Every golf town has a course like Wanaki used to be. The county-owned track where you learned the game, where your kids went to golf camp, where the clubhouse cuisine peaked at a hot dog and a lukewarm brat. Reliable, unglamorous, and roughly as likely to get a renovation as your buddy is to fix his over-the-top move.
Then Waukesha County announced it was closing Wanaki after the 2019 season, and something interesting happened. The regulars got mad. Really mad. A grassroots group called Save Wanaki collected six thousand signatures, stared down the bulldozers, and bought the course a one-year stay of execution. When the Storm family, who have been running golf operations in the Milwaukee area for nearly seventy years, stepped up with a bid of roughly 1.5 million dollars, the county board approved it unanimously. The keys changed hands in November 2020, and the transformation started almost immediately.
Five years on, the verdict is in. Wanaki did not just survive. It flourished.
Why Play Wanaki
Start with the land, because the new owners were smart enough not to touch the routing. Wanaki sits on 150 acres in Menomonee Falls at the corner of Lisbon and Lannon Roads, on ground that once held an 1800s sawmill powered by the Fox River. That same river is still the star of the show, cutting through the property and coming into play on seven of the eighteen holes. The layout is a par 71 stretching to roughly 6,570 yards, flat and eminently walkable, with wide fairways, big greens, and doglegs that bend both directions so you cannot fall asleep on the tee…