Mike Keiser made his fortune in Chicago, co-founding a greeting card company that was sold for nine figures. Working from offices in Chicago, he then gained his fame as a golf course developer, constructing courses in Oregon, Michigan, Canada and Australia. His newest property, Sand Valley Golf Resort, laid out on 1,500 acres in central Wisconsin, stands to be the most important course to open in the nation this year.

Keiser has never built a course in Illinois and probably never will. The landscape is too flat and dull, he says, to interest modern-day golfing connoisseurs. "Illinois means cornfields, and cornfields are not good places to be building courses," Keiser says. "Wisconsin has more interesting land."

ROME – Despite the cold and rain, dozens of community members gathered Monday for Community Day at Sand Valley Golf Resort in the town of Rome.

The event was held ahead of the public grand opening on Tuesday. Residents gathered at Craig’s Porch, a restaurant and bar that overlooks the first hole of golf, and heard from the resort's managing partner and general manager.

Mike Keiser, one of the owners and the managing partner of Sand Valley Golf Resort, said the Rome resort is unique.

“(It has) incredible landscape,” Keiser said. “I have never seen any other place like it in the world.”

Keiser said golf is symbolic of endless opportunities, and he saw endless opportunities as well as warm hospitality in Rome.

Sand Valley, plus the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, are two reasons why it's a big year for Wisconsin golf. (Matt Ginella/Golf Advisor)

We're counting down the top 10 golf destinations to visit in 2017. For destinations 10-6, as well how we determined our list, click here.

The five best golf destinations to visit in 2017 are at the top of their game in different ways.

Two centennial celebrations highlight the festivities, as well as a prestigious, new No. 1 ranking, as well as domination in our own Top 50 ranking.

So start rallying the group and tallying up those credit card miles, here are the five best destinations to visit this year:

f you are a fan of the National Football League, it’s safe bet you’ve heard of the phrase Coaching Tree. It’s used to describe a group of coaches that all went on to greatness after mentoring under a legend. Prime examples of this phenomenon include The Bill Walsh, Mike Holmgren, or Bill Belichick Coaching Trees.

When it comes to golf, an Architectural Design Tree has evolved around the legendary Pete Dye, who will celebrate his 91st birthday this year. The Disciples of Dye include Tom Doak, Tim Liddy, and Lee Schmidt, who have all produced masterpieces throughout the Midwest. Of that impressive list, Bill Coore has set himself apart as the lead understudy that now is a master of his craft.

In 1996 Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser started building Bandon Dunes golf course with young designer David McLay Kidd and Dream Golf was born. 20 years later his newest project, Sand Valley Golf Resort, is emerging as a thrilling national golf destination. Situated on over 1,700 acres of tumbling sand dunes, Sand Valley brings the drama and playing style of a seaside links to the heartland of America. With its first course by Coore & Crenshaw opening May 2, 2017 and the second course by David McLay Kidd already under construction, Sand Valley is a golf destination worth visiting. The tradition of Dream Golf continues...an entirely new experience awaits you in the prehistoric sand dunes of Central Wisconsin. 

Call 888-651-5539 to reserve your stay

The first course at the resort, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, has now opened for preview play. Currently under development, the second course is set to formally open in 2018, with a third course following soon after. An announcement on the designer of the third course is expected in the near future.

GCA caught up with McLay Kidd, who previously worked with Keiser at Bandon Dunes, to discuss the second course and putting his own mark on one of the biggest current golf developments in the US.

“The site is as near-perfect as you’re going to find, short of being on an ocean,” he says. 

Brian Silvernail first developed an interest in golf architecture in the late 1980s, when Accolade released its first computer golf game. Not content just to hone his computer golf skills, Silvernail, trained in graphic arts, began designing golf holes on computer, then entire courses, becoming so skilled he beta-tested several Jack Nicklaus Golf games and even helped lay out some imaginary courses.

It was that background that helped Silvernail win Golf Digest's 2016 Armchair Architect contest...

Two hours north of Madison, tucked away in small Rome, Wisconsin, is the home to America’s next great golf resort, Sand Valley. Up until now, Rome’s fame has been the paper mills that employ much of the area and supply paper to the world. Sand Valley is the latest project by Mike Keiser, who has the goal of bringing the seaside links golf we see at the Open Championship to the heart of the midwest. I was able to make a trip up to Sand Valley with three buddies for preview play a few weeks ago, and we were all blown away at what’s being built. As of now, two courses are under construction with many more on the way.

The owner of Bandon Dunes wants your par 4 on his next resort.

Everyone who plays golf thinks they could be a golf course architect. It starts at an early age.  Tiger Woods was just 11 years old when he entered Golf Digest's first Armchair Architect contest back in 1987.  (Officially, he was too young to win, so he had his father mail it in.) His dream hole was a U-shaped double-dogleg par 5 with an island tee, island traps and an island green (see below or click here to view his design entry in large-PDF format). Even at age 11, he probably had the talent to cut the corner by smacking an iron from the back tee over his 120-foot-high hill and onto the green where he'd have a putt for a double-eagle 2. (If he avoided the bunker in the center of his green, that is.) The rest of us would likely take the long way around, dodging trees, bunkers, mounds, a creek and a bog. 

When a well-traveled golf course developer builds a world-class facility in a relatively undeveloped part of middle Wisconsin, a small township faces a world of…opportunity.

Chicago businessman-turned golf course developer Mike Keiser gravitates to naturally unique places to build.  The area near Nekoosa contains ancient sand dunes as high as 80 feet, left behind when some 15,000 years ago a glacial ice dam burst creating the inland dells of central Wisconsin.  Red pine plantations were carefully removed to make way for an almost seaside landscape of rolling dunes.  After the removal of tree cover, the open areas are showing some signs of primitive plant life that once may have grown in this part of Wisconsin, including a small cactus that blooms in spring.

They’ll also finish up Sand Valley starting in April with preview play on 13 holes this summer. “What I like about the site is it’s got completely different contours than what we work with generally,” says Coore. “It’s not really so much dunes as it is big sand ridges and valleys. It’s very aptly named. They created large situations for some really interesting golf holes. You look out over these long vistas and big rolling hills. It kind of feels like Shinnecock.”

A Magical Day at Sand Valley

September 20, 2015 by jwizay1493 8 Comments

My buddy Chuck was kind enough to include me in a visit to Sand Valley to tour the first course, which is under construction and set to open in 2017.  I expected to be in golf geek heaven, and yet what I experienced so vastly exceeded my expectations that I fear that trying to put it into words won’t do it justice.  I’ll do my best to share my impressions, along with photos.  If there is one thing that I hope you take away from this recap though, it is this – make your reservations now to visit this special place and play this outstanding golf course.

Sand Valley might be the most ambitious golf development project ever undertaken in Wisconsin, and not just because well-heeled clients will someday fly in to play as many as four courses at the destination resort.

That's all well and good. It is, after all, a commercial enterprise.

What makes Sand Valley special, though, is that it's also a habitat restoration project of immense size and scope. What was once a sprawling red pine plantation — a monoculture not unlike a cornfield — will be returned to a 1,700-acre sand barren, home to native plants such as prickly pear cactus and wild lupine, and endangered species such as the Karner blue butterfly and Kirtland's warbler.

David McLay Kidd discusses the new course plans for Sand Valley in Wisconsin.

ROME — Although construction on Sand Valley Golf Resort's first golf course is not yet completed, plans for a second golf course at the new resort have begun with an architect already chosen for the project, a Sand Valley representative confirmed to Daily Tribune Media on Friday.

The Sand Valley Golf Resort, which first was proposed in 2011 by internationally renowned golf developer Mike Keiser, lies on about 1,500 acres in the town Rome. The space could hold up to five golf courses.