As a matter of fact, yes,
I was lost in Wisconsin.
After 317 miles of a 318-mile trip to meet my daughter at college and help her move back in, the locator on my GPS decided to pretend it was dancing the Macarena (I don’t know any dances more recent than that, so give me a break) and bounced all around the map of Waukesha, briefly keeping me from my appointed destination.
But that’s neither here nor there. Well, it’s there, actually, but it really doesn’t matter.
What I found most interesting about my trip to the Dairy State was how one’s perspective changes based on experience. Every other time in the past 30 years that I’ve driven past Lake Windsor Golf Club (pictured), just north of Madison and visible from I-90/94, I’ve thought about the half-dozen times I played that course while living in Madison way back when.
When? Well, it was a year in which JoAnne Carner was LPGA player of the year. And Ms. Carner is 74 now, so suffice it to say it was a coupla years back. You might remember persimmon woods. Or you might not. Anyway, it was a persimmon-wood year. And disco still hadn’t died, though it was gasping its final Kool & The Gang-aided breaths.
Anyway, on the trip back to Minnesota this year, I decided for the sake of nostalgia to take the exit off 94 and drop in on Lake Windsor. This is where current perspective comes in. As I drove up to the golf course, what struck me most was its perimeter — some relatively large areas of empty land, including some lines of trees that served no apparent current purpose but looked strikingly like they could have been borders for old golf holes — possibly a redesign, at the least.
I’m pretty sure only a person whose brain had been fogged over by an obsession with lost golf courses would notice such a thing. That’s me — lost courses equals fog, obsession, kit, caboodle.
There’s no other real story here. I haven’t even Googled the place to see whether I’m right or whether I just want to believe there are lost golf holes at Lake Windsor. (A year ago, I would have Googled until my eyes googled out of their sockets just to try to find an answer.) It’s just that now, in places where normal people see flagsticks and greens and tee boxes, I wonder where the lost golf course is.
Coincidentally, I took more backroads on my return trip and drove past a large piece of land next to U.S. Highway 12 in Eau Claire that appeared to be a former golf course fully in the throes of passing into history. Bulldozers and road graders were turning it into a housing development, it appeared. I do believe I vaguely remember hearing of a course in Eau Claire closing, but again, I haven’t looked it up. I will at some point, but on the off chance anybody knows anything about either the Lake Windsor or Eau Claire site, I would be most interested in hearing about it. By all means, leave a comment here if you can.
Coming soon: a few more concrete details about my book. At some point, I’ll offer access to a map of the Minnesota lost golf courses I know about.
UPDATE, 8-22: I threatened not to Google. Predictably, it was an empty threat.
I checked on the Wisconsin courses I visited / passed. Here’s what I found:
Lake Windsor: I couldn’t confirm it, but based on a couple of Google-aided hints and an aerial view of the course, I believe my memory was correct. Lake Windsor used to be a 27-hole course, I’m almost positive, and nine holes were shut down and the rest of the course perhaps reworked to some degree.
Eau Claire: The course I passed along Highway 12 (technically in Altoona, not Eau Claire) was Hillcrest, which closed last year and is being developed. Though it’s relatively easy to come to terms with golf courses that passed into oblivion 15 or 55 years ago, there was a shock factor in driving past Hillcrest and seeing a large piece of land that was a golf course just months ago now being bulldozed to its death. Sad, but in many cases inevitable.
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