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Big Fish Golf Club is proof of persistence. Golf pro Matt Vandelac telephoned renowned architect Pete Dye just after dawn for three consecutive days asking him to design a course in Wisconsin's north woods, a destination remote enough that one morning Vandelac heard Dye fumbling with a map and asking where in tarnation a town called Hayward was.
That was more than four years ago.
One name change, a foreclosure and sherriff's auction, two ownership changes and a season in limbo later, Vandelac's vision and Dye's creation routed over a former farm field and through rugged forest opened last summer. It's the nearest Dye-designed course to the Twin Cities, an understated project with a $47 weekend walking fee and a marketing slogan that promises - and delivers - "Pure Golf."
Dye is the guy who revolutionized modern course design, popularizing multiple tee boxes, stadium courses intended to accommodate massive galleries, island greens, abundant mounding and railroad-tie bulkheads. He's also the guy from whom Jack Nicklaus learned the business' technical aspects and whose former employees now include such architects as Tom Doak and Bobby Weed, whom Vandelac helped select to design StoneRidge Golf Club in West Lakeland when he...