Sand Valley’s The Lido in Rome, Wis., opened final 12 months.
Brandon Carter/Courtesy Sand Valley
GOLF just lately launched its newest rating of the High 100 Programs within the U.S. (2024-25), an inventory that features 11 newcomers. A few of them you may know. Others you may not. Right here, in our newcomer spotlights, we’ll introduce you to those rookie High 100 gems.
Newcomer highlight: The Lido / Rank: thirtieth
Location: Rome, Wis.
Kind: Resort
Yr opened: 2023
Architect: Tom Doak/Brian Schneider (C.B. Macdonald reincarnation)
What you have to learn about The Lido
The Lido, on Lengthy Island’s South Shore, opened for play in 1917, the work of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor. The course met an unkind destiny within the Forties, however not till luminaries like Bernard Darwin had lavished reward on it; Darwin mentioned he thought Lido was the most effective course on the earth “as a battlefield for giants.” Effectively! Some eight a long time later Michael and Chris Keiser determined to recreate the course adjoining to their Sand Valley Resort. Key to the equation was Peter Flory, who open-sourced a whole lot of classic images of the unique Lido and fed them right into a software program program that modeled the brand new Lido as precisely as potential. The Keisers then employed Tom Doak and Brian Schneider (who spent greater than 230 days on-site) to construct the course. This course of included using GPS bulldozers, although discretion by Doak and Schneider was actually required in getting the inexperienced contours excellent. The size of the course, the depth of its hazards and the scale of the greens, which common over 12,000 sq. ft, is dazzling. Nearly all the nice template holes are represented, from the Alps tenth to the Redan sixteenth, making this course a strategic marvel. Panelist Clyde Johnson calls Lido the “final IQ take a look at for golf-course structure.” One in every of America’s nice designs is again!
What our raters say
“Very like the Outdated Course in St. Andrews, Lido can’t be efficiently performed with out cautious research and planning. Actually nice programs require the participant to suppose their manner by way of the course. Choices abound and should be rigorously evaluated and sorted out.”
“The Lido is a kind of science experiments that ended up curing mediocrity. It reincarnates probably the most tough course on the earth with a number of the most excellent options in golf, delivered of their most excessive iterations. The Lido hates golfers. All of them, no matter handicap. That’s its objective in life. It’s a journey to the middle of the earth of American golf structure. It was by no means a “lay of the land” course. The unique scraped and piled sands in a way meant to ship what was then one of many hardest and most coveted programs within the U.S. It achieves all of that and extra.”
“It has all the Macdonald traits you’d count on, however to really play these variations of the Redan, Alps, Cape, Biarritz and significantly the magnificent Punchbowl twelfth gap, you’re in for a mind-blowing deal with.”
