MARCH/APRIL 2005
Troy Burne GC Comes of Age
By Jerry Poling

If Wisconsin golfers were asked to name the top daily fee courses in the state, some familiar names likely would jump to the top of their lists: Whistling Straits, Blackwolf Run, University Ridge, Brown Deer Park, The Bog, Grand Geneva, SentryWorld.

If the lists stopped there, however, at least one deserving course would be missing – Troy Burne GC near Hudson.

If Troy Burne doesn’t immediately come to mind when people think golf in Wisconsin, it’s because of where the course is, not what it is, according to some of the state’s top players, who have been there and rave about the design and condition of this relative newcomer to the state golfing scene.

Located a tee shot from Wisconsin’s west-central border, Troy Burne is hours from Wisconsin’s biggest cities and hotbeds of golfing activity. In fact, Troy Burne is so far removed from state golfing circles that some people don’t even think of it as a Wisconsin course. “It’s more of a Minneapolis course,” said Mark Bemowski, Wisconsin’s top men’s amateur and senior amateur player in 2004. Indeed, last year, when the Nationwide Tour came to Troy Burne for the first time, the tour’s Web site erroneously listed Troy Burne as a Minneapolis course.

Troy Burne of Wisconsin does have a strong Minnesota lineage. Much of Troy Burne’s business – up to 90 percent – comes from Minnesota. Troy Burne was built by a Minnesotan, Glenn Rehbein of Blaine, Minn. Tom Lehman, the PGA Tour player and 2006 U.S. Ryder Cup captain who helped design Troy Burne, is a Minnesota native. The course’s new head pro, Dave Tentis, long has been one of the top club pros and players in Minnesota.

Whether it belongs to Wisconsin or Minnesota – just for the record it is a member of the Wisconsin State Golf Association – Troy Burne has become a favorite among Twin Cities and western Wisconsin golfers since opening in 1999. With the Nationwide Tour returning July 11-17 for the Scholarship America Showdown (to be televised again on the Golf Channel), Troy Burne finally might start getting respect throughout the state – the state of Wisconsin that is.

If only it weren’t so far away.

“I wish I could get up there more often to play,” said Jim Schuman, University of Wisconsin men’s golf coach and two-time Wisconsin State Open champion. “I think it’s outstanding.”

“I love it,” said Bill Linneman of Milwaukee, director of rules and competition for the Wisconsin State Golf Association. “The only bad thing I can say about it is it’s five hours from Milwaukee.”

With a course rating of 74.3, Troy Burne is one of the 10 toughest layouts in Wisconsin. Its solid slope rating of 136, while not in the top 10 but still among the highest in the state, is deceiving because the course isn’t heavily forested, Linneman said.

In its first true championship test, the 7,003-yard links course held its own against Nationwide Tour players last July. Kevin Stadler won in a playoff after he and two other players tied at 15 under par. Out of 30 Nationwide tournaments in 2004, Troy Burne ranked as the ninth-toughest course. Players averaged 70.73 per round on the par-70 layout.

Par at Troy Burne normally is 71, but the 483-yard 12th hole was changed from a par-5 to a par-4 for the tournament. The 12th wound up yielding only 19 birdies and ranked as the fifth-toughest hole on the tour last year, according to John Bush III, PGA Tour Media official.

“I know the players were very impressed with the course. They enjoyed it,” Bush said.

Nationwide players also ranked Troy Burne the third-best conditioned course on their tour, Tentis said.

The pros apparently like it, and so do two of Wisconsin’s top amateurs. Bemowski and Bob Gregorski both say Troy Burne is among Wisconsin’s best courses and best-kept secrets. As veteran competitors in WSGA tournaments, they have seen the best the state has to offer.

“It’s one of my favorites (in Wisconsin),” said Gregorski, who plays at North Shore GC in Menasha. “I’d certainly put it in my top five in Wisconsin.”

“It’s a very, very good public golf course,” said Bemowski, who lives in Mukwonago and plays at Johnson Park in Racine. “It ranks right up there with anything I’ve played.”

Bemowski and Gregorski were introduced to Troy Burne during the annual Troy Burne Cup, a Ryder Cup-style match between Wisconsin’s and Minnesota’s best club pros and amateurs. That event began in 1999 when Wisconsin PGA Tour pro Steve Stricker defeated Lehman in a ceremonial match to christen the course.

State players look forward to the event because of the good competition, great hospitality and the course, Gregorski said. “They treat us like kings,” Gregorski said of the Troy Burne owners, who started the event as a way to promote the course’s dual-state attraction.

Gregorski said amateurs are used to playing for nothing, but even the state’s marquee club pros, such as Schuman, Ed Terasa and Dave Spengler, return to play in the Troy Burne Cup when they’re picked. “They wouldn’t keep going up there if it wasn’t such a fine course,” Gregorski said.

What makes Troy Burne such a good course? Bemowski says it’s long and tough but fun to play. “Not every course is long and tough but fun,” he said.

With about 120 sand bunkers, water on eight holes and an open design that puts the course at the whim of the wind, Troy Burne is a championship test from the back tees. However, it is very playable for average golfers, as well. Many holes play downhill. There are generous target landing areas and a mix of long and short risk-reward holes. Aesthetically, with its water, prairie grasses and rural setting, it’s a knockout. Troy Burne Village is a housing development on the grounds, but most homes sit well back from the fairways, maintaining the course’s rural feel.

Lehman, 46, the former University of Minnesota All-American golfer, has helped design courses in six states, including Minnesota and Arizona, where he now makes his home. He became involved in Troy Burne shortly after winning the 1996 British Open. The back tees at Troy Burne are called the Lehman tees; a Lehman room in the clubhouse features some of the golfer’s memorabilia, including the golf bag he used when he won the 1996 British Open.

Troy Burne’s principal designers were Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, but Lehman was on hand often during construction, especially when it came to shaping the bunkers. “Hurdzan and Fry have designed some awesome courses throughout the nation, and this certainly is one of their better ones,” Linneman said, citing the back nine and the bunkering as “spectacular.”

While the front nine has water on just one hole and meanders through what was once St. Croix County farmland, the back nine dips into a hollow. A pond, waterfall and creek – or burn, to use the Scottish term – come into play on a string of memorable holes that include 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 17.

The 464-yard 14th hole has been called one of the state’s best par-4s. It has water down the left side of the hole, trees right and a small waterfall rushing past the elevated green. Lehman, in losing the match against Stricker, was one of the first victims of the waterfall.

The back nine has three par-3s, including the 144-yard 15th with a 7-foot-high stacked sod pot bunker, reminiscent of holes at some British Open venues. The 176-yard 11th is downhill along the creek to a green that is “only seven or eight paces wide,” Gregorski said.

Tentis was named pro at Troy Burne in January. He had always admired the course and its conditioning. “It’s like something you’d experience on (the PGA) Tour,” said Tentis, citing fairways that are regularly cut tight and greens that typically run at 11 on the Stimpmeter, close to U.S. Open standards. “Usually you can only find conditions like that on private courses,” Tentis said.

Tentis, a native of White Bear Lake, Minn., near St. Paul, has had a long and successful playing career, including playing in the Nationwide event at Troy Burne in 2004. He made the field by shooting 69 in local PGA section qualifying. In the 72-hole tournament, he made the cut, shot 281 (1 over) and tied for 46th, winning $1,739.

Tentis played the PGA Tour in 1989, although his season and eventually his pro career were cut short by a shoulder injury. He won the 2002 Minnesota State Open and has played in the last three PGA championships. He also made the cut at the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine in Chaska, Minn. Tentis played collegiately at the University of Houston, played in the Walker Cup and roomed with future PGA Tour player Steve Elkington.

Although Troy Burne has not yet held any major Wisconsin tournaments, such as the State Open or State Amateur, “we definitely would be open to hosting one of those events,” Tentis said. “We’re kind of the forgotten course over here.”

Troy Burne has become one of Wisconsin’s best. Tentis said he would match it up against Minnesota’s best daily fee designs as well. At Troy Burne, which rides the fence between both states, that’s just par for the course.

Jerry Poling, a frequent contributor to Wisconsin Golfer, also wrote about Troy Burne in Wisconsin Golf Getaways (Trails Media, 2001), a guide to the best public golf courses in Wisconsin that he co-authored with Jeff Mayers of Madison.