The new Glenway: making golf accessible to all.
Theran Steindl says he was called “every name in the book.”
In redesigning and overhauling Glenway, the municipal golf course located at the corner of Speedway and Mineral Point roads on the near west side, over the past year, Steindl, the city’s golf operations supervisor, and his crew took out some big trees. The neighbors were not happy.
“Back in the ’70s, there was a government grant for Colorado blue spruce — so, not native — and Madison got quite a number of them,” Steindl says while standing next to Glenway’s ninth fairway, clad in rain gear and work boots, on a recent afternoon. They were planted haphazardly, often close together.
“You can see a maple right over there that has one side missing because it had three blue spruce growing into it. So, like, what are we doing here?”
The tree removal is part of the work that’s been done at Glenway since spring 2021, when the city council approved a donation from world famous golf course developer Michael Keiser and his wife, Jocelyn, for $720,000-worth of project planning and design services to remake the city’s smallest, and arguably most beloved, course. It’s set to reopen in July.
Keiser and his father, Mike, are responsible for developing some of the country’s best courses built in the last 30 years, including Sand Valley in Nekoosa. Their reputation attracted specialists in golf course design, marketing and even ecology. Steindl says his crew cut and replanted trees in consultation with a group of UW-Madison professors.
The goal of the project wasn’t just to build a better golf course (though ensuring it would be fun for both novices and accomplished players was a priority), but also to engage the community and remove some of the perceived barriers that have led to a decline in golf participation.
“Golf in general, not just in Madison, has a problem. You think about country clubs, exclusivity, get off my lawn,” Steindl says. “Here, we want it to be more like everyone’s welcome, it’s everybody’s sport.”
Steindl is eager to talk about converting the fairways to a native bluegrass/fescue mix, adding elevation changes and other topography to bigger greens — “We were out here putting on them the other day, and they really move!” — and building tee boxes to add some length to the diminutive nine-hole track. But he’s even more excited about the expanded practice putting green, located just off the bike path that runs along Glenway Street and Speedway Road, within a sand wedge shot of the Village Bar.
Modeled after The Himalayas at St Andrews in Scotland, the green now features some “crazy, wonky” undulations and can serve as a miniature course with nine holes that can be played in sequence, free of charge.
“Families that walk by, or ride past on bikes, can stop and grab a putter, putt around for a little while,” Steindl says. “Maybe grab a drink, get an ice cream, a pizza and just hang out.”
The course also features a new name: The Glen Golf Park.
“It’s not a country club, it’s not a golf course, it’s a park and a park is for the community,” Steindl says. “The concept of a golf park is unique in America, but not overseas. Not in Scotland, which is where golf originated.”
