A development group plans to build a championship caliber private golf course, which they believe will be rated as one of the top 100 in the country, north of Ashippun in Dodge County. The site for the course, to be called Kettle Forge, is located at W1851 Creek Road in the Town of Ashippun, 8
A development group plans to build a championship caliber private golf course, which they believe will be rated as one of the top 100 in the country, north of Ashippun in Dodge County.
The site for the course, to be called Kettle Forge, is located at W1851 Creek Road in the Town of Ashippun, 8 miles west of the Erin Hills golf course (which hosted the 2017 U.S. Open and the 2025 U.S. Women's Open) and 12 miles north of Oconomowoc. The development group, Kettle Forge Golf LLC, recently purchased the 270-acre site for $3,375,000, according to state records.
Construction is expected to begin this fall and be complete for a fall of 2027 opening.
[caption id="attachment_618326" align="alignleft" width="300"] Brett Craig[/caption]
The Kettle Forge development group is led by Brett Craig, a Delafield resident and former president and chief operating officer of Pinellas Park, Florida-based Transitions Optical, a manufacturer of photochromic lenses. He is also the former president and CEO of two venture capital/private equity-backed vision care companies, Roanoke, Virgnia-based Pixel Optics and Alpharetta, Georgia-based QSpex.
“The vision (for Kettle Forge) is to build a championship-caliber golf course, potentially rated as a top 100 golf course in the U.S. and that could potentially even host a major (PGA) Tour event or a very strong Tour event,” Craig said. “Whether we host (a PGA Tour event) or not will be up to the board. But we will build it to the level we would have the option of doing that.
“It’s going to be very exclusive but comfortable and casual. We’re going to obviously enforce rules and regulation within the club, but the setting is a very beautiful farm setting, so we’re going to have a casual feel to it in terms of its culture.”
[caption id="attachment_600994" align="alignleft" width="300"] Bill Kubly[/caption]
In addition to Craig, the Kettle Forge development team also includes Bill Kubly, chairman of the board for Lincoln, Nebraska-based Landscapes Unlimited LLC, one of the nation’s largest golf course construction, development and management companies, and PGA Tour pro Steve Stricker, who has won 12 tournaments on the PGA Tour.
Landscapes Unlimited will be the project manager to build Kettle Forge. Landscapes Golf Management, a sister company of Landscapes Unlimited, will operate the club, oversee the grow-in of the course and handle membership sales and other planning functions.
The design team for Kettle Forge will be led by Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based Jackson Kahn Design. The design team also includes East Gull Lake, Minnesota-based Scott Hoffmann Golf, which provided the early routing for Kettle Forge, and Stricker, who will serve as a design consultant for Kettle Forge.
[caption id="attachment_600995" align="alignleft" width="300"] Steve Stricker[/caption]
“It will be designed with professional input, including Steve Stricker, and as well as other resources like the PGA Tour to ensure we can build to (championship) caliber,” Craig said.
Craig said Stricker brings a premium player’s view on how the course should be designed.
“He’ll add his perspective as a PGA player and coach on what’s appropriate to make this course the top caliber golf course we want to build,” Craig said.
Kubly and Stricker were previously working on a golf course development project calledTrinity Hillsin western Waukesha County with Bob Lang, the original developer of the Erin Hills in Washington County.
The Trinity Hills project was sidetracked when the landowner for the site targeted by Lang significantly increased the price he was seeking to sell the property, Lang said. In addition, Lang wanted to build a daily fee public course, while Kubly wanted to develop a private golf course, similar to other projects his company has developed.
“I wish them well,” Lang said of the Kettle Forge team. “I have no hard feelings.”
Craig said his group’s market analysis determined that Wisconsin is saturated with high end, championship caliber daily fee public golf courses including Erin Hills, Whistling Straits, Blackwolf Run, Sand Valley and SentryWorld. But the state lacks modern, high end championship caliber private golf courses, he said.
“Wisconsin is a top 10 state in the U.S. for destination golf courses, but those are all daily fee golf courses,” Craig said. “When you look at the private courses in the state of Wisconsin in terms of especially modernizing the golf experience in length and difficulty as well as all of the extra amenities brought to a Kohler-like level, they just don’t exist. The private courses in the state of Wisconsin, at least in this area, are older-designed golf courses that were for a golfer at that time, but they’re not modernized for the game today. This would be us building something like an Erin Hills or a Whistling Straits, but in a private sense.”
Amenities planned at Kettle Forge will include a clubhouse with a fine dining restaurant and a pub, a self-service high-end coffee and tea lounge, a spa, a cigar and bourbon lounge, a business lounge, men’s and women’s locker rooms, a golf pro shop, and cottages for members to stay on premise.
The plan is for Kettle Forge to have more than 200 members, Craig said. Single standard membership costs will range from $55,000 to $75,000. Annual dues will cost about $12,000. Craig said he expects 75 to 80 percent of the members to be local, living within 180 miles of Ashippun, and 15 to 20 percent to be national.
Memberships are now on sale and Craig said “it’s been very popular.”
Kettle Forge will be 7,600 yards from the tips, one of the longest courses in Wisconsin. Craig said the course will be a fair test for any golfer, as long as they choose the appropriate tees to play from.
“It’s going to be a very sophisticated, very difficult but yet fair golf course,” he said.
As for the site of the golf course, the Kettle Forge team wanted it to be located in between Milwaukee, Madison, the Fox Valley and Chicago, and within 40 to 60 miles of the Delafield/Oconomowoc area. Private clubs in that area have been in demand and have significant waiting lists, Craig said.
The land for Kettle Forge includes numerous features including mature oak and maple trees, rolling hills, kettles, a stream, ponds and a massive hill offering 20-mile panoramic views, Craig said.
“Kettle Forge will uniquely look like a natural preserve with grasses, wildflowers and wetlands,” Craig said. “It promises to be a course that attracts repeat play, fair to members yet exhilaratingly difficult for those who desire challenge amid rugged elegance and timeless appeal.”
[caption id="attachment_618307" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Aerial photo of the Kettle Forge site near Ashippun.[/caption]
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