen Golf Park is a nine-hole muni in Madison, Wisconsin.

It is also a picnic ground; a fresh-air yoga studio; a venue for live music and movie screenings; an outdoor classroom and — you get the picture. There are things to pursue here beyond par.

As audacious as Sand Valley’s growth is, so are the plans for its putting course. It’s set to be around five acres, or well over 200,000 square feet. That’s over twice as big as any other putting course currently in use, including the game’s old-school original: the Himalayas course at St. Andrews in Scotland. For further context, the average green size on the PGA Tour is about 6,000 square feet, so this would be approximately 35 times bigger.

Keiser is the benefactor behind the transformation, and salvation, of a 9-hole municipal course in his hometown of Madison, Wis., that just might be a blueprint for a public golf facility focused on playability, ecology, and perhaps most importantly, community. The nearly 100-year-old Glenway Golf Course has given way to The Glen Golf Park, a muni modeled after the vision of the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, with golf coexisting with other community activities.

Restorations and redesigns are all the rage in modern American golf architecture. Classic courses built in the golf boom of the early 20th century have started reaching their shelf lives. Over time, these properties have succumbed to numerous pressures, including crowding by trees, environmental changes and an inability of these mostly shorter tracks to remain challenging for elite players who have taken advantage of advances in modern technology. Fueled by increasing demand in the industry and growing interest in golf architecture, restoration projects and outright redesigns are sprouting up across the country, with acclaimed architects attempting to rekindle the magic of these historic American treasures.

Representatives from Geneva National Resort & Club, 1221 Geneva National Ave. South, have opened The Dance Floor putting golf course next to the Geneva National Clubhouse, overlooking the Arnold Palmer Golf Course. An opening event was held at the putting course, June 27, which included famed professional golfer Paige Spiranac playing a round with course designer Craig Haltom and four sweepstakes winners.

In this Feed the Ball podcast, we get deep into some Wisconsin golf talk with golf course architect Craig Haltom. Haltom joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss recreating C.B. Macdonald’s The Lido at Sand Valley, how GPS technology has the potential to change the way courses are preserved and finished, how he located the Sand Valley property over a decade ago and brought it to the attention of Mike Keiser, renovating a municipal course in Madison with a crew of talented designers, the power potential of adventurous practice putting greens, and his new 18-hole course, The Club at Lac La Belle outside Milwaukee.

“Craig Haltom, golf course architect and president of Oliphant Golf, the Wisconsin-based company that’s provided construction support for each course at Sand Valley, including The Lido, agreed.

“Because [Flory’s model] was so photorealistic, and because of the way you could fly around in it in 3-D, I thought if we only had that we can always go out and use that as our reference,” Haltom says. “At the very least we’d have this visual representation of the golf course that would be useful.”

“‘The first four holes have been built on new property that was never part of the original course,’ said Haltom. ‘That gave us room to reroute holes on the existing course to reach all the most interesting parts of the property, while avoiding a lot of the low-lying problem areas. The result is a routing that has a lot of room between holes, in some places, and a scale that most people don’t expect.’”

“It was a familiar feeling, and one I’ve come to chase over the years while being blessed to play some of the country’s great golf courses. It was that feeling when, despite high expectations, you’re blown away by a golf course that’s unfolding in front of you.

My expectations were surpassed quickly and often at the new Club at Lac La Belle outside Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.”

“Gary D'Amato and Rob Hernandez of Wisconsin.Golf talk about Gary's first ‘D'Time with D'Amato’ course review of the 2020 season. It's on the brand-new, reimagined Club at Lac La Belle in Oconomowoc, one of the oldest courses in the America. They also take a shot at answering the questions being presented to high school seniors in Wisconsin.Golf's new ‘Senior Spotlight’ series.”

“There are so many different ways it could have turned out,” says Craig Haltom, president of golf management for the Oliphant Companies and an 11-year GCSAA member. “For me, it was a lesson in, if you’re able to make a reinvestment in a golf facility, it can pay off. I’m not a person who would just advocate change for the sake of change. But if you’re able to make a reinvestment ... I’ve seen people respond to it.

“Craig Haltom is one of the more under-the-radar figures in golf course design. Through his affiliation with the Oliphant Golf Companies, he has been the construction lead on the courses at Sand Valley Golf Resort, and has done his own design consulting work elsewhere in Wisconsin, including at Stevens Point Country Club. He's brought his talents to Lac La Belle, site of one of the Badger State's first courses, to reimagine the facility for the next hundred-plus years. The semi-private course's reopening is scheduled for June.”

“Haltom, who lives in Stevens Point, found the land in central Wisconsin that became the acclaimed Sand Valley Resort. He was owner Mike Keiser’s right-hand man while Oliphant built the first course, doing whatever needed to be done and working side by side with architect Bill Coore. He secured Oliphant’s management contract with The Golf Courses of Lawsonia. He oversaw renovations at Stevens Point Country Club and the Beloit Club.

When Oliphant was doing renovation work at Nakoma Golf Club in Madison some years back, the club coincidentally was looking for a superintendent, so Haltom stepped into that role for two years. Turns out he can grow grass, too.

His latest project, the reimagination of historic Lac La Belle Country Club – now called The Club at Lac La Belle – will open in 2020. Haltom essentially built a new course on top of the old one and in the process solved chronic drainage problems, a challenge he rated as ‘10 on a scale of 1 to 10.’”

OCONOMOWOC – Perhaps you knew it as Lac La Belle Country Club, a once-prosperous private club that, like many private clubs of a certain vintage, struggled with a dated business model, took on too much debt – much of it for an expensive clubhouse renovation – and had no choice but to sell.

Maybe you played it in subsequent incarnations as Rolling Hills Country Club and La Belle Golf Club, which despite the good intentions of its owners struggled for market share in a region saturated with golf options ranging from high-end private clubs to affordable municipal facilities.