Sand Valley’s The Lido in Rome, Wis., opened last year.
Brandon Carter/Courtesy Sand Valley
GOLF recently published its latest rankings of Top 100 Courses in USA (2024-2525)a list that includes 11 arrivals. Some of them you may recognize. Others you may not. Here, in the spotlight for newcomers, we’ll introduce you to these 100 best beginner gems.
Newcomers spotlight: The Lido / Rank: 30th
Location: Rome, Wis.
Business: Resort
YEAR OPEN: 2023
Architect: Tom Doak/Brian Schneider (reincarnation of CB Macdonald)
What you need to know about The Lido
The Lido, on the south shore of Long Island, opened for play in 1917, the work of CB Macdonald and Seth Raynor. The course had a run of bad luck in the 1940s, but not until such notables as Bernard Darwin had praised it; Darwin said he thought the Lido was the best course in the world “like a battlefield for giants”. Well! Some eight decades later, Michael and Chris Keizer decided to recreate the course adjacent to their Sand Valley resort. Key to the equation was Peter Flory, who open-sourced hundreds of vintage photos of the original Lido and fed them into a software program that modeled the new Lido as accurately as possible. The Keisers then hired Tom Doak and Brian Schneider (who spent more than 230 days in the field) to build the course. This process involved the use of GPS bulldozers, although of course discretion was required by Doak and Schneider to get the green contours just right. The scale of the course, the depth of its hazards and the size of the greens, which average over 12,000 square meters, are dazzling. Almost all the major holes of the template are represented, from Alpes 10 to Redan 16, making this course a strategic marvel. Panelist Clyde Johnson calls the Lido “the ultimate golf course architecture IQ test.” One of America’s top models is back!
What our reviewers say
“Like the Old Course at St. Andrews, Lido cannot be played successfully without careful study and planning. Really great courses require the player to think their way through the course. The options are many and must be evaluated and chosen carefully.”
“Lido is one of those science experiments that ended up curing mediocrity. It reincarnates the world’s toughest course with some of golf’s most iconic features, delivered in their most extreme iterations. Lido hates golfers. All of them, regardless of handicap. This is her purpose in life. It’s a journey to the center of the land of American golf architecture. It was never a “ground layer” course. The original sands were raked and piled in a manner intended to deliver what was then one of the most difficult and coveted courses in the US. It achieves all this and more.”
“It’s got all the Macdonald features you’d expect, but to actually play these versions of Redan, the Alps, the Cape, Biarritz and especially Punchbowl’s magnificent 12th hole, you’re in an amazing pleasure.”
