While everyone else on this board was (apparently) agonizing with their favortie college football team Saturday afternoon, I played Big Fish with Dan Kelly and his daughter Rose. We had the course pretty much to ourselves (Minnesota was playing Wisconsin) and had a wonderful day. Jason very accurately described the front nine -- links-style golf on a sand-based, treeless layout that plays firm and fast, by design. Aim for the wide side of the fairway and contend with the greenside bunkers, or risk the fairway bunker and reward yourself with the option of running a ball onto the green. Great fun -- a thinking player's nine.
The back nine is, in a word, spectacular. Steep hills and colorfull hardwoods, rolling fairways, great green sites and subtly contoured putting surfaces. The 14th and 15th holes, both uphill par 4s, are two of the best back-to-back two-shotters I've ever played. No. 15 in particular is simply epic: 490 from the tips, 467 from the next set of tees, into a treelined fairway dug out from a ridge that runs across the center of the hole; the second shot is uphill to a green that is angled from front left to back right; if you come up short to any hole location except extreme front left, your ball will roll 20 feet or more down a hill in thick rough.
John Conley is right; Hayward is a booming vacation area. It's not the easiest drive from the Twin Cities, but there aren't enough rooms and vacation homes for all the people who want to be in Hayward in the summer. Director of Golf Matt Vandelac said they'd like to keep the rounds down to about 20,000, at $60 -- the price is very fair, and a real bargain compared to some of the comparable resort courses around the country charging $200.
Big Fish is another course to add to your itinerary if you're going to be in the Wisconsin-Minnesota area.