Hazeltine National: A Beauty & A Beast

July 2009 Special Advertising Section

Hazeltine National is the Paul Bunyan of Minnesota golf courses, the state’s broad-shouldered king of the game. Straightforward and strapping. No nonsense and sturdy. What you see is what you get.

And, man, you get a handful.

No. 16 today

The world’s best golfers will be reminded of this when they gather at the Chaska club August 10-16 for the 91st PGA Championship. The course will play no less than 7,674 brutish yards—an all-time record for major championship golf.

“It’s a big, strong course, and it just lays out in front of you,” says Hazeltine’s head pro, Mike Schultz. “It’s like one of those heavyweight guys who just keeps coming at you.”

At age 47, Hazeltine is a relative babe among clubs that regularly draw golf’s majors. It has hosted two U.S. Opens, two U.S. Women’s Opens, one U.S. Senior Open, and the PGA Championship in 2002. Next up: the 2016 Ryder Cup.

To fully appreciate Hazeltine’s stature, retreat to Minneapolis in the late 1950s when the game of golf as well as the Twin Cities metro was beginning to burst at the seams.

Hazeltine founder Totton Heffelfinger.

“The club really came out of Totton Heffelfinger and his vision as former president of the United States Golf Association,” says Tom Brakke, who heads up Hazeltine’s heritage committee. “His position was that there would be a need for a championship golf course in the Upper Midwest, in Minnesota.”

A member at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, Heffelfinger saw that suburban golf courses would best have the grounds and the capacity to host modern-day majors. He looked westward to Chaska and founded what was then called Executive Golf Club of Minnesota.

Heffelfinger hired famed golf architect Robert Trent Jones to design the course and it opened in 1962. Jones’ original design called for a maximum length of 7,410 yards, at the time an almost unthinkably long total. “Even the 2002 PGA Championship wasn’t played at that kind of yardage,” Brakke says.

Hazeltine architect Robert Trent Jones

But Heffelfinger and Jones thought big. As a result, they secured a piece of land and routing that could accommodate the changes that golf would go through in the ensuing decades.

Hazeltine National landed its first men’s major championship with the 1970 U.S. Open. Rave reviews did not ensue. Golfer Dave Hill was the squeakiest wheel, famously proclaiming that all the course lacked was “80 acres of corn and a few cows.”

Robert Trent Jones’ original design was full of sharp doglegs and blind tee shots.

“A little bit of the early criticism in the 1970 Open was that there were too many severe doglegs, numerous blind tee shots,” says Schultz.

So a short course for junior players was removed, allowing Jones to dramatically straighten sharp doglegs at No. 1, 9, and 18. He made some greens less severe as well.

But the most notable extreme makeover in Minnesota golf took place after Hazeltine hosted the 1980 PGA Grand Slam of Golf. A redesign committee headed by Reed Mackenzie, Robert Fischer, and Warren Rebholz identified land that could be used for renovation. With Jones they set out to convert the par-4 No. 17 into a par 3.

A club history reports what they had in store for No. 16: “Rebholz conceived the basic routing, changing the downhill par 3 into a harrowing par 4 played along Hazeltine Lake.”

The new No.16 became the most photographed hole in Minnesota golf and one of the most pivotal. Payne Stewart in the 1991 U.S. Open and Rich Beem in the 2002 PGA Championship made sizeable birdie putts at No. 16 to help seal their victories.

Before the 1991 U.S. Open, the course underwent more changes. Robert Trent Jones’ son Rees added tees, adjusted fairways, and repositioned bunkers, but the basic routing remained.

The course now earns almost universal praise as a major championship venue. Though it wouldn’t be accurate to say the early criticisms have been reduced to whispers in the pines, they certainly seem a bit ironic.

[From left] Hazeltine superintendent Jim Nicol, head pro Mike Schultz, heritage committee chair Tom Brakke, and club manager Matt Murphy

So what will the course look like for the PGA Championship? “Essentially it’s the same layout,” says Schultz. “There have been some new bunkers and some additional tees put in, but I don’t think anything major has been done.”

Hazeltine’s burly shoulders have been further broadened though, primarily to counter the additional distance today’s pros have acquired through better technology.

Some holes have been lengthened to mammoth proportions. Golfers will face two par 4s of 490 yards or more, a 248-yard par 3 (No. 13), and three par 5s exceeding six bills, headed by the gargantuan 642-yard No. 15.

No. 15, a 642-yard par 5

Greens will run at “championship speed,” says Hazeltine superintendent Jim Nicol. The rough will be 4 inches deep, with a 1.25-inch “step cut” around bunkers, greens, and fairways. The PGA of America, which operates the tournament, asked for the step cut around the bunkers in order to allow more balls to roll into them.

Hazeltine today. The pros will face a beastly 7,674 yards.

Nicol is satisfied that Hazeltine is a deserving venue for both the 156 golfers and the 40,000+ fans who will turn out daily to watch the tournament. “Heck, yeah,” he says. “It’s a terrific place.”