(WXYZ) — Michigan-based golf architect Tom Doak will be the architect behind Sedge Valley, the newest course at Wisconsin golf destination Sand Valley, the resort announced this week.
Sedge Valley will be the fourth course at Sand Valley, which is located in Central Wisconsin, about 2 1/2 hours northwest of Milwaukee. It's expected to open in 2024.
Doak is the architect of some of the best courses in the world, including The Loop at Forest Dunes in Roscommon, Mich., a reversible golf course.
Construction is set to begin on the course this spring, according to Sand Valley, and it will be a contrast to the broad, links landscape at San Valley's other two courses – Sand Valley designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and Mammoth Dunes, designed by David McLay Kidd.
“Sedge Valley is unique,” Sand Valley Co-owner Michael Keiser, Jr said in a statement. “With Sedge Valley, Tom Doak shares some unique design insight. This is a golf course intended to engage your imagination and decision-making at the game’s most visceral levels. You will re-think some of your assumptions – in a great way.”
According to Sand Valley, Doak's course will draw on heathland and links courses of London and the English coast, and it may require what Doak said are compromises from longer and more wild hitters.
Doak is really focusing on the green sites at Sedge Valley, according to the resort Q&A with him.
"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 on the website.
"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," Sand Valley Co-Owner Michael Keiser added.
Sand Valley also offers a third, short-course that is 17 holes and was designed by Coore & Crenshaw, with holes ranging from 40-140 yards.
Here's what golfers can expect at Sedge Valley, according to Doak.
"The heathland courses built around London in the early 1900s were the first great inland golf courses, and Sedge Valley will integrate some of those characteristics – native groundcover as a strategic element, for instance. This property has sand, open expanses, good terrain and intriguing green sites – the fundamentals of holes that stand up over time," he said.
