Green Bay physical therapist paints his way to British Open

GREEN BAY – It’s not unusual to treat a bucket-list opportunity as something that happens once, if you’re lucky. Challenging that idea is how Green Bay artist Joe Woldt went from volunteering medical coverage at the US Women’s Open to having his work featured at the British Open in the span of a single year.

Woldt is inspired by his wife Julia’s questioning: “Why do things have to be once-in-a-lifetime?”

It’s a mindset that’s helped fuel a journey that’s grown exponentially over the last twelve months, but the roots of it go back much further.

“If Joey gets up and starts walking around, just go tell him to draw in the corner,” his mom told his first-grade teacher. It wasn’t a punishment. It was the one thing that settled him down.

The habit became a lifeline right before COVID, when Woldt wasn’t sleeping. His mind was stuck in overdrive from long days in the medical field and hours in front of a screen.

“I gotta do something to try and unwind that’s not watching TV or staring at my phone,” Woldt said he remembers thinking.

He built a daily habit of sketching, often of his daughters and family, jotting notes on the back of each page to capture the moments. It wasn’t building toward anything at the time, just his way of getting by.

Then, last May, a trip to Sand Valley changed that. Woldt sketched all four courses on the property, gave three away and kept a painting of the Lido for himself. He posted the drawings and tagged the resort; Sand Valley shared them.

“My phone was blowing up with people asking, ‘How do I get ahold of one?’” Woldt said.

Two weeks later, while volunteering medical coverage at the US Women’s Open at Erin Hills, he sketched a bunker he’d once played into himself and posted it. Erin Hills shared that one too, and a week after, their marketing team invited him on-site for a live painting session.

“It gave me instant credibility,” Woldt said. “I’ve always been an artist, but it was new to me to do something like that.”

Woldt then drove back to Sand Valley alone. On his way out, he had one painting left, the Lido piece, one he’d almost kept for good. It’s a mostly private course and he figured his odds of returning were slim. He decided if he found someone playing it that day, he’d let it go.

The last man he saw in the parking lot was headed to the Lido.

That stranger turned out to be connected to one of the course’s founding members. Woldt’s painting ended up on that member’s bookshelf.

Since then, Woldt has played the Lido as a guest four times over.

There’s a detail in that course Woldt said he can’t stop coming back to: the 18th hole is named “Home.” It was designed by Alistair MacKenzie, the architect who went on to build Augusta National, the same career Woldt once dreamed of at 15, but never thought it was realistic enough.

In a way, working in golf is no longer a dream for Woldt — it just looks different than he imagined.

Instead of designing courses, he’s painting them.

Woldt has pushed himself to keep improving, working across pen, charcoal, pastel, acrylic and watercolor after years leaning almost entirely on the two he knew best.

That changed with a glossy Cypress Point scorecard he didn’t know how to handle. Instead of turning the project down, he called his artist father-in-law for pointers and went for it. It turned into one of his best pieces and gave him the confidence to lean into acrylics more.

Nearly a year after his original breakthrough at Sand Valley, a media contact for the British Open came across his work online and asked him to paint Royal Birkdale, the course hosting that year’s Open Championship, for a commission piece. He again leaned on his range of skills, this time using acrylics.

Here’s the kicker: Most people who follow his work don’t know he’s a full-time physical therapist. He doesn’t plan on changing that.

“I don’t think giving up PT fully is ever an option,” he said. “I enjoy it too much.”

What looks like two lives is really one instinct, wearing two hats. Treating patients and painting courses both come down to the same thing for Woldt: meeting people, hearing their stories and being part of them.

Between shifts, family time and everything else, Woldt paints in the pockets he can find, often early mornings and late nights. It’s not a complaint. He talks about it the way he talks about all of it — quick to smile, clearly having the time of his life.

If you ask what’s next, he doesn’t hesitate: Playing Augusta National.

In the meantime, he’s aiming for three or four new courses a year, growing commission work and a personal book project on the Lido that’s been years in the making. None of this happened by accident. It’s been built one course, one scorecard and one opportunity at a time.

Woldt takes on a range of projects with his most common being custom scorecard paintings. Requests can be submitted through his website, joewoldt.art, where his full portfolio is available to browse. His Instagram, @joe.woldt.art, carries much of the rest.