Sand Valley Golf: A Trip Guide from Chicago

Sand Valley is a golf resort in the sand country of central Wisconsin, outside Nekoosa, with four full-length courses that are all played on foot. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw opened the first in 2017, David McLay Kidd and Tom Doak followed, and Doak and Brian Schneider's rebuild of a lost C.B. Macdonald course is now the highest ranked of the four. This guide is for a Chicago group weighing the drive and deciding how to split the rounds. It is an overnight trip at the least, and one of several in the golf trips from Chicago listings.

Getting there, and when to go

By the resort's own estimate the drive is 3 hours 55 minutes from Chicago and 3 hours 30 minutes from O'Hare. That rules out a day trip, and two nights suit the distance better than one. Once you arrive the car can stay parked, because Sand Valley runs a 24-hour shuttle around the property.

The Wisconsin resorts run roughly May through October, and Sand Valley closes all of its courses for the winter, so the window is shorter than the season at home. The Chicago season guide covers the local calendar.

Three of the four courses take day guests on golf-only bookings, without a room, although the resort will not commit to a date when day-guest reservations open. The fourth requires a stay; more on that below.

The four courses

Sand Valley

Sand Valley is the original. Routing began in 2014, the course opened in 2017, and the resort says the founding idea was public golf on these dunes. From the Championship tees it is 7,124 yards and par 72, with five par 3s and five par 5s, rated 75.1 with a 142 slope. The ground does much of the work: cross bunkers on the 2nd and 7th, a split fairway at the 12th, false fronts on the 4th and 16th and a punchbowl green at the 17th. Golf Digest's 2025-26 rankings put it No. 134 in America's Second 100 Greatest and No. 6 in Wisconsin.

Play it first. It is the clearest lesson in how the ball behaves on firm sand turf, and that lesson carries over to the other three.

Mammoth Dunes

Mammoth Dunes, David McLay Kidd's 2018 course, is the most forgiving of the four off the tee. The routing plays off a huge V-shaped ridge that crosses the property, with fairways and greens sized to match; that scale gave the course its name. Kidd's 5th has a fairway roughly 120 yards across, and the real question there is which side of it opens up the flag. Pronounced contours run the ball onto many of the greens, and the drivable 14th came from the winner of Golf Digest's 2016 Armchair Architect contest. Par is 73, reached with five par 5s, and the Championship tees stretch to 7,549 yards with a 154 slope. The resort rates ten tee combinations, though, so the length is optional. Golf Digest ranks it No. 165 in its 2025-26 Second 100 Greatest and No. 7 in Wisconsin.

For a mixed group this is the round most likely to please everyone, provided everyone picks honest tees.

Sedge Valley

Sedge Valley opened in July 2024 and works on a smaller scale. Tom Doak dropped any target of par 72 and aimed for the roughly 6,000-yard length of English courses such as Swinley Forest, Rye and West Sussex. The result is a par 68 of 6,198 yards, rated 70.7 with a 133 slope, built from five par 3s, several short par 4s and a lone par 5. Because the resort sees so much play, Doak avoided small greens and built long, narrow targets instead, some turned 90 degrees to the line of approach so they play wide and shallow. Sand plays a smaller part than on Sand Valley or Mammoth Dunes, mostly as a buffer between the targets and the native sedge Doak's team worked to keep. Golf Digest ranks it No. 51 on its 2025-26 America's 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses and No. 10 in Wisconsin.

It has the shortest card on the property, which makes it the natural second round on a 36-hole day. Short is not soft, though. Doak expected good players to find par hard to break.

The Lido

The Lido is the highest-ranked course here and the hardest to get on: it is for Sand Valley resort guests only, with limited tee times Sunday through Thursday. Macdonald's original on Long Island was lost when the U.S. Navy took the site in 1942. Peter Flory pieced together a model of it from hundreds of old photographs, and Doak and Schneider used that model to rebuild the course here; it opened in 2023. The holes are Macdonald's templates, an Eden, a Biarritz, an Alps, a Punchbowl, a Leven and a Redan, along with originals such as the Channel and the Lagoon. The greens average more than 12,000 square feet and many targets are hidden from view, so it rewards a second round.

It entered Golf Digest's 2025-26 America's 100 Greatest at No. 69, the highest debut of any new course in that edition, and it is No. 3 on the magazine's Wisconsin list, behind the Straits at Whistling Straits and Erin Hills. The USGA has picked Sand Valley and the Lido for four championships. The Lido hosted match play at the 2026 U.S. Mid-Amateur, and the 2029 U.S. Junior Amateur is on the schedule.

If the Lido is the point of the trip, book a midweek stay and ask about Lido times when you reserve the room. Limited means limited, so have a fallback round in mind.

The resort's count of six courses also takes in Sandbox, a 17-hole par-3 course, and Commons. GolfIn lists the four 18-hole courses only.

Walking, caddies and carts

All four courses are walking only. Sand Valley, Mammoth Dunes and Sedge Valley offer caddies or push carts, and the Lido has push carts. According to the resort's FAQ, a caddie usually stays with your group for the whole trip, many carry double bags, and booking at least a week before arrival is the way to be sure of one. Pull carts can be rented or brought from home, though the resort warns that the sand and the lack of paths are hard on motorized models. Golfers with a medical need can apply for an accessible cart.

For some groups that rule settles the question. If a player needs to ride every round, the Kohler trip is a better fit, since three of its four Pete Dye courses take carts.

Which course to build the trip around

Golf Digest's 2025-26 Wisconsin list ranks all four, at Nos. 3, 6, 7 and 10, so by that measure there is no weak link. The choice comes down to access and the group.

For a first visit of two nights, make Sand Valley and Mammoth Dunes the core and add Sedge Valley as the third round. If your dates fall between Sunday and Thursday and a Lido time comes through, take it.

For a return visit, build around the two Doak courses. They make an instructive pair: the Lido's greens average more than 12,000 square feet while Sedge Valley's are long and narrow, and one plays to par 72 while the other stops at 68.

Sand Valley rewards staying put. With four 18s on one property and a shuttle running around the clock, there is little reason to bolt a second destination onto the same trip. If four hours is too far, the Lake Geneva courses are about 90 minutes from Chicago by Geneva National's estimate, and the Wisconsin trips comparison weighs Sand Valley against Kohler and Erin Hills.

How to book

Sand Valley, Mammoth Dunes and Sedge Valley are booked through the resort, golf-only or with lodging, and each course page links the tee sheet. The Lido is booked only with a resort stay, Sunday through Thursday. Check the cancellation terms before the group commits: the resort asks for 30 days' notice to cancel a golf-only booking, and its 2026 terms asked for 45 days on golf and lodging in peak season. We don't sell tee times; the resort does.