NEKOOSA, Wis. – You can’t let your mind wander on a single shot at the new Lido course at Sand Valley in Wisconsin. Not on a putt. Not on a chip or pitch. Not on a single approach, and certainly not on a tee shot. Every swing demands your attention, and there might be no greater compliment for a golf course.
Built as a recreation of the famed Lido on Long Island in New York that was purchased and then demolished by the U.S. Navy during World War II, the new Lido is a stunning test of every aspect of a golfer’s game, especially the mind. It’s no exaggeration to call it the most strategic course – at the very least among a handful of contenders – in the United States.
The original Lido was designed by Golden Age architects C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, with several individual holes designed by contestants in an architecture contest that included Alister MacKenzie. It was built along the shore on soil dredged from the sea floor, then shaped by teams with horse-drawn equipment. The new reproduction and its many template holes were meticulously laid into place by Tom Doak with a giant assist by Peter Flory, a Chicago-based banker (and Golfweek’s Best course-rater ambassador) who used old photography to generate a digital replica of the New York original. Doak used those digital models to recreate the old layout as closely as possible.
- More: Where to play golf in Wisconsin
- Golfweek’s Best public courses in each state
- Golfweek’s Best private courses in each state
Judging by two rounds this author played with Flory in early September, it’s easy to guess the hickory-equipped golfers of the 1920s had their hands full on the original.
Bunkers seemingly are everywhere. The Lido offers plenty of width, with fairways sometimes playing more than 100 yards wide as they overlap, but the traps appear to be unavoidable, especially the first time a player goes round. Woe to any golfer who gets out of line.
Players must stand on each tee and plot their way to the flag. It’s an exhilarating exercise that every course designer should strive to produce, but nowhere is such strategizing more important than at the Lido. A well-struck shot on the wrong line, even one that finds short grass, might as well have found a bunker closer to the proper line. It’s an awkward moment when you realize you picked the wrong angle off the tee – you can see the flag ahead on the green, but you can’t even begin to imagine how to get close in regulation when playing into the new and bouncy putting surfaces.
But if players take the time to study the various pathways offered for the tee ball and choose wisely, then the greens open up. That flag that appears tucked from one side of the fairway probably is reasonably approachable from the opposite side. You have to play the holes backward in your mind before you ever swing.
It’s all complicated by the bunker design. Many of these fairway traps would be better described as trapdoors, with their tops even to the surrounding grades. Most modern course designers flare their bunkers into hillsides or manufactured inclines, giving the players visual clues as to where they should play and what they must avoid. Many of the fairway bunkers at the Lido, by contrast, are flat on the ground and often hidden beyond rolling terrain. It’s hard to stand there and know exactly where all the trouble waits because you can’t see half of it. If your caddie tells you to avoid an area, even if it appears safe from the tee, take that advice to heart. Flory pointed out that the best well-known example of similar bunkering is the Old Course at St. Andrews, where nasty traps often lurk just out of view.
Even those traps you can see aren’t necessarily easy to avoid, and many of the greenside bunkers in particular have fearsomely steep faces – nearly vertical and more than 8 feet high in some cases. Just the intimidating sight of such bunker faces will send some players wayward.
The trouble doesn’t end with the tee shots and bunkers. The waste areas and steep grassed banks surrounding many of these greens present incredibly difficult chips, pitches and blasts to elevated putting surfaces that feature beautiful tiers and ridges. From short and center of many greens, the flags are reasonably approachable to players with solid short games, but most attempts from pin-high or long grow exponentially more difficult. The more you challenge the course in an attempt at a low score, the more the course challenges you back.
So yes, the Lido is difficult. It’s also beautiful, fascinating and incredibly fun. It’s in no way impossible to play, so long as golfers think. As soon as a round ends, most players will want another shot at it to try different routes. A golfer could play it a dozen times and never replicate all the same routes.
Key examples are the fourth, a par-5 that offers a safer route to the left or a risky drive rightward to a small patch of fairway flanked by sandy waste areas. Players who pull off the riskier tee ball are rewarded with a reasonable chance to reach the green in two shots, but those who miss into the sand are faced with a tough second shot over water just to reach the safety of the main fairway.
The par-4 11th is another great example of width providing options. Flanked by the 17th fairway to the left and the second fairway to the right, players have a choice of vectors over, around and short of a minefield of bunkers and scrub. In our first round together, Flory went well right off the tee while I fired one off to the left just to be obstinate. We both hit solid tee shots, and our golf balls finished 118 yards apart as measured by laser rangefinder. Flory’s line paid off with a birdie 3, his first on the Lido, while I made a 7.
There are plenty of such examples, especially as the wind and its directions changes. On the wide-open, treeless expanse upon which this Lido was built, the breezes tend to be stronger than at the resort’s other two existing courses, Mammoth Dunes by David McLay Kidd and the eponymous Sand Valley by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
We wanted to share some of the photos of our two days at the Lido. Keep scrolling for those, but first the answers to several frequent questions in the days after our trip:
- The Lido is still growing in, and the course will not officially open until the summer of 2023.
- The resort is allowing small groups of members to play nine-hole preview rounds now while the grass is still taking hold, but many of the bunkers do not yet have sand (as you will see in the photos below). It is still very much a work in progress.
- The Lido will accept very limited resort play. It will be a private course operated by the resort, but don’t expect to just show up as a guest and play on a weekend. Details on how to obtain a round on the Lido are still forthcoming. Plan to stay at the resort for any chance, and book earlier as excitement about the Lido builds among golf architecture fans.
- Golfweek will present plenty of more coverage on the Lido before it opens, including Flory’s take on how it all came together. We just want to provide a sneak peak on how it all looks and plays.
Now, for those photos:
