Finally full

For most of his first 15 seasons as the superintendent at Hawk’s View Golf Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Damon Soderberg could approach the 18-hole Barn Hollow par-3 course as more than an afterthought but less than a top priority. “Before, it was just, ‘OK, when you finish your jobs on the big course, go do the little course,’” says Soderberg, a Wisconsin native and the son of a longtime superintendent. “Now, I’m pretty much forced to handle it as a standalone.”

The pandemic surge played a key part, of course. Before the world shut down starting in the spring of 2020, a big day at Barn Hollow might have counted 50 or 60 golfers. With the game still surging, the short course now averages about 120 golfers per day, with plenty of summer sellout days topping 170. But Barn Hollow is more than a benefactor of circumstance. It is a genuinely great course. Every hole feels different, and every hole feels as if it could have been plucked from a standard golf course — perhaps even Hawk’s View, which wraps around Barn Hollow like a horseshoe.

Designed by Todd Clark and Craig Schreiner, Barn Hollow sits on land used over the last century as a farm, then a concert venue, then Mount Fuji Ski Hill. New ownership opened all 36 holes in 2001 to immediate acclaim, if not booming play.

Clark had never designed an 18-hole par-3 course — and hasn’t designed one since — and approached the project with a list of questions. “How do you keep coming up with different ideas?” he says. “How do you get variety? How do you get it to route? How do you make it exciting so you want to keep coming back and playing it?”

Clark and Schreiner — who also designed Hawk’s View — plotted numerous routings to maximize the location, “because it is a unique piece of property,” Clark says. “Everything’s on a hillside that slopes down to the river bottom down below. When you come in off the main street, you dip down into a valley, and then you have a steep hill where the driving range is now. We had to come up with some creative routings on how to navigate that hillside.”

The course has maintained its shape through almost a quarter of a century and is finally attracting the round count it deserves.

Much of the recent success is owed to Soderberg, now in his 18th season, and general manager Matt Boesch, who started at the club as an intern and is in his 20th season. They have worked together to build up both Hawk’s View and Barn Hollow in a state rich with great courses. They have also worked together long enough to build off each other’s sentences.

“I haven’t heard of too many rounds under par on Barn Hollow in my 20 years here,” Boesch says.

“It’s harder to score on a par-3 course!” Soderberg adds.

“100 percent,” Boesch says.

“Honestly,” Soderberg says, “you miss the green, you gotta get up and down. You got no room to scramble, at all.”

“There’s no par 5s where you can take advantage of length, there’s no par 4s,” Boesch says. “The holes range from 126 (yards) to 202 and, on average, you’re hitting a 150-yard shot on every green. And the green complexes are not easy. There are some fun ones out there.”

The increased interest has altered how Soderberg and his team approaches maintenance on both courses. Soderberg normally counts 17 or 18 on his crew — including an equipment manager, a foreman, a flower specialist and himself — and now has to start two or three on Barn Hollow to stay ahead of play. “We’re just getting too busy,” he says. “Come 9 o’clock, there’s no room out there.”

Soderberg is still able to schedule some jobs a little later. “Or,” he says, “we just change how we do things. For instance, when we mechanically rake bunkers, I send two off on No. 1 of the big course, but after nine holes, one of them has to get to the par-3 course, otherwise they’re going to end up running into golfers, and the other one continues on the big course.”

He manages the layouts not like two different courses but like 27 holes. “It’s just slightly different as far as how it gets used as opposed to a 27-hole facility,” he says. “It’s still just grass.”

Appropriate words for a man raised around and often on golf courses. Soderberg’s father, Jack, recently retired after decades as the superintendent at Western Lakes Golf Club in Pewaukee — about 20 miles west of Milwaukee and 40 miles north of Hawk’s View and Barn Hollow. “He initially tried to talk me out of it, as any good superintendent should,” Soderberg says. “Once he realized that I had the drive, he was supportive and helped me choose Michigan State despite being a (University of Wisconsin) grad.”

Boesch arrived with less of an agronomic pedigree. Born in Washington and relocated to western Michigan as a teenager, he learned the game from his grandfather, an Iowa native who reared him on some of that state’s numerous 9-holers. Two decades in at Hawk’s View, he sees himself sticking around for the rest of his career.

“Barn is in a really good spot,” he says. “We’ve had this conversation dozens of times: Could we jack up the rates? 100 percent. We choose not to. We want to keep this an affordable, family-friendly, community-based place to have some entertainment.”

“The par-3 course is almost a public service,” Soderberg says. “Sure, we want to maximize money, but we also don’t want to price out that family being able to come out and introduce their kids to the game of golf.”

“When you have Grandma and Grandpa coming out with the grandkids, that’s just so much fun to watch,” Boesch says. “We want to keep that.”

Boesch says the course recently celebrated a 9-year-old girl who recorded her first ace while playing Barn Hollow. Soderberg adds that he noticed a mother playing with her 7-year-old son. Not the kind of moments common on longer golf courses, but almost routine at Barn Hollow the last four summers.

“We’ve seen this facility grow,” Boesch says. “It’s really satisfying.”

“Grow and mature,” Soderberg says. “Seeing the turf mature, but also the business. Living through some of the leaner years, seeing how we had to do things to get by — cut corners, pinch pennies — to where we’re at now.”

“We were a hidden gem for a long time,” Boesch adds. “Now we’re just a gem.”

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry's managing editor.