Foreword:

This article was originally published in Grass Roots Magazine, which is the official publication of The Wisconsin Golf Course Superintendents Association.

A PDF of the full April/May/June 2024 edition, including my article on TPC Wisconsin, can be viewed or downloaded at the end of this post.

TPC Wisconsin: Eric Leonard’s Crash Course in Course Renovations

Even among the many picturesque landscapes of the Madison area, TPC Wisconsin’s is unique. Nestled amid the Cherokee Marsh Conservation Park and just south of the Yahara River, the former Cherokee Country Club’s land is more reminiscent of South Carolina, Georgia or Alabama than Wisconsin.

Beautiful waterways now dissect the playing surfaces and long views across the property and its clean lines provide a high-end look and feel. Large, well-contoured greens complexes beckon for play while run-offs and newly reshaped, flashed white bunkers hint at a heightened level of challenge to what was already a dramatic golf course. The property looks magnificent and is sure to show well on national television when it begins hosting the American Family Insurance Championship in June 2025.

Just three years ago, Course Superintendent Eric Leonard started a major renovation project – the first of his career. In January 2022 the 17-year superintendent veteran was thrown into the proverbial deep end: a $20 million overhaul of his course’s layout, systems and natural environment. This was no typical update but a redevelopment whose results have elevated TPC Wisconsin from a mid-tier private club to a premiere site poised to host top-level tournaments.

The transformation reflects a blend of strategic foresight, environmental stewardship and cross-functional teamwork, setting a new standard in golf course innovation across the Wisconsin golf community and adding a unique style of golf to its upper echelon of world-class courses.

Leonard joined Cherokee Country Club in 2006, assuming the role of Superintendent a year later. With an educational foundation in horticulture focused on turfgrass management from Kishwaukee College and practical experience from his previous tenure at Hawk’s Landing in Verona, his skill set has grown as he’s dealt with persistent issues caring for a transitional property. During no time, though, has his professional acumen grown more rapidly than during the past several years while helping a world-class project team execute on their sweeping renovation project.

Originally opened in 1962 and designed by David Gill (who also designed the back nine at West Bend Country Club, North Shore in Mequon and Meadowbrook in Racine among others), the golf course at Cherokee was always known for its solid and challenging layout, fast greens and quality private club conditions. The years had taken their toll on its terrain, though, and Leonard and his team had been embattled in fights against non-native species like reed canary grass and phragmites, cattails and chinese wisteria.

Like many Wisconsin golf properties, its layout was never intended to be tree-lined, yet it had experienced tremendous grow-in over the decades. Large willows and dying ash specimens encroached on playing corridors leading to target golf, shade, roots and challenging turf conditions. The course faced problems with waterlogging, too, due to its proximity to the water table and a peaty, fluctuating soil composition. Furthermore, a lack of air movement caused by the trees and excessive water led to bad turf pressure and troubling microenvironments across the property.

Considering its breadth and severity of foundational issues, a simple renovation at Cherokee Country Club would probably not have led to a long-lived, successful outcome. Owner and Wisconsin Golf Hall of Fame member Dennis Tiziani recognized that. Along with his son-in-law, Steve Stricker, the team opened lines of communication with PGA Tour Design Services and the TPC Network to transform this challenging marshland course into a vaulted tournament venue.

Stephen Wenzloff, SVP of PGA Tour Design, worked hand-in-hand with Stricker and Tiziani to radically update the course and improve its functionality at the newly rebranded TPC Wisconsin. A lot was needed for Eric Leonard and his team to successfully manage it, and Wenzloff knew it. “I started out right away going around with Steve (Wenzloff) and talking about ‘How can you maintain this area?’ We tried to prepare the staff and how we would care for the new course,” said Leonard.

“My staff and the amount of time we’ll have to maintain it all goes into the design. That was a great part about Steve – he was very conscientious about how we’d treat the area, how the mowers would turn on it and so on, and we tried to carry that through the whole course.”

Hiring high-quality project partners was integral to the project’s success, as well, and Tiziani hired great ones in local civil contractor RG Huston for 80 percent of the dirt work, Wadsworth Golf Construction for the fine-tuning and building of greens, bunkers and tees, and Leibold Irrigation for its new state-of-the-art irrigation system.

With the majority of work being outsourced, one of the toughest initial tasks for Leonard was laying off his current staff and working with area courses to find new homes for their talents.

“We hired the right professionals to get the job done instead of doing everything in-house. I worked with other course’s teams across the area to place my people. Josh Lepine at Maple Bluff was nice enough to hire some of my staff for three-quarters of a season while we were under construction and then let them come back when I needed them,” said Leonard.

“Wadsworth worked on two holes per week starting in August 2022, so we didn’t have to ramp up staff quickly afterwards because we were doing incrementally more in a phased approach. It was a lot easier to work on six to eight holes than an entire course,” Leonard said. “I got some good help from guys like Neil Radatz at Hawk’s Landing to help with the grow-in, too. He and others who have been through multiple new builds and renovations were great resources.”

It wasn’t just in their work that hiring top-end project partners proved to be valuable, but in the commitment they showed to TPC Wisconsin as a client. “Wadsworth had a really great head foreman, Pedro Carillo, and several months into the project, while driving home to Illinois, he and his son, Angel, were involved in a pretty bad car accident. Thankfully, they are both ok now and have returned to work, but he was out of commission for about six months. In the interim, Matt Lohmann stepped right in to continue the project for half a year. It says a lot about the company that they’d send one of their top guys to handle our project and make sure things were done right.”

In lieu of hiring a Construction Superintendent from TPC or Wadsworth, Eric was charged with overseeing the construction process and was surprised at how less stressful it was than he’d expected. “In the end, we hired very quality companies so my job was to oversee it all and ensure everything was going accordingly, but not to be overbearing on the project. ‘Here’s the plan, now let’s make it happen.’”

Cherokee’s issues were never about design, but about the substructure it was built on. To combat those issues, 600-650 total trees were removed, all waterways (30 acres of wetlands) were dredged or dug deep to improve water quality and aquatic wildlife, the entire property was lifted two to four feet, and a 12” sand cap was installed all the way around the property to help with drainage and provide a more stable surface to manicure. Leibold installed a Toro Lynx 2-Wire irrigation system, HDPE piping and a Watertronics pump station. “We went from 350 irrigation heads to 1,350,” Leonard said.

“The layout was already really good,” Leonard said, “and had especially solid par threes. We tweaked everything, shifting greens left or right and lifting it to create more structure and flow. The layout hasn’t changed much so we built on what we had, created better bunkering, better greens complexes and drainage capabilities while accentuating the natural environment versus letting it hide behind overgrowth.”

“The number one most important thing to me when caring for a golf course is playability,” Leonard continued. “Drainage is more important to me than anything else because I dealt with so much flooding. We also put in a wall-to-wall irrigation system, so the two go hand-in-hand. The ability of the property to drain and then my ability to water every piece of it is, to me, the best case scenario that puts playability at the forefront. I always want this course to be as close to firm tournament conditions as we can get it.”

In addition to developing a course for peak operations, there was a dichotomy to the design process that it should be both enjoyable for club members while presenting a world-class challenge for Champions Tour professionals.

“The process began with Wenzloff putting together an overall design and then sitting down with Tiziani and Stricker,” said Leonard. “They went over the bunker locations, bunker designs, greens complexes and tee angles. It was very interesting to watch the chess match of Stricker explaining how he attacks a golf course and then how the architect (Wenzloff) designed it to combat his approach.”

To help with this, a fifth set of tees were added to cater to a greater variety of handicaps. The course’s overall yardage, meanwhile, remained remarkably similar to its previous total. In fact, it now plays 40 yards shorter.

The actual layout was only altered slightly with the 10th, 15th and first holes changing locations. The first is now the old tenth but shifted over. The old 15th is now played backwards as the 10th hole and was converted to a 472-yard par four, and the new 15th is the former first hole played opposite. These “slight” changes led to a reduction of par from 72 to 71.

One of the other most significant changes made was on the 16th, which was moved up at the recommendation of co-designer Steve Stricker, who the team began calling “Steve Ross” because of his affinity for Donald Ross’s golden age architecture.

Playing the roles of ambassador, host sponsor and 2023 champion of the AmFam Championship, Stricker was triple-invested in the redesign. The tournament is one of the most well-attended stops on the PGA Tour Champions schedule since its 2016 inception at University Ridge.

“Steve was very involved in the renovation, especially around the greens complexes,” Leonard told me. “That’s his staple, his chipping and putting, so he provided a lot of input around the greens. They are much more undulated now, and there are several with quite drastic differences. There aren’t two-tiered greens, but definitely transition slopes – they’re sneaky tricky like with tall back sections or elevated entrances.”

“Stricker plays right-to-left, always drawing the golf ball,” said Leonard. “We didn’t change the layout of the golf course much and the majority of holes out here were already left-to-right. When it came to 16, Steve wanted a drivable par four. So, we shrunk it down to 308 yards. It was originally left-to-right, and Steve showed up with the architect and said, ‘No, we need one hole out here that’s right-to-left.’ He’s now got his 305-yard par four that sets up nicely for a draw coming down the stretch.”

When I photographed the course in May 2024, two areas that shined were the greens and bunkers. The property’s greens have always been large in size, averaging between 7,500-9,500 square feet. They were “big, round pancakes” before, as Leonard called them. “Now, there aren’t two greens alike. There’s undulation in them now, but it’s more subtle which is trickier because you need to study them a bit to figure them out.”

While the bunkers were flat before, they now have great shape and are flashed slightly so to be seen. All tee boxes have been squared off with a clean, traditional aesthetic and all greens have been designed around tournament pin locations and proper slope to meet PGA Tournament standards. Tournament tees were made with v-drain and USGA greens mix. Viewing locations were created for grandstands and cart paths were made wider and stronger for tournament preparation. Signature 900 bunker sand from Ohio was installed for a glorious, bright white visual appearance. “Dennis Tiziani said from the beginning of the project that we were building a tournament golf course,” said Leonard, and the results prove it.

The transformation of TPC Wisconsin under Eric Leonard’s guidance encapsulates more than just a physical renovation. It represents a legacy of meticulous stewardship and a renewed commitment to the golf community. As the course stands ready to host the Champions Tour next spring Leonard says “the general feedback from players so far has been consistent that the course is tough, but fair. We like that response. We don’t want it to be unplayable but we wanted it to be a challenge. I believe the design was a great success.”

To me, the project stands as a testament to what can be achieved through collaboration, innovation and a deep respect for the game of golf, and I cannot wait to watch Stricker and many of the world’s other best players attack it next season.

Read The Grass Roots Summer issue with the PDF linked below: