By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
The Club at Lac La Belle is located in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. One of the oldest clubs in Wisconsin – founded in 1896 – The Club at Lac La Belle has a storied history that starts with one of its founders, A. Montgomery Ward and is highlighted by its impressive list of golf professionals, including former U.S. Open champions, Alex Smith and Willie Anderson.
In 1899, Smith and a wealthy club member created the Oconomowoc Open, the country’s first “major” golf tournament not administered by a golf association. The format was so successful that it’s said that Bobby Jones designed the Masters Tournament with that blueprint in mind – just one of many legacies to be created at Lac La Belle in the coming century.
Owned by the Prestwick Golf Group and the Morse family since May of 2018, the Club at Lac La Belle is a semi-private facility that offers an 18-hole championship golf course that was rated the best new golf course in Wisconsin in 2021 by Golf Digest. It was also in 2018 that Craig Haltom and his design team were called upon to completely redesign the golf course.
“The Morse family knew that Haltom was influential in discovering Sand Valley for Mike Keiser,” says Clint Higgins, PGA of America Head Golf Professional, “So, they hired Craig to do the redesigns at The Club at Lac La Belle.
New land was acquired west of the golf course, where four new holes were created and a nine-hole Par 3 layout is currently in the works. In addition, 14 new holes were designed out of the original 18, meaning that virtually no blade of grass went untouched. “Some holes were abandoned in wet, low-lying areas, and others were rerouted,” Higgins adds. They redid green complexes, added bunkers, removed hundreds of trees, raised fairways as much as eight feet in some places and installed new drainage, pumps and French drains. The course reopened on June 20, 2020 after a couple of very wet years in the upper Midwest.
Prestwick Golf Group is a leader in golf course supplies, including bag racks and stands, podiums, scoreboards, storage boxes, F&B furnishings, range accessories, outdoor furniture, signages, recycling bins and much more. In fact, the Club at Lac La Belle is the showroom for Prestwick’s extensive line of products, welcoming golf course operators shopping for new furnishings and a new vision for their own facilities.
“Prestwick founder Matt Morse started with a recyclable plastic rope stake that replaced the old-fashioned wooden ones of the past,” says Higgins. “Once he saw success with this product in the mid-90s, he listened to people, did right by them and built his company. His dream was to redesign or own a golf course, which came to fruition in 2018.” The course was immediately closed and renovations began.
Matt sadly passed away of cancer in February of 2022, leaving the company to be run by his son Tyler, who is also the GM and Club President of the Club at Lac la Belle. A former scratch golfer and Westmoor Country Club club champion, Matt was just 65 years old.
“The Morse family will honor him and own this property forever,” Higgins adds.
Since 2022, an outdoor patio/bar was built near their practice facility that has music, TV, patio chairs and promotes a fun, social atmosphere that honors Matt’s legacy. Papa’s Porch, as it is called, pays homage to a visionary in golf, business and family.
The club’s practice range has 15 hitting stations that are both real grass and a synthetic strip that is used during inclement weather. A 15-hole putting course known as the Flatstick Putting Course is attached to the back of the 18th green. The punchbowl design has about 25 feet of elevation change from the end of the 18th green to the other side of the putting course. At 192 yards long, the club’s course maintenance team push-mows it, as it does every one of the facility’s green complexes. A smaller putting green was added closer to the first tee, near Papa’s Porch after the course reopened.
The club’s short game area, opened at the end of 2023, offers putting, chipping, pitching, bunker practice and allows a variety of shots to be hit going back as much as 40 yards. As mentioned, a Par 3 course is being built as we speak and will open in late 2025.
The Club at Lac La Belle is family-owned and operated and has been rebuilt based on a foundation created by patriarch Matt Morse. Whether serving its members or welcoming its many public golfers, the Lac La Belle team goes above and beyond with every customer interaction to create the environment that Matt had long envisioned for his golf course.
After growing up in Texas, playing college golf in New Mexico and working as a Head Golf Professional in Mexico, Clint Higgins has found a home in Wisconsin. In fact, he got a taste of the hospitality two decades ago when he interned at Whistling Straits, another family-owned facility. He’s implementing that Morse service philosophy into his every day, and the facility is thriving with a stellar future ahead of it built upon an amazing past.
