To the Ends of the Earth: Madeline Island G.C. And Finding Golf Beyond the Media

Though Pelé may have coined soccer as “the beautiful game,” the design renaissance we’ve enjoyed over the last three decadeshas golf in hot pursuit of the title. Each year has seen a flourish of stimulating courses, each seemingly more ambitious than the last, drawing swarms of magazine and social media pundits torelentlessly pump content into the ether, doing battle with the almighty algorithm. With so many new designs, it can be easy to get lost in the chaos.

So where does that leave you and me? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a blessing to be spoiled for choice, but between the media fatigue, often exorbitant green fees, and significant travel commitments, many of us are left asking where we really want to play, or in my case, what do I really like?

To get an answer, I concluded that I’d need to find a place completely outside the media consciousness – which in a state with as notable for public golf as Wisconsin, finding a course that hasn’t been talked about to death felt impossible – but during one of my ritual scourings of Google Earth, I saw potential.

A few weeks later, I found myself aboard a ferry crossing Lake Superior to Madeline Island, the largest of Wisconsin’s 22Apostle Islands, and more importantly the only one with a golf course. Here at the northern tip of the Badger State sits the Madeline Island Golf Club, one of only two Robert Trent Jones designs. Though his trademark “heroic” school has become the butt of many an architecture hipster’s joke, MIGC appeared to be something completely unique to his catalog, and perhaps the world in general. Tasked by developer Ted Gary to design 18unique holes on only 85 acres, RTJ threw out the rulebook, creating a routing featuring mammoth double greens, diverging fairways, and split tees. This place had the potential to be either a diamond or a disaster, and on an unseasonably warm late October day, I’d find out for myself.

“I think you’re going to like it out there, as long as you aren’t colorblind,” chuckled the starter, “the red pins are the front and the white’s the back.” Thankfully, being the only person out on the last day of the season, I wouldn’t have to worry about any faux pas for hitting at the wrong flag.

The first two holes – a par 5 and par 3 – seemed rather plain other than the double pins, but the quirkiness picked up on the third green, which I measured at 57 yards side to side. Remarkably the greens kept growing, with the fourth measuring 60 yards and the fifth some 63 yards wide! By the time I made it to the short sixth, I was preparing to have to use my rangefinder to putt, but RTJ was just getting started. Instead of sharing a green, the sixth and fifteenth shared fairways which dogleggedin opposite directions to their own greens. The tee sign showedsomething more akin to a sea monster than a golf hole. While the novelty of its design was fun, making the turn to approach agreen flanked by fiery maples made for a picturesque approach.

The latter half of both nines plays to the southern half of the property, with standalone holes cut through incredibly dense forests combining once more on the ninth/eighteenth, downhill par 3s which offer spectacular views of the distant Wisconsin mainland.

In possibly the biggest surprise, the “back nine” felt largely separate from the first loop, with many fairways playing out and far away from their front side counterparts before reconvening at the mammoth greensites. Pleasantly, the second head of the hydra sixth/fifteenth proved just as scenic as its sister, with amber hints of the Bayfield Peninsula peaking above the foliage behind the green.

After enjoying one last panorama on the eighteenth, I couldn’t help but be amazed at the experience. The idea of a partially conjoined course that figure eights on itself shouldn’t work, but thanks to its remoteness, Trent Jones’ insane experiment stands as a one-of-a-kind innovator in an age of design malaise. Playing MIGC felt more like an expedition at times than a round of golf. Combine this feeling with the journey of reaching it, and a round on Madeline Island becomes a pilgrimage for the golf sicko.

After my heroes journey, I did get an answer to the question that started all this, albeit one far more metaphysical than I would have thought. More than the design, the quirkiness, or the setting, I felt that MIGC rewarded me the most for simply taking the effort to seek it out. I’m not sure the feeling is possible to capture in today’s social media maelstrom, but I found my joy in golf comes from discovery and I hope to have many more stories about where I find it.