Nice Office

Two bugs have bitten Brandon Carter. The first struck while he was an undergrad at Arizona State. The second came more than a decade later, in Nekoosa, Wisconsin. Golf and photography have yet to let go.

Carter, who grew up in Peru, Illinois, a small town outside of Chicago, didn’t take up golf seriously until he went west for college. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “But I loved golf and got into the golf-management program.” That led to a 2009 internship at Bandon Dunes that changed everything. “I saw the writing on the wall: ‘Hey, there’s an opportunity here to stay and move up,’” he remembers. And he was right: Carter spent the next few years there in several positions, including head pro at Bandon Preserve, Old Macdonald and Pacific Dunes.

In 2018, he moved to Wisconsin to help open the sprawling Sand Valley Golf Resort facility. While there, he picked up his first camera. “It kind of became a sickness,” he laughs. “It went from having one camera to now needing more space for all my gear.” His interest in photography led him down a different career path, and today he’s the resort’s marketing director.

So, could he ever choose between his two passions? Would he rather hit a great golf shot or photograph one? “Oh, that’s tough,” he says. “But I would have to choose hitting the shot. I’m fortunate to be here every day with my camera. Hitting a great shot is much more rare for me!”