Golf greens, simulator screens – Stone Hedge offering indoor golf

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

February 9, 2026

EGG HARBOR – Recent facility renovations at Stone Hedge Golf and Pub, owner Kevin Wehrenberg said, have allowed the Door County business to open for year-round entertainment.

The establishment, Wehrenberg said, features a par-34, nine-hole public course; a restaurant and bar; and, now, new TrackMan golf simulators and an upgraded billiards room with pinball and gaming machines.

“In February 2025, we broke ground on the close-to-3,000 square foot addition, which [now] houses the two simulator bays along with a billiard room and then a covered patio with built-in heat,” he said.

In 2021, Wehrenberg and his wife, Erin, became the fourth owners of the golf course, originally established in the early 1990s.

“The first owner and his sons built the golf course by themselves,” he said.

Wehrenberg said that during his five years of ownership, he has focused on gradual improvements to Stone Hedge, rather than attempting costly upgrades all at once.

However, he said the idea to include simulated golf in its offerings was always top of mind.

“We had a restaurant and a bar, but in the wintertime up here, you don’t have as much tourism,” he said. “You are basically relying on business from the locals, but a lot of people head south in the wintertime. [So], this was really a way to try to increase our business in the wintertime.”

Wehrenberg said the new covered patio will draw visitors year-round, from winter customers to those seeking shade in the summer.

“That covered patio [is] someplace to go into summertime, too, [because] it’s Wisconsin – you only have so many months of decent weather,” he said. “I tracked the weather at the beginning of June last year, [and temperatures were] down into the high 30s/low 40s. So, you only get so much play on the regular golf course even when it’s that temperature.”

Outside of his service and hospitality staff in the clubhouse and Stone Hedge’s single groundskeeper, who maintains the 38-acre property at 4320 County Road E in Egg Harbor, Wehrenberg said much of the remaining work falls to him and his family.

“Our groundskeeper who works, [roughly, from] April to November [does] a bulk of the maintenance on the course,” he said. “Myself and my sons, we help in certain areas – sand[ing] the greens, or we’re trimming trees or cleaning up at the beginning of the season.”

Wehrenberg said the on-site restaurant can seat about 50 patrons, with the patio adding space for another 30 to 40 when weather permits.

“The [previous] patio was just black top with tables, chairs and umbrellas,” he said. “The biggest issue that I dealt with all summer long [was] opening, closing and moving umbrellas because it’s Door County – we get a decent amount of wind up here. That’s why part of the addition was the covered patio.”

 Wehrenberg said other renovations he and his family have completed over time include remodeling the restaurant, the bathrooms and the pro shop – “basically the entire inside of the clubhouse” – as well as exterior upgrades.

“There’s an architect who we worked with out of Green Bay when I did the exterior renovation to the clubhouse back in ’23,” he said. “At [that] point, I was going to do the addition on the back, [too] – but it ended up, financially, that I needed to wait just a little bit.”

However, Wehrenberg said the wait is over, as customers begin to enjoy Stone Hedge Golf and Pub’s new simulators and its expanded entertainment amenities.

The city of angels to the county of cranberries

Employing Dyckesville-based Van’s Lumber & Custom Builders Inc. for the bulk of the general contracting labor, Wehrenberg said he personally completed much of the sub-contracting work – “HVAC, plumbing, electrical, low-voltage electronics, [etc.].”

Wehrenberg, a native of Eau Claire who attended college in Oshkosh, said he relocated to Los Angeles in the summer of 1993 and met Erin there five years later.

“My wife and I worked in television for 30-some years,” he said. “I produced TV shows – ‘Wipeout’ and ‘Fear Factor’ are the two biggest shows I did, [with] many others in between.”

As the executive producer of competitive reality television, Wehrenberg said he was often a show’s initial employee.

“I’m usually the first person hired to budget the show, figure out how to shoot the show, and then I’m the one who handles all the money, the staffing, the insurance, the legal and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “Running a business has a lot of similarities to that. Then my dad was a general contractor/mechanic. So…, I know just enough to be dangerous.”

While living in LA, Wehrenberg said he and Erin grew their family and decided to purchase a home in Juddville – “between Egg Harbor and Fish Creek” – in 2010.

“I wanted to get a house back here once we had our first son in 2005,” he said. “So, we would come back from Christmas, and because [Erin’s] family is all from LA, they were fine to come back and experience a winter, snowy Christmas.”

Prior to purchasing the Door County house, Wehrenberg said his family’s Christmas celebrations were held in rented cabins across the state.

“We rented a house in Eagle River for one year, and in the winter of 2009, we rented a house in Sister Bay,” he said. “My wife [said], ‘Oh, I like it here,’ and that’s all I needed to know. By the next Christmas, we actually owned our house and had our Christmas at that house.”

Already spending two months a year in Wisconsin, Wehrenberg said buying the golf course prompted their permanent relocation.

“When this place came up for sale, and we bought it in the winter of ’21, I was going back and forth between LA in the wintertime, but I’d be here all summer,” he said. “Then, my wife ended up being laid off last year out in Los Angeles. So, it made sense for us to sell our home [in LA] and move here.”

Spending several consecutive months in their Juddville residence during the COVID-19 pandemic, Wehrenberg said, made the relocation much easier on his LA-born-and-raised family.

“We knew we would probably retire up here at some point, and then during COVID, we were here from March 2020 to November 2020 with both our boys, and that sort of… allowed us the opportunity to experience being here for a long period of time,” he said. “I think that made my wife more comfortable with it.”

Though Erin still works in LA, and he often revisits their former community to visit her, Wehrenberg said an overwhelming majority of his family’s time is now spent in the Midwest.

“We have two sons – one who’s in college in Minnesota and the other one’s a junior in high school,” he said. “So, it made more sense for him to be going to school here.”

‘Why are you here?’

With one of Stone Hedge’s clubhouse bathrooms decorated with “Wipeout” memorabilia from his time on the show, Wehrenberg said customers frequently ask about how he came to Wisconsin.

“I have a bunch of ‘Wipeout’ artwork and stuff like that, and they’ll come out and [say], ‘Hey, what’s the deal with this?’” he said. “I’ll [tell them] I was the executive producer of ‘Wipeout,’ and they [ask], ‘Why are you here?’”

“I wanted my kids to have a little taste of Wisconsin like I had growing up,” he said.

Another question Wehrenberg said he’s often asked is, “which one is easier – producing TV shows or running a golf course and restaurant?”

“I say, ‘Oh, producing TV shows,’ [because operating Stone Hedge is] just a different thing,” he said. “I never ran a bar, restaurant or golf course before in my life, and that first summer, we didn’t open the restaurant right away. We just opened a golf course and the bar, [because] I had to learn how to program the POS system [as well as] how to order alcohol and beer, and in Wisconsin, it seems like there are way more distributors of beer and alcohol than there should be. It wasn’t overwhelming. It was just tedious.”

With a family depending on him, Wehrenberg said his first year as owner of Stone Hedge was a battle to turn a profit.

“Both kids were in school – one was in high school, and one was in middle school in LA – so that first year was pretty tough, honestly,” he said. “I worked a lot of hours [and] didn’t get much sleep along with the renovation we were doing in the clubhouse.”

In his first week of ownership, Wehrenberg said a lightning strike near one of the fairways almost destroyed the course’s irrigation system.

“A big thunderstorm came through – one of those where the thunder shakes you out of bed at night – lightning hit a cherry tree out by the eighth fairway, basically followed the roots into the ground and then hit all the wires for the irrigation heads on that fairway,” he said. “It followed the control wire all the way from that fairway back to the clubhouse, where the controls are for the irrigation system, and, for lack of a better word, it literally blew them up like shrapnel.”

Despite the initial challenges and steep learning curve, Wehrenberg said he eventually found his footing.

“Now it’s manageable [and] I know what to expect,” he said.

The addition of new golf simulators, a billiards room and a covered patio, Wehrenberg said, is his latest effort to expand offerings for customers.

“Especially in Northern Door [County], there are only so many things to do inside in the wintertime,” he said. “A lot of bars do trivia, bingo and that kind of thing, [but] the closest simulators were down in Sturgeon Bay. Now, these are open to the public, and we’re honestly booked pretty solid.”

Currently open 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, and 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays, Wehrenberg said those interested in renting a simulator bay should call Stone Hedge Golf and Pub at (920) 868-1861 as he works to establish its electronic booking system in the meantime.

“It’s really doing well, [and] people are very impressed with how the bays turned out aesthetically,” he said. “TrackMan simulators are some of the best simulators in the world – they’re the ones used by most PGA professionals, like Rory McIlroy, so people like having that quality system up here, too.”

For more on Stone Hedge Golf and Pub, visit stonehedgegolfandpub.com.