Lyndsay Lyle looked across the root-shot grass of Bigwood Golf Course and pictured children playing. She saw bocce, maybe a few beers, and families gathering after a round — or not — for a meal in the clubhouse along Saddle Road. What she didn’t picture was the golf, because neither Lyndsay, nor her husband Christopher, had ever played a round.
That didn’t stop the Ketchum couple from buying the shopworn — and much loved — public layout, and putting Bigwood through the biggest changes the property has seen since it transitioned from a treeless in-town airstrip to a nine-hole golf course more than 50 years ago.
After two years of renovations, the Lyles are opening their reimagined Bigwood in full this summer, with an overhauled nine-hole par 36, a new bar and restaurant, a half-way house, a recreation area and a full slate of activities ready to launch north of downtown.
Maybe then they’ll have a minute for a round of golf.
“It has been a huge project — beyond our wildest dreams,” Christopher Lyle said.
To do it, they needed to build a team.
But that’s part of what drove the Lyles to buy into Bigwood in 2024.
Six years earlier, the family made a list of small towns around the West. The couple and their three kids were growing weary of their lives in the Bay Area. They knew they’d be happier in the mountains — they just didn’t know where. So, they went down the list. They booked trips, called schools, and headed out to see for themselves.
Christopher had never set foot in Idaho, but after 36 hours in Ketchum he knew their family had found their place. It had its glitz and it had its grit, and it had its places where both sides of the spectrum could meet and mingle, places like Lefty’s and Grumpy’s and the Pio — and Bigwood.
“It was so clear that Bigwood was one of these institutions,” Lyndsay Lyle said, “and it really had fallen on hard times.”
To Christopher, the feel of Bigwood was “true Ketchum” — they chose to buy the course for the same reasons they fell in love with the place.
“It has always been at the core of Ketchum,” he said. “It’s golf, but it’s a little irreverent. It’s not stuffy. That vibe is at the core of Bigwood.
“We thought, ‘How could we make this place we call home — this town, this valley — even more amazing?’ And we decided Bigwood is a place where we could do that.”
At its closest, Bigwood is three strong shots away from Sun Valley Resort. But prior to its 2024-25 renovation, no serious golfer would confuse the two. The resort’s operation is well oiled — and its courses well-manicured, an emerald mirage cut through dun sage and cottonwoods. Bigwood survived on its ramshackle charm, and those who loved it worked hard hours against stacked odds to keep the course alive and playable. But irrigation pipes kept failing. Greens kept dying. A casual visitor could drive north towards the Boulders and, if no one was playing, not realize they had passed a golf course. Compared to its neighbor up Saddle Road, Bigwood was “Caddyshack” in the shadow of Carnoustie.
Changes started with the course itself. But to fix it, they had to destroy it first.
“There was a lot of trepidation beforehand,” said Superintendent Chris Gray, who came over from Sun Valley to lead the greenskeeping crew. “We were talking about tearing the course up and putting it back together.”
Architect David Druzisky came over from Boise to lead the redesign, which started with new irrigation under the grass. Then, he reshaped the original Robert Muir Graves routing, sculpting with a bulldozer. Crews put in new greens and replaced the hardpan sand traps with new bunkers, rugged and rough-hewn, to match the landscape. Finally, they changed the routing and added a new ninth green — formerly the sixth — below the clubhouse patio.
The new course, which opened last summer, takes a few more linksland cues than its previous self. But the overall effect has less to do with the layout than the look: It’s just so much greener than it looked before.
To Gray, that starts with the Lyles, who committed three keys to the project: “Resources, time and people,” he said.
One of those people is Clif Neely. After 20 years at the Pioneer Saloon, Neely left restaurants six years ago to get closer to his passion: golf. As a greenskeeper, Neely met the Lyles’ commitment with one of his own, recently completing a turf management degree to better understand the course he was caring for.
“Having such proactive owners, it’s fabulous,” he said. “They’re investing in it. They’re bringing on good people. It’s legit. You stand a little taller, working around here. It’s something to be proud of.”
Bigwood “needed a fresh face,” Neely said, and it’s finding one. This summer, he’ll dip back into his old expertise to run the course’s new snack shack, Birdie’s, by the fourth tee box. They’ll serve up drinks, hotdogs and burger dogs — a hotdog-shaped hamburger pulled in from San Francisco’s famed Olympic Club, where Bigwood’s longtime starter worked before decamping for Idaho.
Birdie’s sits next to a broad, open field, once a pond by the old sixth green. It already has a bocce court and a small turf putting green, with more on the way for kids and families. To Neely, that’s the spot that represents what the new Bigwood is all about.
“It’s always been an accessible, affordable spot. You can come and spend a lot of money or spend no money and have a great time.”
By the time you read this, all of that should be open to the public. So should the clubhouse, bar and restaurant, Timber’s. That — like the food it serves — started from scratch, too. The Lyles recruited Matt Robinson away from Sun Valley to launch the project. The new general manager cut his teeth running the Roundhouse, where items have been on the menu longer than most diners have been alive. At Bigwood, he said, “we’re making it up as we go along.”
“At the start, everything was just an idea,” he said. “We’re creating something out of nothing, without any real direction besides ‘What do we feel like this should be?’”
Idaho native Taite Pearson sets the menu at Timber’s, lured off the river (and out of culinary retirement) by the Lyles’ pitch. A chef and a fishing guide, he was leery of re-entering the Valley’s restaurant scene. Then again, the Lyles are no more restaurateurs than they are golfers. They offered him the reins and agreed on one red line: “You won’t have to Google anything on the menu.”
Pearson and his crew call Timber’s style “crafted American,” but its focus is more local than that. The baking, curing and pickling will all be done in house.
“Everything we can do here we will do here,” Pearson said. Ingredients, too: If Pearson can find it close to home, he plans to use it. That’s why he’s most excited about “getting chefy” with the menu’s “grazing platter,” featuring local meats, cheeses, pickles and breads. Not only does it scream Idaho, he said, but it’s also meant to share — a “community aspect” he sees running through the Lyles’ Bigwood.
“We want people who live here to want to and be able to come here frequently,” Lyndsay Lyle said. “The only thing we cared about was the community — the people who make a home here or feel at home here.”
To Christopher, that means knowing what to change, and what to leave alone.
“Nobody’s trying to be Augusta. We’re trying to be a great experience,” he said. “You can’t serve everybody — you have to build for a core set of customers. I think the people who have loved Bigwood over time — people who live here, who make a home here and love this valley — those people are our core audience. That really drives every decision.”
On a cold Monday in April, Pearson and his chefs were working in the new kitchen on “long prep,” and there was plenty to prepare. Around them, construction crews buzzed and hammered. Out the new bank of westerly windows, Baldy still glistened in post-season white, and a thin scrim of snow formed in the air. And Bellevue resident Vicky Walker strode to the new first tee, weather be damned, for the first of her three rounds that week.
“We’re just loving the transition to this new, wonderful place,” the nine-year Bigwood member said. “I can’t wait to see it come to fruition. It’s living up to its potential.”