Each of the five golf courses at Sand Valley is an outright winner, but the pleasures of the place aren’t limited to one sport. For tennis obsessives, the sprawling Wisconsin resort is aces too.
The Keisers may be the closest thing to American golf royalty, but their sporting roots are at least as deep in tennis. Chris and Michael Keiser, sons of Bandon Dunes founder and 2025 USGA Bob Jones Award winner Mike Keiser, grew up visiting their paternal grandparents in East Aurora, N.Y., near Buffalo, where there were always family tennis matches as well as golf outings and hikes — anything to enjoy the great outdoors while the weather was, briefly, good.
In 2017, just after the eponymous first course at Chris and Michael’s Sand Valley resort in Wisconsin opened, Mike Keiser looked over from the 9th green to the adjoining practice range with his boys. “Dad says, ‘Guys, that looks like a perfect lawn tennis court,’ ” recalls Chris, a former doubles specialist on his high school team. “ ‘Put up a net, leave some rackets and balls over there, and see what happens.’ ”
To avoid wear and tear, only eight or nine of the 15 potential courts are in use at any one time.
Brandon Carter/Courtesy Sand Valley
A Keiser business tenet is to test things before committing, so they cobbled together a court. It was a smash: Lots of golfers picking up the rackets, getting into it and being late to the 10th tee.
If you love the look of persimmon woods, court tennis rackets might be your thing.
Brandon Carter/Courtesy Sand Valley
Just as Bandon Dunes begat Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails and the rest, Sand Valley’s lone court morphed into a 15-court complex. (It’s worth noting that grass courts in the U.S., never mind publicly accessible ones, are as rare as hen’s teeth.) Still, golf remains the main draw here, and Sand Valley’s sixth and newest layout, the Commons, needed the real estate. This meant moving the courts near the Sedge Valley course and outside the recently unveiled tennis building — which itself houses America’s only public facility for the indoor racket sport called court tennis. (Venues for court tennis — there are only 12 such courts in the country — make hen’s teeth look like chicken eggs.)
Maintained by the Sand Valley course’s grounds crew, the grass courts are fescue with a bit of ryegrass to aid in recovery. They play firm and fast, just like the surrounding fairways and greens. During the summer, players can hire the junior caddies to switch gears and serve as ball boys and ball girls.
“Court tennis is a very, very niche sport with a tiny community,” Keiser says. “But even though that community is incredibly small globally, their passion is as high as it gets. And it’s an absolute blast trying to figure out the game’s angles — and the rules too.”
Brandon Carter/Courtesy Sand Valley
So, next up: Pickleball? Heck no.
“Strategically, we want to do things that others don’t or can’t,” says Chris Keiser. “We’re thinking maybe platform tennis.”
If you know, you know; if not, we’ll explain later.
