Sand Valley begins construction on Sedge Valley By Brian Weis

Sand Valley begins construction on Sedge Valley

Tom Doak design inspired by Historic Heathland Courses

By Brian Weis

Sand Valley, one of the country's premier resort destinations set amidst 12,000 acres of tumbling prehistoric sand dunes, announces new plans to expand its golf and resort experience. Construction on Sedge Valley, the third 18-hole design to be built on resort property, will begin in spring, 2022 under the direction of architect Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design.

Sedge Valley will add to the resort's collection of top-rated layouts, Sand Valley (Coore & Crenshaw), Mammoth Dunes (David McLay Kidd), The Sandbox (Coore & Crenshaw) and the forthcoming Lido, which will open to members and resort guests in 2023.

"The golf experience at Sedge Valley is completely different from anything else on the property," says Sand Valley co-owner Michael Keiser. "Tom Doak moves so easily from the large-scale engineering project of the Lido to this much more intimate design. Greens are the heart and soul of any golf course. Watching him identify and work his routing to these incredible natural green sites has been an amazing process. This is how the great ones have always done it."

Sedge Valley occupies an intimate piece of Sand Valley's property rich with sandy soil, native groundcover and a prominent rock outcropping. Sand Valley owners Michael and Chris Keiser gave Doak the green light to follow his own inspiration for Sedge Valley - and that started with identifying the most exciting and best green sites the land had to offer.

"When you don't have to think about stretching a course to 7,300 yards, you can start thinking about finding cool green sites without worrying about how close together they are," Doak said. "I don't have to worry as much about a severe slope at the edge of the green being "unfair" if you're hitting a relatively short approach into it. My idea for Sedge Valley is to bring back a more intimate scale and build classically styled holes that everyone can enjoy, but which may require some compromises from the long and wild hitters."

Sedge Valley is scheduled to open in 2024.

"These are exciting times for Sand Valley," Keiser says. "The Lido is growing in and will open in 2023. Sedge Valley will follow a year later, along with some significant additions to the resort experience, which we will be announcing soon."

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Revised: 03/14/2022 - Article Viewed 5,101 Times - View Course Profile

About: Brian Weis

Brian Weis is the mastermind behind GolfTrips.com, a vast network of golf travel and directory sites covering everything from the rolling fairways of Wisconsin to the sunbaked desert layouts of Arizona. If there’s a golf destination worth visiting, chances are, Brian has written about it, played it, or at the very least, found a way to justify a "business trip" there.

As a card-carrying member of the Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA), International Network of Golf (ING), Golf Travel Writers of America (GTWA), International Golf Travel Writers Association (IGTWA), and The Society of Hickory Golfers (SoHG), Brian has the credentials to prove that talking about golf is his full-time job. In 2016, his peers even handed him The Shaheen Cup, a prestigious award in golf travel writing—essentially the Masters green jacket for guys who don’t hit the range but still know where the best 19th holes are.

Brian’s love for golf goes way back. As a kid, he competed in junior and high school golf, only to realize that his dreams of a college golf scholarship had about the same odds as a 30-handicap making a hole-in-one. Instead, he took the more practical route—working on the West Bend Country Club grounds crew to fund his University of Wisconsin education. Little did he know that mowing greens and fixing divots would one day lead to a career writing about the best courses on the planet.

In 2004, Brian turned his golf passion into a business, launching GolfWisconsin.com. Three years later, he expanded his vision, and GolfTrips.com was born—a one-stop shop for golf travel junkies looking for their next tee time. Today, his empire spans all 50 states, and 20+ international destinations.

On the course, Brian is a weekend warrior who oscillates between a 5 and 9 handicap, depending on how much he's been traveling (or how generous he’s feeling with his scorecard). His signature move" A high, soft fade that his playing partners affectionately (or not-so-affectionately) call "The Weis Slice." But when he catches one clean, his 300+ yard drives remind everyone that while he may write about golf for a living, he can still send a ball into the next zip code with the best of them.

Whether he’s hunting down the best public courses, digging up hidden gems, or simply outdriving his buddies, Brian Weis is living proof that golf is more than a game—it’s a way of life.