Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Lawsonia Links Golf Review



Wisconsin has been getting a lot of professional golf love over the last few years. The 2015 PGA Championship was at Whistling Straits and the 2017 US Open was at Erin Hills. All of these courses are top notch but also muy expensivo. Lawsonia Links, nestled in the sleepy lake town of Green Lake Wisconsin offers the same quality golf experience but at a fraction of the price of some of its Wisconsin neighbors.

The course was created in the 1930s and truly plays like an inland links with a tremendous amount of fescue grass everywhere you turn.


Like other traditional links courses in the United Kingdom, Lawsonia offers multiple blind tee shots, and bunkers that disguise the best approach to the green.

For the most part, the fairways are wide and generous off the tee and show you all the golf you have to view before getting the ball in the hole.


That being said, there are a few holes on the course that I really dug as Langford and Moreau framed the holes using trees to create a false runways, a flair rarely seen nowadays.

Don't worry though, Lawsonia is a very fair test of your game and even the fescue is extremely playable.


The real star of Lawsonia however is the greens. The greens are like a Pete Dye fever dream and the fact that this course was built in 1930 makes me suspect that Mr. Dye visited the course prior to him embarking on his course design career. What do I mean by all of this? Check this out:


and also this:


You can see similar design elements in Raynor, MacDonald and others of the same "golden era" of design but the Lawsonia team took those concepts, downed a bunch of steroids and designed a golf course for the ages.


Perhaps the most extreme example occurs on a par 3 that has one of the most diabolical green side runoffs I have ever seen.


This amazing architectural flourish is both the defining feature of the course but also my one criticism of it. Too many of the holes have elevated greens thus negating the ground game which is a shame. If there were a few holes below the golfer on this course it would be an A++.

Despite that one critique, the course is a home run and unlike most other courses you will ever play. The conditioning is fantastic, the staff friendly and helpful and the round of golf sublime. Take me back to Wisconsin to play this course any time!

For more information on Lawsonia, check out the link: http://www.lawsonia.com/


No comments:

Post a Comment