A Wily Fox
The fox. If you’ve ever watched one you know they can be absolute tricksters. They're clever, cunning, and maybe even a little mischievous.
And that’s precisely why Rome, Wisconsin’s newest golf course, called Sedge Valley, embraced the wily fox as its mascot and logo.
Like the other four courses at Sand Valley, Sedge Valley capitalizes on the area’s sandy soil, native ground cover, and rolling dunes, but blends it with a belief that great golf holes can be built by bucking convention and using guile as its guide.
“Sedge Valley is unique,” says Sand Valley’s co-owner Michael Keiser, Jr.. “This is a golf course intended to engage your imagination and decision-making at the game’s most visceral levels.”
Indeed, Sedge Valley is beguiling. And unique. Different from any of the other regulation courses at the resort, and most courses throughout the game of golf, for that matter. The most obvious difference is on the scorecard, where the 18-hole yardage taps out at just over 5,800 yards (from the tips) with a very non-traditional par-68.
WIth a nod to the great heathland courses of London and the English coast, par and length were never really paramount. But rather, creating great golf holes where creativity and strategic play will be the difference between fortune and failure.
Unlike Sand Valley and Mammoth Dunes (the first two courses at the resort), sand blowouts and large waste areas do not bracket the fairways and dominate the landscape here. The greens are smaller, much smaller, requiring a little more forethought on approach. In fact, the biggest green at Sedge Valley is about the same size as the smallest green at Mammoth.
Bunkers are more sunken and strategically placed with less-than-manicured edges. Holes are more classically styled and the setting is more intimate - by nature and by design.
The “drivable” sixth hole, for example, is a 290-yard par-4 with a narrow green. It’s the kind of hole that the overconfident will be tempted to swing away with naive expectations. Sure it’s possible for the big and burly, but success is more likely to come from a more calculated approach that threads the gap between the deep bunkers that guard the equally deep green.
And if you liked that one, good news, there are one or two more drivable par-4 temptresses on the card, each as seductive as the last.
Sedge has eight par-4s under 400 yards, and four over 400. The toughest may be No. 3 (455 yards) with its spacious, but specious, fairway that plays hard to get with a hidden green and a blind shot off the tees. The only par-5 (No. 11) can play an imposing 542 yards. The only hole where length may be an advantage (unless, of course, you drove the green on those tantalizing par-4s). And to round out the card, Sedge once again deviates from the norm with five par-3s instead of the usual four.
Yes, Sedge Valley has only been open since July of last year, but it’s already getting more than its fair-share of kudos, because this mischievous little course is doing what great golf courses are supposed to do: make golfers think.
That’s right, if you come to Sand Valley to play Sedge, you’d better be prepared to be a little more clever, and a little more cunning than that wily ol’ fox, or else...
Both Sand Valley and the Sedge Valley course are located at 597 Leopold Way in Nekoosa, Wisconsin.
For more information on Sand Valley and all its offerings, visit sandvalley.com or call 888-398-8671. And stay tuned for more exciting and unconventional golf news coming Summer 2026.
Written by: Lydell Capritta
