{"id":38157,"date":"2026-07-17T09:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T09:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/38157\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T09:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T09:28:19","slug":"antigos-bass-lake-gc-once-home-to-packers-greats-like-bart-starr-gets-set-to-celebrate-100-years-of-memories-friendships-and-traditions-courses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/38157\/","title":{"rendered":"Antigo’s Bass Lake GC, once home to Packers greats like Bart Starr, gets set to celebrate 100 years of memories, friendships and traditions | Courses"},"content":{"rendered":"

As good as the golf has been for most of the first 100 years at Bass Lake Golf Club<\/a> in Deerbrook, near Antigo, the unforgettable stories that have originated there might be even better.<\/p>\n

For Pete VandeHei, they go back to the earliest of his many days spent at the course.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when we were kids the only time we could golf was on Mondays,\u201d the 88-year-old retired doctor and life-long Bass Lake member recalled last week. \u201cWe used to play 72 holes a day \u2013 36 in the morning and 36 in the afternoon. If you didn\u2019t par the first hole, you went back and started over. We knew every nick and cranny on the course back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if they had to go back to the first tee, it didn\u2019t keep VanderHei and his pals from coming back to Bass Lake again and again. They found a passion for the game, a friendship with one another and, most importantly, a deep love for a club that has now provided a century of golden memories not only to those who grew up in the area, but to those who found the hidden gem.<\/p>\n

Bass Lake CC, opened in 1926 as a nine-hole course carved out of 110 acres of land owned by the Langlade Lumber Company, will celebrate its 100-year anniversary Saturday evening with a program to include live music, cold drinks and many, many more memories. A Facebook post for the event said the celebration would recognize a special place, located 15 miles due north of the Culvers in Antigo, where \u201cmemories are made, friendships are built and traditions live on.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those traditions is the unique blend of golfers who find their way to Bass Lake. Many are lifelong members \u2013 or their children and grandchildren, who have turned this into a legacy club \u2013 while others are golfers who happened upon the course and are drawn back year after year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting what this place does and how it gets you,\u201d Nick Bretl, 51, a Wausau-area dentist who grew up playing Bass Lake and now serves on Bass Lake\u2019s board of directors, said during the Talking.Golf podcast recorded for this story. \u201cI remember I was about 10 years old, playing up here with my dad and I saw two cars in the parking lot that had Florida plates. And I\u2019m from Antigo. My dad was a member. He joined in 1962. I looked at him and said \u2018What\u2019s this all about? How can there be Florida cars here?\u2019 He kind of explained how you have to go to Florida for the good weather in the winter and you come up here for the good weather in the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forty years later, Bretl \u2013 now a Tampa, Fla., snowbird \u2013 counts himself among many Bass Lake members who scatter as far away as Arizona, California and Florida during the winter. But they return home to Bass Lake during the summer when the days are long and the course is perfect.<\/p>\n


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Once upon a time, Bass Lake was a little Starr-struck<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always been like that at Bass Lake, which had some \u201cGlory Years\u201d of its own.<\/p>\n

A group of longtime members recalled them with a mix of pride and fondness last week as they gathered around the telephone during an interview for this story. Specifically, they remembered Bass Lake\u2019s place during the same era for high-profile members of the Green Bay Packers dynasty.<\/p>\n

Legendary quarterback Bart Starr had a cottage on Bass Lake. Fuzzy Thurston,who played left guard in front of Starr, had a place on Upper Clear Lake. Wide receiver Max McGee vacationed in the area. Of course, their presence attacted other Packers greats to tee it up at Bass Lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to work for (golf professional) Bill Martine,\u201d said Tom Conrad, a many-time club champion at Bass Lake who enjoyed a 33-year career as the boys golf coach at D.C. Everest (Schofield). \u201cOne of my jobs was to clean the bottle chute \u2026 and take them to the dump down the road. That\u2019s when I got to know Bill. Before long, I was playing in all of his tournaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuzzy Thurston, I got to know him quite well. Max McGee. It was a great memory for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even today, celebrity sightings during that era are the stuff of Bass Lake legend.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Future Antigo eye doctor) Rick Gjome caddied for (Packers coach) Vince Lombardi,\u201d said longtime member Sarah Lange, who lived across from Starr.<\/p>\n

VanderHei added: \u201cBing Crosby was up here quite a bit. Guys would caddy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

For golf history buffs, however, nothing could top the story of an early visitor to the course \u2013 a seven-time major champion who happened to be a good friend of Louis Jedlika, the first golf professional at Bass Lake who is also credited with designing the front nine in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came from Chicago in 1926 to, essentially, build the course,\u201d longtime Bass Lake member Don Winter said in a video interview with Lange for the celebration. \u201cHe was good friends with a guy by the name of Gene Sarazen, who was one of the best golfers at that time in the country. In the 1920s and 1930s. Gene Sarazen actually played up here a few times with Louie.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hundred years later, the golf course remains the star of the show<\/p>\n

Celebrities have come and gone. Many members, too. But the golf course endures.<\/p>\n

The nine holes Jedicka designed enjoyed what would now be called a \u201csoft opening\u201d on July 4, 1925 ahead of its inaugural season in 1926. Before that, according to club history published during its 50th anniversary, the golf pro opened an indoor practice facility in the Masonic Temple downtown and local hardware stores in Antigo advertised having golf equipment for sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the Chicago & Northwestern railroad track that came all the way up to Elcho\/Summit Lake,\u201d Conrad said. \u201cThe course was right next to the railroad track back then. There were a lot of people from Milwaukee and southern Wisconsin who came up to eventually buy property up here. They all got off at the depot in Summit Lake. They came and bought property on Bass Lake and the golf course. If you see the history of the membership, that\u2019s how it got started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Offering golf, swimming at nearby Langlade Beach, boating, and fishing, what became known as Antigo Bass Lake Country Club drew golfers from all over and the interest in the club grew exponentially through the 1950s. In 1963, Bass Lake expanded to 18\u00a0holes thanks to the design work of Larry Packard, who did many courses in Wisconsin and the region during that era.<\/p>\n

The course underwent a $750,000 renovation in 2001 in conjunction with the club\u2019s 75th anniversary. Led by Michigan native Jerry Matthews, who had received regional acclaim for his work at TimberStone Golf Club in Iron Mountain, Mich., the changes were largely cosmetic \u2013 expanding greens, adding and relocating bunkers and creating the last of four sets of tees.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, that made it more enjoyable for a lot more people,\u201d said Dick Olk, 88, a retired attorney, a former club president and one of Bass Lake\u2019s oldest living members. \u201cIt\u2019s probably never going to have a state golf championship there, but it\u2019s a fun course.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Bretl, that the original nine remains largely as it looked when it opened speaks volumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of them had any experience in golf course architecture,\u201d Bretl said of Jedlicka and early club members who consulted on his plans for what today is Bass Lake\u2019s back nine. \u201cIt\u2019s an absolute gem, what they laid out. We\u2019ve done nothing but restore. There has really been minimal renovation to that side, maybe a bunker or two added here or there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat those guys had for a vision blows our mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

To many, the key to Bass Lake\u2019s future rests in its past<\/p>\n

As Bass Lake gets set to salute its past Saturday, the club is already looking to its future.<\/p>\n

Many clubs in areas the size of Antigo have struggled to retain members and offer course conditions that keep golfers coming back. By all accounts, Bass Lake has mastered both.<\/p>\n

Its members have always been invested in the course. In the early 2000s, they stepped up financially to retire the debt that came with the renovation and today, according to Lange, they continue to step up with sweat equity \u2013 performing tasks such as painting the interior and exterior of the clubhouse and tarping greens in the fall and taking them off in the spring.<\/p>\n

2026 ANTIGO BASS LAKE GC FEES<\/p>\n\n

Days<\/p>\n

Spring\/Fall<\/p>\n

Summer<\/p>\n

Late Summer<\/p>\n<\/tr>\n\nOpen to May 22
& Oct. 1 to close<\/td>\nMay 23-Sept. 7<\/td>\nSept. 8-Sept. 30<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n

Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday<\/p>\n$28 for 18
$20 for 9<\/td>\n$41 for 18
$27 for 9<\/td>\n$37 for 18
$24 for 9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n

Thursday, Friday,
Sunday<\/p>\n$35 for 18
$26 for 9<\/td>\n$60 for 18
$38 for 9<\/td>\n$47 for 18
$35 for 9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n

Saturday,
Holidays<\/p>\n$35 for 18
$26 for 9<\/td>\n$64 for 18
$42 for 9<\/td>\n$47 for 18
$35 for 9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n

Twilight Rates
After 4 p.m.<\/p>\n$24 for 18
$20 for 9<\/td>\n$24 for 18
$22 for 9
($2 more on Saturday)<\/td>\n$24 for 18
$20 for 9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\n\n\n<\/tr>\n\n

Cart fees<\/p>\n$25 for 18<\/td>\n$15 or 9<\/td>\nYear-round<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Google reviews of the course conditions reflect the priority the club places on them. Bretl credits course superintendent Eric Schmitt, who came to Bass Lake in 2019 after stints as assistant superintendent at Oconomowoc GC and the Legend at Brandybrook in Wales, for continuing Bass Lake\u2019s proud tradition of providing fast greens and tight fairways, course qualities that always seem to turn heads for first-time golfers who come from far and wide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they get (done), they are ranting and raving about it,\u201d said Bass Lake director of golf John Hunter, a third-generation member whose family\u2019s roots in the club date to the 1940s. \u201cLike we always say, we\u2019ve got private-club greens at a public golf course. They really are spectacular.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Miller, the club intends to keep it that way. He said it is about \u201cfive years ahead\u201d on a 10-year plan to restore details in the design to help it play the way it did 100 years ago and Bretl said attention paid to a century of tree growth has perhaps made the biggest difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing we\u2019re really doing with the restoration is ensuring the new age of architecture and the new age of agronomy, which is less trees (and) what the game originally was,\u201d Bretl said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t originally designed around big trees being around. We\u2019re starting to get back sightlines, some wind movement, some airflow, some sun. We\u2019re really growing grass in places that we haven\u2019t before. We\u2019ve always been good at growing grass in the center of the fairways and on the greens. But now we\u2019re starting to work on the periphery of the golf course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime members like VanderHei are proud of the club and what is being done to preserve the history, tradition and, of course, the stories that have been authored during the first 100 years.<\/p>\n

Like the time VanderHei was playing a game called \u201cWolf\u201d with Martine and two other golfers. Each golfer gets to be the wolf every four holes and has the option of playing the hole alone or choosing another golfer to be his partner for that hole. Martine, the wolf on a par-3, went first, missed the green, looked at the other three golfers and chose someone other than VanderHei.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like \u2018What\u2019s the deal here? I\u2019m a better golfer than (him),\u2019\u201d VanderHei said. \u201c(Martine) is like \u2018You dummy! (The other guy) gets a stroke on this hole and you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when VanderHei took matters in his own hands. He hit his tee shot into the bottom of the cup for a hole-in-one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI turned around and looked at Bill,\u201d VanderHei recalled, \u201cAnd he just said, \u2018You \u2026 @#%$*!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say the choice word rhymed with Bass … and had nothing to do with a lake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As good as the golf has been for most of the first 100 years at Bass Lake Golf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3689,44],"class_list":["post-38157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-courses","tag-golf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}