Golf Bliss

May 2007 Special Sections

In golf-crazy Minnesota, golf bliss means different things to different people. At its best, golf is an experience: It isn’t just eighteen holes on a Saturday morning, then cram the clubs back in the trunk until next month. It’s not a stretch to say you can live the game.

We asked a handful of authorities on Minnesota golf how they define this bliss. When naming their favorites, they focus not only on the game itself but on the fringe as well: remarkable courses, unforgettable road trips, great eats, wonderful reads. Roll it all into one, and you have the best that golf has to offer. There’s nothing scientific about this poll, but still, it’s a little slice of Minnesota golf perfection.

Eat, Drink, and Make Birdie
When it comes to Minnesota golf, Hazeltine is where it’s at. Or Minikahda. Interlachen. The Wilds. Giants Ridge. Fong’s.

Fong’s? Yes, Fong’s Restaurant & Bar in Prior Lake.

“Go play The Wilds in the afternoon and eat at Fong’s at night.” That’s the recommendation from golf connoisseur and Stillwater High School golf coach Matt Anderson of Woodbury.

Anderson is a connoisseur on two fronts. As an avid golfer, the three-handicapper has played most of Minnesota’s finest courses—and not to brag on his behalf, but his restaurant recommendation came midwinter via phone from northern California, where he had played Spyglass Hill hours earlier and Pebble Beach the day before. On the culinary side, Anderson is equally plugged in: Nine to five, he is a catering director with Aramark at 3M.

The Wilds Golf Club, a Tom Weiskopf–Jay Morrish design in Prior Lake, makes almost any Minnesota golfer’s list of top places to play. For Anderson, The Wilds—followed by the post-round spread at Fong’s Restaurant & Bar, three miles away, is as good as it gets. It’s golf bliss with an after-dinner mint.

Anderson rates The Wilds a nine on a ten-point scale, and as for Fong’s, “I would rate it the same.” He praises the restaurant’s authentic Chinese cuisine and particularly endorses the lettuce wrap, wine collection, and top-notch service. Piggyback The Wilds and Fong’s together for one of the best values in Minnesota golf: On cooler days during the off-season, play The Wilds when its “Pay the Temperature” promotion is running. Pay $50 on a 50-degree day, follow up with a meal at Fong’s, where entrees run from $7 to $17.95, and you’d still have a chunk of change left over from a $100 bill.

Not far from The Wilds is another of Anderson’s golf-and-eat favorites: a round at Meadows at Mystic Lake, which is abundant with water features and large animal carvings, then American cuisine at the Minnehaha Cafe, which, like the golf course, is part of the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel complex.

Honorable mention: Axel’s at Prestwick Golf Club, where “they give you a piece of [carrot] cake as big as your head,” Anderson says, and the Victoria House in Victoria, not far from Deer Run Golf Club.

Artistry
What’s the picture-perfect Minnesota golf hole? With all the riches out there, it’s tough to decide. “You could spend 100 lifetimes and never hit everything,” says Bud Chapman, the eighty-four-year-old Minnetonka artist who holds renown regionally for his age-shooting feats (shooting a golf score lower than his age)—1,183 times by a midwinter count—and worldwide for his fictional “18 Infamous Golf Holes” paintings.

But if Chapman had to narrow it down to one Minnesota Mona Lisa? “I play one hole every day that’s just a beauty: No. 10 at Minneapolis Golf Club,” Chapman says. “It’s a par-3 hole (216 yards) over the lake, very demanding with no place to bail out. It’s just a really good, long par-3.”

Word Perfect
Golf books fill a shelf, floor to ceiling, in Rick Shefchik’s Stillwater home. They bleed over onto his fiction shelf. A number? Shefchik figures he owns 300 to 400 golf books. In addition, the former St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter recently completed the novel Amen Corner, a murder-mystery set on Augusta National during the Masters. All of this makes Shefchik eminently qualified to judge golf writing.

So, what’s the best golf book on Shefchik’s shelves? Without hesitation, Shefchik selects Dead Solid Perfect, Dan Jenkins’ fictional, ribald 1974 tale of Kenny Lee Puckett’s pursuit of a career on the PGA Tour and recollections of fun-loving, beer-drinking golf relationships in Jenkins’ native Fort Worth. “It’s what everybody loves about golf but is really hard to capture if you’re writing about it,” Shefchik says of the book. “Nobody cares about your round, but they care about the people you meet on the golf course.”

Another Shefchik favorite is the more staid The Golf Courses of the British Isles, a tour of courses in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales written in 1910 by journalist Bernard Darwin. “It manages to capture a way of writing about golf courses that is so elegant,” Shefchik says.

Another nomination, from golf course architect Kevin Norby of Chaska, is Ben Hogan’s instructional book Five Lessons: Modern Fundamentals of Golf.