A Tennis Vacation in the Midwest’s Golf Mecca

An hour into my three-hour drive from Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport to Sand Valley in Nekoosa, Wisconsin, I consider making a frantic call to the resort’s front desk.

Storm clouds have massed ominously on the horizon, rain lashes my rental car’s windshield in sharp bursts, and relentless winds rip through the cornstalks around us. My girlfriend tells me her weather app warns of tornadoes on the horizon. She scans X and finds that one has touched down in Dodgeville, which an anxious survey of Google Maps indicates is only an hour southwest of our position. I’m now convinced that as newcomers to the Badger State, we’re dangerously ignorant of a storm system whose severity locals have long acknowledged and prepared for. The highway, desolate and darkening, furthers my suspicion.

Levelheaded Kate suggests we find a gas station or a Culver’s to wait out the worst of it before resuming our journey. I’m tempted — I’ve heard Culver’s has amazing cheese curds — but I think we need a more fortified shelter. No longer vacationers, now survivalists, we need to find someplace with a cellar, someplace welcoming to wanderers — a church, a school, maybe a neighborly family farm? Fragments of a heroic fantasy appear to me: we’re outrunning a tunnel of wind and cloud, throwing open heavy bulkhead doors and slipping into a warm, candlelit bunker, where the shock and adrenaline of the moment fade and are replaced by an animal relief. We will live to die another day. 

With Kate’s reluctant blessing, I call Sand Valley for advice. I ask the bemused and unfailingly polite attendant if the resort is tracking the storms; if there’s a shelter she might recommend near — where are we, Kate? Sun Prairie? — Sun Prairie; if, generally, we’re navigating a life-threatening situation, and we (Kate) should maybe start acting like it? “We’re not from tornado country,” I say clumsily, hoping to excuse my ignorance of standard procedure. Our connection isn’t great, so I have to repeat myself, and when I say it again — “We’re just a bit worried, because we’re not from Tornado Country” — Kate helplessly snickers at my performative hoke. I flash her a grave look: you think this is funny? 

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, which I take as a bad sign. Surely she’s trying to find the gentlest way to tell me we’re fucked. I look to Kate, catching her in sharp, freckly profile, and I close my eyes with intention, as if searing a soothing final image into my brain. But when I open my eyes the black sky hasn’t fallen, the car staggers forward and I am still alive. 

A voice, finally, breaks through the crackly Bluetooth. The woman reveals that Sand Valley is indeed experiencing intense rain and wind, but she doesn’t seem too worried. She explains that tornado safety alerts are issued regionally under one of two classifications: “watches,” in which weather conditions make tornadoes possible; and “warnings,” in which a tornado has either occurred or is imminent. Nekoosa, home to Sand Valley, and Sun Prairie, where we are, both appear to be in watch zones. I exhale for the first time in minutes — then breathe in the promise of more life. We will live to die another day. 

Welcome to Sand Valley

During our call, the Sand Valley employee I spoke with was at her most solemn when describing the impact of the extreme weather on the golfers, who had to be called in from the resort’s five courses. This I found peculiar — her tone suggested these players would rather chance a lightning strike than interrupt a round of 18 — until I arrived at Sand Valley and came to understand the centrality of golf to its ethos. 

“We’ve always led with golf, and let the dining, lodging and other amenities fill in from there,” says Chris Keiser, Sand Valley’s co-founder. Keiser, alongside his brother Michael, has spent more than 10 years building what was once inland Wisconsin wilderness into a Midwestern golf mecca. The process began in 2013, when their father, Mike Keiser — known in the golf world for developing the Bandon Dunes resort in Oregon — bought the first parcel of land that would become Sand Valley. He entrusted the resort’s development to his sons, who opened the site’s first course in 2017. Since then, they’ve added a range of facilities designed to expand and enhance the golf experience, and steadily transformed Sand Valley into a full-scale destination resort. 

That philosophy of putting golf first, while thoughtfully layering in supporting facilities, is evident across the entire property. Its lodges, built in stages over the resort’s 12-year history, offer unobstructed views of the rolling fairways and sparkling greens designed by legendary course architects Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, all renowned for shaping some of the country’s most celebrated courses. The main restaurant, Aldo’s, and bar, Mammoth, placed to catch pre- and post-play stragglers, overlook the prehistoric sand dunes of the resort’s centerpiece, Mammoth Dunes, ranked the 25th best public golf course in the U.S. by Golf Digest. And just up the hill from the Sandbox — a 17-hole par-3 course — a permanent barbecue truck lures passersby with mingling scents of woodsmoke and slow-roasted meat. 

I end up at Bill’s BBQ upon the recommendation of a Sand Valley employee of Southern descent and therefore unassailable credibility — and I’m not disappointed. My order is a Walking Taco, which, in its “Sandwich” section, the menu teases as containing pulled pork, Fritos, cream, queso and pico de gallo; a recovering stoner, I literally salivated and said to myself “fuck yeah” upon discovering such indulgence. When it arrives at my picnic table, I find their barbaric (de)construction wholly distinct from anything that could be classified as a sandwich, and all the more glorious for it. The taco filling — tangy, tender meat; sharp pico; runny, smoky queso — is heaped atop a bed of Fritos Scoops! and served inside a Fritos Scoops! bag, which comes with instructions: hold the bag shut, shake well for maximum blending, then dig in, presumably with a fork, but going hands first might also be appropriate.

Back in New York I’d be self-conscious to be seen maximally blending a plastic bag of unfathomable caloric excess, but here on the edge of the Sandbox, among the bachelor parties and dads’ trips and Chicagoland executive retreats that Sand Valley attracts, I tap into a certain let-the-boys-play permissiveness, and let it rip. My Walking Taco is dead, destroyed, in 180 breathless seconds. 

A Return to Form

As the taco glugs down my gullet, triggering hot, acrid belches and ominous intestinal growls, I curse myself for obliterating the good feeling in my body that an earlier hour of tennis brought me. (This is a surprising and redeeming fact for golf skeptics like me: for all its golf-centrism, Sand Valley also has 16 tennis courts and a dedicated facility for court tennis — also known as real tennis — the niche racquet sport from which modern tennis evolved.) Stepping onto the court that morning, I did not expect to feel good in my body. A new medicine regimen, or general indolence, or both, has caused me to gain a not-insignificant amount of weight; the added chunk has compromised my spinal alignment, resulting in an achy lower back. Plus, long-dormant tendinitis in my Achilles was reignited during a casual hitting session I undertook in preparation for this trip. 

But my hour on Sand Valley’s courts with their amiable pro, Jack, returned me to an ease and confidence of form I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back. It is important to note that Sand Valley’s courts are made of grass — a blend of rye and fescue, cut to a precise six-millimeter height — which is a surface I’ve never played on, and which, I was pleased to find, went easy on my ailing frame. Balls typically bounce lower, faster and less predictably on grass, but Sand Valley does its best to mitigate the surface’s challenges through regular, painstaking landscaping, to ensure a divot-less experience. We also use special balls designed by Diadem, which are white, for greater color contrast and visibility; fuzzier, better to wick away residual dewy moisture; and contain a noticeably denser rubber core, which creates a lively, springy feel off the ground. Trading forehands with Jack, staying lower than I would on a clay or hard court, pretty soon I’ve adjusted to the pace and variability of the bounces, and I’m actually enjoying this opportunity to experience tennis — this sport I’ve spent my life playing, think I know intimately and completely — in grass’s slick and quick and elegant expression. 

There’s a point about halfway through our session where Jack and I slice crosscourt backhands back and forth with almost choreographed rhythm. He spreads his arms like wings and strikes; I skim the ball off the green and loop it over, competently if half as gracefully; and our dance continues almost by rote, ball after ball after ball, until an errant bounce jams me up, and my return flies long. I’m the kind of maniac to shout profanities when I make an understandable error in casual play, especially one that spoils an otherwise perfect rally, but out here with Jack, I just laugh — wasn’t that fun. Even more strangely, my Achilles doesn’t hurt. Typically it’s easier for me to lament pain than rejoice in its absence, but right now I can sprint, shuffle, bend and burst without issue. I thank the grass for its soft, cushioned respite, and whatever universal forces accelerate bodily healing.

When I jog to the bench behind me for a squirt of water, a stooped older man on the adjacent court tells me I look good out there. I haven’t noticed him until now. He is tanned and long-limbed, with an angular face and big, sensitive eyes that recall my late dad, a grass court enthusiast who took my mom to Wimbledon for their honeymoon. I thank this man with feeling, and he turns away. Backlit by the white sunlight, rooted in the green beneath our feet, he takes on a ghostly, Edenic aspect as he gets back in flow with his partner, who’s of a similar vintage. Their strokes are gingerly but assured, in the way of faded talents. 

I hop off the bench and ask Jack if we can play out service points. We’re not keeping score, and I’m affecting this nonchalant attitude where I’m just the hapless student trying to get one over on the infallible pro, but secretly I’m burning with a primal competitive spirit. I want to beat Jack, and I want this apparition next to me to watch me do it. But whenever I think I sense his eyes on me, I turn and find him serenely absorbed in his own game. 

What on Earth Is Real Tennis?

In 2024, Sand Valley unveiled its real tennis court, marking only the 13th in the U.S. and 50th worldwide. Its addition to the resort appears to be less about practicality (something like 10,000 people play the sport globally) and more about aesthetics and ambition. After all, it is pretty swag to say you’re one of only 50 places on earth keeping an ancient human activity alive. Played indoors, real tennis is governed by arcane rules I only came close to grasping in my third hour of practicing. It is like most other racquet sports in that there is a net you want to avoid; and like racquetball and squash, the walls are in play; but similarities with its descendants largely end there. Designed to evoke the feel of a medieval European street with shopfronts, awnings and doorways, the court is asymmetrical, multi-tiered and bordered on three sides by a sloping wooden roof called “the penthouse,” which plays a central role in the service ritual. Along the walls are netted galleries that, like the penthouse, are more than decorative — they’re live targets, awarding an instant point if the ball is struck directly into certain ones. 

The court is divided into two halves: the service side, where every point begins, and the hazard side, where the serve is returned. To be valid, a serve must strike the side wall of the hazard-side penthouse before bouncing into play; miss the penthouse, and you’ve lost a fault. On the hazard side, a lined rectangle near the back wall defines a zone where the rules of modern tennis apply: if the ball’s second bounce lands there, the receiver loses the point outright. Everywhere else, on both sides of the court, a second bounce doesn’t automatically decide a point. Instead, play stops and the exact spot of the second bounce — indicated on the floor by a grid of hash marks, some numbered, some, confusingly, lettered — is recorded as a “chase.” Chases are replayed later, after a change of ends, which occurs either when two chases have been set in a single game, or when one chase has been set and one player has reached game point (the scoring system is identical to that of modern tennis). In that replay, the player who conceded the chase — that is, the one who failed to reach the ball before it bounced twice — must now hit a shot that forces a second bounce on their opponent’s side deeper than where that original chase was marked. 

The court’s maze of lines, nets, markings and jutting buttresses can bewilder a novice, who’s already disadvantaged by the game’s unwieldy instruments. Thin wooden racquets with narrow, off-center, oblong heads make perfect contact nearly impossible; and the lumpy, hand-sewn, felt-covered balls skid wildly across the court’s painted concrete floors. For the uninitiated, real tennis often feels like an exercise in futile experimentation and soul-shrinking humiliation. But in those rare moments where physical ability and strategic awareness come together — when you meet a ball cleanly in mid-air and drive it into the service side’s “dedans,” its largest netted gallery; or carve a serve against the side penthouse so that it dies in an airless corner of the hazard — the emotional payoff more than makes up for all the frustration. 

As my court time wears on and I feel myself becoming more secure with the game’s dimensions, a wistfulness comes over me. I recognize that when I return to New York — home to only one real tennis facility, at Manhattan’s impenetrably exclusive Racquet and Tennis Club — I won’t have the chance to play this maddening sport again. When I walked off Sand Valley’s tennis courts a similar grief took hold. Not because I can’t find a court in New York, but because I don’t know when I’ll next get to play on grass, let alone at a facility where groundskeepers tend to its moisture, texture and length with the care of Florentine landscape architects. I suspect that as their vacations wind down, visiting golfers feel a similar melancholy measuring the wild beauty of Sand Valley against whatever tamer courses await them back home.

What Can Sand Valley Do for You?

This, I gather, is the point of Sand Valley: to offer an athletic program so rarefied it sets the resort apart from other high-end destinations, where the draw typically lies in some combination of scenery, design, cuisine and general luxuriousness — areas in which Sand Valley doesn’t really compare. Architecturally, its timber-rich exteriors and interiors are more functional than distinctive. The food tends toward the over-salted. If you want to swim, you can walk yourself to one of a few barren man-made lakes, one of which posts a sign warning guests to enter at their own risk. And its rural central Wisconsin setting, while blessed with an otherworldly blend of sun-baked sand dunes and dense, lush greenery, isn’t exactly socially vibrant. 

Some of these deficits are inherent to the place; others are not. There are plans to build a “beach club” on the grounds’ north end, and in the next couple years the resort expects to add new retail posts, more food trucks and an amphitheater pavilion for visiting entertainers. What difference will these enhancements make to golfers for whom names like “Tom Doak” and “David McLay Kidd” and “Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw” carry real weight? To tennis players itching for an ersatz Wimbledon experience? Or to racquet-sport diehards curious to try their hand at real tennis?  

My guess is: very little. Sand Valley is a fantastic place to be a guy playing sports with your boys, and its supplementary amenities exist mainly to help that guy relax and indulge after a long day of sports with his boys. Hence the putting green, all the Adirondack chairs, the Buffalo cheese curds, the barbecue, the booze. But let’s say it’s a (God forbid) tornado watch day; or you’re a non-athlete dragged to Wisconsin by your dad or boyfriend or brother; or you’re a stooped older man who unwittingly evokes the frailty and kindness of a visiting writer’s dead father, and who, at your advanced age, can’t sustain more than 60 minutes of intensive physical activity a day. What, then, can Sand Valley do for you? 

Again, probably very little. But even if these proposed embellishments fall flat, the resort will survive, even thrive, and it deserves to. The golf will always be great. The grass tennis and real tennis, too. The Walking Taco! To refresh your memory, that’s pulled pork, crema, queso and pico de gallo heaped atop a bed of Fritos Scoops! 

And not to mention, everyone who works at Sand Valley is super nice. Kate got a massage from a woman who apparently asked a lot of thoughtful questions about her life. Kate and I do this thing where the more equanimous person in a stressful situation offers to relieve the psychic burden of the anxious person by metaphorically taking “the backpack” off their shoulders. The we’re-gonna-die backpack I offloaded onto her during the tornado episode was especially weighty, and this masseuse really helped her recover from the strain. 

The strain! That’s the thing about confronting mortality: as relieved as I felt when my tornado fears were put to rest, what lingered was the memory of how scared I was to die — how expendable I felt in the indifferent grip of nature. That sense of smallness, powerlessness, is probably proportionate to the size of my dot on the great radar, but that doesn’t make its cruelty any easier to accept. While I’m here I want to feel strong. I want to dominate the elements. I want to feel how I felt playing tennis on Sand Valley’s perfect rectangle of unnaturally nourished grass: effective, embodied and invincible.