Keiser Pegs Kidd to Design Second Course at Sand Valley in Wisconsin


Developer Mike Keiser has announced that David McLay Kidd will design the second course at the new Sand Valley Golf Resort in central Wisconsin. Kidd's layout will accompany the original Coore & Crenshaw design, which is well underway and will open in summer 2017.

Work on the Kidd course will commence in spring 2015 and be ready for play in summer 2018. This will be the first time Keiser and Kidd have worked together since they opened Bandon Dunes - the original course at Bandon Dunes Resort on Oregon's Pacific Coast - in 1999.

"David identified perhaps the most interesting part of our site and has routed the golfer through it in a very exciting way," said Keiser in making his selection in early December 2014. "I truly am looking forward to working with him again."

According to reports, Kidd was selected over architects Tom Doak and Rod Whitman.

In January 2014, Keiser completed the purchase of the 1,500-acre site in Adams County, which is situated about 15 miles south of Wisconsin Rapids - a town of about 18,000 in the central part of the state - and on the bottom of a prehistoric lake that evolved into a sand barren.

After consummating the land deal, Keiser said: "With Cabot Cliffs underway and Gil Hanse and I working on Bandon Links (a new 27-hole municipal layout under construction near Bandon Dunes), I really tried to resist this project. But within 30 minutes of being on-site, I was hooked. It is a thrilling dunescape - a cross between Pine Valley and Sand Hills."

The Oliphant Companies, a Madison, Wis.-based golf construction and management firm, is building the first course on a site blessed with sand 100 feet deep.

The project involves harvesting tens of thousands of red pine trees on the property, exposing the sand and creating courses that remind Keiser of the famed Pine Valley in New Jersey. "We're going to restore it to sand barren," Oliphant vice president Greg Haltom told reporter Gary D'Amato of Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel in November 2013. "Globally, that's a rare ecosystem."

With the hiring of Kidd, it looks like there will be at least two 18-hole tracks.

Green fees are expected to be in the $125-150 range; Keiser will decide whether to make Sand Valley - like Bandon Dunes - walking-only, although caddies will certainly be part of the playing experience as at his Oregon resort.