We have a saying in New York City: Anyone can find a great $60 steak, but the real trick is to find the great $20 steak.
The same is true of golf. Anyone with money can play an overpriced, under-designed resort course that caters to posers impressed by brand names and slick marketing. Also, anyone can plunk down $50 at an awful municipal dog track that a city neglects like vampire landlords, and spend six-and-a-half hours behind loudmouth lunkheads who can’t hit the back end of a mule with a yardstick. Of course, they fuss over every one-foot putt like Jim Furyk, before they miss both that and the comebacker for an nine. [Editors Note: insert Jay making the sign of the cross, looking skyward, and muttering, “St. Andrew, protect the best of thy sons.”ïŠ]
The savvy golfer, however, wisely distinguishes between “merely pretty good” and “truly great,” by playing a course which he’ll remember long after he walks off the 18th green thereby making the most of his increasingly hard-pressed disposable income.
Still, such finds are tough in the 21st century golf world. Few public courses can claim the same pedigree as their private counterparts: simply look at the ratio of private to public courses of many of the greatest designers. There are far more private Tillinghasts, Macdonalds/Raynors/Bankses, and Mackenzies than there are public courses by the same men. The few public courses by the truly great architects must be preserved and cherished so that the entire golf world can enjoy them, not just a privileged, moneyed few.
Happily, golf-loving Wisconsin – with more golfers per capita than any other U.S. state except Minnesota – provides yet another public must-play destination. The Links Course at Lawsonia along the idyllic shores of sleepy Green Lake, Wisconsin, is one of the best golf values in America, melding a rich, storied architectural heritage and highly intelligent golf course with a price affordable to every golfer. It’s chateaubriand quality at ground chuck prices, so dig in with two forks and order extra au poivre sauce.
Originally called Lawsonia Country Club, the Links Course was conceived by the Stone Company of Chicago as part of a resort development. They purchased the property from the estate of Chicago Daily News publisher Victor Lawson, and hired the tandem of William Langford and Theodore Moreau to build the course, which is draped over the tumbling, open farmland Lawson’s Estate.
Lawsonia is the best preserved course of this largely unknown and vastly underappreciated design team, who designed over 200 courses. Costing around $250,000.00 to build – an enormous sum in the Roaring 20’s – the Links Course opened for Play in 1930. Legend has it that Walter Hagen played on opening day.
Sadly, the timing could not have been worse. Lots failed to sell and course went into receivership shortly thereafter. During WWII the grounds were used to house 400 German war prisoners and for a period of time the course was used as dairy farm. Eventually the property was purchased by the American Baptist Assembly in the mid 1940’s for about $300,000. After a well-received restoration by architect Ron Forse in the mid-90s, the course has enjoyed high rankings perennially in all the major golf magazines, and enchants golfers across the globe with its spellbinding homespun charm and beguiling bunkering and green complexes.
[We’ll continue this discussion in our next installment, so stay tuned for Pete and Alice Dye and Ron Forse.]
