Tom Doak to rebuild Lido in Wisconsin

Golf course developers Michael and Chris Keiser are working with golf course architect Tom Doak and consultant Peter Flory on a replica of Long Island’s famous lost course, the Lido, designed by Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor. The replica course will be built on a site adjacent to the Keiser’s Sand Valley resort in Wisconsin.

Michael and Chris, who are the sons of Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser and the operators of Sand Valley, plan to rebuild The Lido as close as possible to the original. “This is not a design project ‘inspired’ by the Lido,” says Michael Keiser on the course’s website thelido.com. “Our aim is to restore the Lido.”

Pre-construction began several months ago and, in an interview with The Fried Egg, Michael Keiser said Doak’s team has already rough-graded two holes, the fourth (Channel) and the twelfth (Punchbowl). Construction will officially begin in spring 2021. Nine-hole preview play is scheduled to for summer 2022, with a full opening by summer 2023.

The site for the new Lido is 850 acres adjacent to Sand Valley, which has courses designed by David Kidd and Coore & Crenshaw. The new course will not be part of the resort, it will be run as a private club that allows regular public play.

Lido Golf Club on Long Island was designed and built by Macdonald and Raynor in 1918, before being abandoned during World War II. Dr Alister MacKenzie also contributed to the layout, having won a design contest for its eighteenth hole, held by American magazine Country Life.

The original Lido played alongside the Atlantic and Doak’s team plans to dig lakes to represent the coastline. The course will also be orientated so that the direction of the wind is as close as possible to the original. Around 700,000 cubic yards of sand will be moved. “For me, the goal is to get the reproduction just spot-on to what it should be,” Doak told The Fried Egg. “And that will be an interesting goal.”

Chicago-based consultant Peter Flory was invited to participate in the project following his creation of a highly detailed digital version of the Lido using course building software from the video game The Golf Club. Flory spent months reviewing every piece of information he could find about the original Lido to create his digital version. His renderings feature on thelido.com and have been used to gather interest among prospective members.

Watch: a video of plans for the Lido replica featuring hole renderings by Peter Flory.

The project will also see the creation of the ‘Lido Conservancy’, 880 acres of landscape restored back to its savannah, prairie, and sand dunes origins. To help fund the work, the Keiser family plans to sell 17 to 20 home sites near the golf course.

The Fried Egg reports that the par-68, 6,100-yard Sedge Valley course that Doak was scheduled to create for Sand Valley is on hold, but the Keiser brothers are committed to growing the golf experience at Sand Valley and building Sedge Valley in the future.

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