Big Fish Club, Hayward, Wis.: The One That Didn't Get Away

Story originally published 07/22/05

Big Fish Golf Club is proof of persistence. Golf pro Matt Vandelac telephoned renowned architect Pete Dye just after dawn for three consecutive days asking him to design a course in Wisconsin's north woods, a destination remote enough that one morning Vandelac heard Dye fumbling with a map and asking where in tarnation a town called Hayward was.

That was more than four years ago.

One name change, a foreclosure and sherriff's auction, two ownership changes and a season in limbo later, Vandelac's vision and Dye's creation routed over a former farm field and through rugged forest opened last summer. It's the nearest Dye-designed course to the Twin Cities, an understated project with a $47 weekend walking fee and a marketing slogan that promises - and delivers - "Pure Golf."

Dye is the guy who revolutionized modern course design, popularizing multiple tee boxes, stadium courses intended to accommodate massive galleries, island greens, abundant mounding and railroad-tie bulkheads. He's also the guy from whom Jack Nicklaus learned the business' technical aspects and whose former employees now include such architects as Tom Doak and Bobby Weed, whom Vandelac helped select to design StoneRidge Golf Club in West Lakeland when he worked on that project.

Vandelac is the guy from West St. Paul who nurtured Big Fish to life after his original seven-member ownership group collapsed, leading to locked gates, lost investments (including part of Dye's fee) and a few months when Vandelac, his wife, Julie, and their three children maintained the growing grass. He's now Big Fish's director of golf and co-owner, along with two former classmates from Henry Sibley High School.

Dye visited the Hayward site nearly a dozen times, arriving by private jet with his black German shepherd dog often en route from Wisconsin's Whistling Straits golf course that he conjured from a former military airstrip. He often stooped, gathering dirt with his hands to model shaping of a fairway or bunker for his work crew, many of whom also helped turn Dye's vision into Whistling Straits' manmade tumbling dunes next to Lake Michigan.

In Hayward, Dye and design associate Tim Liddy created two distinctive nines. The front nine is links-style, using contours and angles and feathery fescue grass and asking golfers to be imaginative and wise. The back nine rumbles through the forests that have made the surrounding resort area so popular with mountain bikers and cross-country skiers; it's an exercise in precision and strength, with each passing hole seemingly more difficult than the last.

Dye has become famous for some of the game's most dastardly creations. Included is the PGA West Stadium Course where he was instructed to build the world's hardest course in the California desert, and might have succeeded. More than one tour pro has referred to his work as "architorture." None of that - nary a pot bunker or railroad tie, either - is found at Big Fish. Vandelac, who caddied at sublime Somerset Country Club as a kid, sought out Dye because he "wanted to find the best," a designer who could create a walker-friendly course that looks difficult and plays easy.

"We wanted to build a course any golfer would want to play every day," Vandelac said. "I think it's as good, or better, than any public course in the Twin Cities."

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Jerry Zgoda is at jzgoda@startribune.com. . QUOTABLE: "It's good to have nine holes of one character and nine holes that are completely different. It adds interest. Some of the best courses in the world play through different environments. On the back nine, Mother Nature did all the work. Usually, when Mother Nature does all the work, it's better. Our work on the front nine was to try to mimic what Mother Nature could have done." - Big Fish Golf Club co-designer Tim Liddy on the Hayward, Wis., course's two distinctive nines. .

Big Fish Golf Club Where: Near Hayward, Wis., about a 2 1/2-hour drive northeast of the Twin Cities.

Greens fee: $42 walking Sunday noon through Thursday, $47 walking Friday through Sunday noon and holidays. Cart is $12 per person extra. Twilight rates after 3 p.m.

Web site: www.bigfishgolf.com. Phone: 715-934-4770.

What's in a name? Originally named True North, Big Fish - suggested by golf director Matt Vandelac's wife, Julie - was chosen in a contest because of the area's other summer pastime.

Distinctive feature: Designer Pete Dye, now 80, experimented with "kicker" bunkers, specifically contoured to leave errant better players with a long greenside bunker shot while not affecting the shorter hitter.