If you think coffee is strictly for drinking, you haven’t been to Kohler Waters Spa. Coffee granules and sugar crystals are just two ingredients on the menu of the 24,000-square-foot spa, which offers everything from a “Golfer’s Foot Renewal” to the “Executive Head Trip” massage.

But water therapies rule, and Kohler has a claw foot up on the competition, since its tubs and showers have been manufactured across the street from the spa for decades. Whether you choose to soak in a fizzy rainbow with full-spectrum chromotherapy and tiny bubbles that cling to your skin like weightless beads, or immerse in a Roman-bath style copper tub sprinkled with essential oils of rose, geranium, jasmine and ylang ylang, the Kohler experience is all about the wet stuff. To bathe is to be: weightless, warm, comforted and nurtured.

Not that your choices are limited to shoulder-to-toe submersion. Try the five-jet Kohler Vichy shower (one Vichy treatment features simultaneous warm and ice-cold spurts of water), by turns gentle rain mist and cascading waterfalls. The “Highland Fling” treatment offers a dousing with buckets of warm water, a Midwest version of frolicking in the Caribbean surf.

For a drier option, consider the “H2O Inspiration” service, which pairs a foot bath in front of a fireplace with a scalp-and-shoulder massage in a woodland haze of oil scented with geraniums, rosewood, ginger, and violets, followed by a stimulating sugar scrub. 

Because you have to kill time between spa appointments, the American Club offers all the amenities of a first-class golf resort: luxurious lodging, restaurants, shops and, of course, Pete Dye’s outstanding layouts at Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run.

What else makes Kohler tops? Between spa services, you can go next door to the Kohler Design Center and pick out the latest designs and gadgets for a home spa. 

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