The Sweet Spot: Wisconsin golf anniversaries in 2025; new ownership for old Fox Hills Resort; Tiger and Mark Wilson; TGL's debut (2025)

Wisconsin golf anniversaries we’ll celebrate in 2025

Time flies when you’re making birdies. It’s hard to believe, but 40 years ago this summer, in 1985, Madison’s Andy North won his second U.S. Open title and Steve Stricker swept the Wisconsin Junior Boys and Wisconsin State Amateur championships, one of only two golfers to accomplish that feat (Jeff Bisbee, 1983).

Here are a few other Wisconsin golf anniversaries we’ll celebrate in 2025.

95 years ago: John Revolta, then the club pro at Swan Lake CC in Portage, wins the first of his four State Open titles, five years before he would win the 1935 PGA Championship.

50 years ago: South Milwaukee legend Archie Dadian wins the inaugural WSGA Match Play Championship. He would repeat in 1976.

45 years ago: Sherri Steinhauer, playing out of Nakoma GC in Madison, wins her third consecutive Wisconsin Junior Girls Championship, a prelude to her many successes on the LPGA Tour.

40 years ago: Jim Thorpe beats Jack Nicklaus by two strokes to win the Greater Milwaukee Open at Tuckaway CC. It is Nicklaus’ only appearance in the GMO, though he played in the 1961 Milwaukee Open as an amateur.

35 years ago: Steve Stricker wins the second of his record-tying five State Open titles, edging fellow future PGA Tour players Jerry Kelly and Skip Kendall at North Shore CC. Those three have combined for 51 victories in PGA Tour-sanctioned events.

30 years ago: Bob Gregorski wins the first of his two State Am titles, beating John Pallin by one stroke after Pallin blades a green-side bunker shot out of bounds on the 72nd hole at Milwaukee CC.

15 years ago: In a wild finish at Whistling Straits, Martin Kaymer beats Bubba Watson in a three-hole aggregate playoff to win the 92nd PGA Championship. Dustin Johnson comes to the 72nd hole with a one-shot lead but makes a triple-bogey after being penalized two shots for grounding his club in a bunker.

5 years ago: As COVID-19 rages and the Chicago District Golf Association cancels its tournaments, Chadd Slutzky of Deer Park, Ill., ventures north to win the WSGA Match Play Championship at The Club at Strawberry Creek. He is the first Illinois golfer to win a major WSGA title.

Rustic Golf Properties adds Fox Hills to its portfolio

The Sweet Spot is old enough to remember when Fox Hills Resort in Mishicot was something of a prominent golf destination in Wisconsin, located east of I-43 about halfway between the golf mecca that is the Sheboygan area and the vacation mecca that is Door County.

Fox Hills National, a Bob Lohmann design that had the look and feel of a Scottish relic, opened to great fanfare in 1988. It played host to the Class B and C portions of the WIAA state tournament in 1989 before the Class A competition arrived in 1990 and pushed the two smaller divisions to the Classic Course from 1990 through 1993. It also played host to a Hooters Tour event in 2005.

Against that backdrop, our guess is we weren’t the only ones happy to see the New Year’s Day announcement that Rustic Golf Properties has acquired the 45-hole golf operation that in recent years has been known as Par 5 Resort. The social media post indicated that JLMR Properties will take over the Grey Fox Bar & Grill as well as the Fairway Inn and Suites.

The Sweet Spot has been a big fan of what Rustic Golf owners Rusty Grimm and Eric Buchholz have done in adding Tuscumbia Golf Course in Green Lake, White Lake GC in Montello and nine-hole Saddle Ridge GC in Portage to their Two Oaks North GC headquarters in Wautoma. Those properties had seen their better days, which Rustic Golf has sought to restore.

Fox Hills seems to fit the mold of those other acquisitions in that it has a rich history that dates to 1964 and construction of the first nine holes of what is now the 27-hole Creeks Course, but it has struggled to keep pace with the explosion of destination golf in Wisconsin. The Sweet Spot believes there is a niche for golf getaways that blur the line between a buddies trip and afamily vacation and Fox Hills seemingly caters to golfers of all ages and abilities, with The National remaining a hidden gem while The Creeks has long been playable to one and all.

College coaching carousel spins into the New Year

College golf coaches come and go, but The Sweet Spot is always intrigued at how many programs see those changes occur between the fall and spring seasons.

The 2024-25 season will be no exception. As we combed the state to get a look at spring schedules, we discovered several coaching changes that flew under the radar.

At Carthage College in Kenosha, Bill Buss has taken over the women’s program from John Sams, the very successful coach at Kettle Moraine High School in Wales who had led the program the last two years. Most of Buss’ experience has come as a corporate executive – most recently as vice president of operational excellence for Reynolds Consumer Products in Lake Forest, Ill. – but a news release indicated he has served as an assistant coach at UW-Parkside and supported his daughter Eleni’s college golf career (she played at NCAA Division III Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky., from 2018 through 2022).

At Concordia University in Mequon, Waukesha native Wyatt Wilderman has taken over the men’s and women’s programs from Greg Nikolai, who resigned in October after 10 seasons at the Division III school. Wilderman, the assistant professional at the River Club of Mequon (Concordia’s home course), played high school golf at Waukesha West and college golf at Millikin University in Decatur, Ill., before transferring to Concordia for his final 2½ seasons.

Woods’ final-match USGA opponents remembered (including our own Mark Wilson)

The Sweet Spot came across a good where-are-they-now read on amateurgolf.com about the golfers thatTiger Woodsbeat in the finals to win his six consecutive national amateur titles (three U.S. Junior Amateurs followed by three U.S. Amateurs).

Menomonee Falls native Mark Wilson was one of them, losing to Woods in the final of the 1992 U.S. Junior. The Sweet Spot was then just starting to cover golf for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and recalls with fondness the daily phone calls from Mark’s late father, Les, who provided details of that day’s matches at Wollaston GC in Milton, Mass.

Mark Wilson turned 50 on Oct. 31 and will tee it up on the PGA Tour Champions this year. Woods turned 49 on Dec. 30 and … well, we kinda know what happened to him.

The other finalists who bowed to Tiger were Brad Zwetschke in the 1991 U.S. Junior, Ryan Armour in the 1993 U.S. Junior, Trip Kuehne in the 1994 U.S. Amateur, Buddy Marucci in the 1995 U.S. Amateur and Steve Scott in the 1996 U.S. Amateur.

Of the six, only Wilson and Armour went on to win on the PGA Tour (Wilson five times, Armour once). Zwetschke is now an Army chaplain; Kuehne continues to compete as an amateur while balancing a career in finance; Marucci, 72, is a car dealer in the Philadelphia area, and Scott is a PGA professional in the Carolinas PGA Section.

Inaugural TGL Golf season tees off in prime time Tuesday

After much anticipation and buildup — and a one-year delay — the debut of the TGL presented by SoFi is set for 8 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN and ESPN+.

TGL is a new indoor golf league backed byTiger WoodsandRory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports.The league consists of six teams of PGA Tour players who compete in the custom-built SoFi Center, a 250,000-square-foot venue in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

TGL’s first-ever match Tuesday pits the New York Golf Club (Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick, Rickie Fowler) against The Bay Golf Club (Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, Shane Lowry).

Scott Van Pelt (host), Matt Barrie (play-by-play) and Marty Smith (reporter) lead the ESPN telecast.

SoFi Center is a tech-infused arena for golf, with 1,500 spectator seats wrapping around the field of play, which is 97 yards long and 50 yards wide. TGL technology includes unprecedented audio access with all players mic’d and robotic cameras embedded throughout the field of play. There also is a 40-second shot clock.

TGL was supposed to launch in January 2024, but a power failure two months earlier caused the SoFi Center’s air-supported dome to collapse.

Tap-ins, lip-outs and double-breakers

Former Marquette University golfer Bhoom Sima-Aree, the 2023 Big East Championship co-medalist, has earned exempt status on the All-Thailand Golf Tour. Sima-Aree shot 74-71-71-70 for a 2-under 286 total and finished T-32 in the final qualifying tournament. In November, he finished T-13 and was low amateur at the 52nd Thailand Open.

The Sweet Spot: Wisconsin golf anniversaries in 2025; new ownership for old Fox Hills Resort; Tiger and Mark Wilson; TGL's debut (2025)
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