Golf Bliss

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.
Picture Perfect
Minnesota’s preeminent golf photographer Peter Wong talks about his golf bliss. It involves an early-morning engagement 200 miles north of his Burnsville home. “My favorite hole for shooting would be a sunrise shot at Giants Ridge, No. 17 on The Legend [course]. It’s so serene, so quiet. You don’t hear anything.”

Wong’s work captures the beauty and the beast that is No. 17 at The Legend at Giants Ridge, a jaw dropper that, from the back tees, is 226 yards over a lake to the green. “Half my job is done if the course is gorgeous,” he says, which explains why his other favorite venues include The Minikahda Club (sumac around the third hole) and Windsong Farm (colorful native grasses), and, on the public course side, Legends Golf Club (an urban oasis), Willingers Golf Club (a good value), and Rush Creek Golf Club (a challenging course). Oh, and there’s the thirteenth hole at the ultra-exclusive Spring Hill Golf Club in Orono. “When you get to the tee box, you have to stop and tell yourself to breathe,” Wong says. “The [fall] colors are amazing.”

Here’s a quick course in golf photography from Wong: Don’t shoot with the sun behind you (it makes everything look flat). Look for highlights and shadows, and shoot in early morning or late afternoon when colors are more vivid.

Top Tracks
Now on to the main course, so to speak. Minnesota golfers perk up like Pavlov’s dog when talk turns to opinions on the state’s best courses.

Among courses Norby has designed, he points to The Refuge Golf Club in Oak Grove. “When I think about my favorite places to play, you sort of feel like you’re up north or in the woods, and I think The Refuge does that the best,” he says. The Refuge was built on a 340-acre tract, 100 acres of which was wetland, sedges, and wildflower.

Other Norby favorites (which he didn’t have a hand in designing) include the panoramic views at Superior National in Lutsen, the outstanding bunkering and shot variety at The Wilderness at Fortune Bay in Tower, and Arthur Hills’ smartly designed Chaska Town Course. Norby’s favorite holes include three at Greystone in Sauk Centre, which he designed: the 242-yard, par-3 seventh; the intimidating par-3 seventeenth; and the par-4 eighteenth, which he nominates as one of the most scenic holes with its descent toward Sauk Lake.

James Bade, superintendent at Somerset in Mendota Heights, enjoys some of the Twin Cities’ long-established clubs, such as White Bear Yacht Club, Somerset, Midland Hills, and Minikahda. Among newer courses, Windsong Farm and Somerby are included in his top picks. He appreciates architects who use “deception,” using shapes of greens, fairways, bunkers, and hazards to indicate one thing to a golfer from afar but presenting something entirely different up close. He especially likes bunkers that appear fearsome but might be less so when actually encountered. And he issues an admonition to those who believe the game should eternally be played from flat, close-cropped lies. “We manicure courses so much nowadays that on every shot we expect a perfect lie, and the game isn’t meant to be like that,” Bade says.

Jim Manthis, an instructor for the University of Minnesota, Les Bolstad Golf Course and Baker National Golf Course, prefers the “classic-style” golf at Minneapolis Golf Club, White Bear Yacht Club (including the quirky fifteenth hole, where a ridge splits the green), and Midland Hills Country Club. Of the latter course, he says, “I’ve been playing there since 1955, and I never seem to get tired of it.”

Brenda Williams of Minnetrista, long one of the state’s top female amateurs, mentions a long and distinguished list: Minneapolis, Minikahda, Windsong, Somerby, White Bear, Oak Ridge, Town & Country, and the Brainerd-area courses, including Golden Eagle.

For Anderson, Hazeltine National heads the list. “Besides the TPC in Blaine, it’s as close as we get to a Tour course,” he says. “Hazeltine is the best we have in Minnesota, as far as atmosphere, food, everything for the true golfer.”

Chapman says the opening holes at Donald Ross-designed Minneapolis Golf Club are “the greatest four holes of golf conceived around here.” But, he adds, if he could play just one golf course the rest of his life, he’d choose Interlachen, the Edina club that has hosted a handful of national championships and will be host of the 2008 U.S. Women’s Open. “If I had to play one golf course for the rest of my life, [it] would be Interlachen. It’s got everything—it’s fun to play, it’s beautiful, the clubhouse is beautiful, it’s got all the history there.”

Golf Trips
Want to take your clubs on the road? Road trips can be wonderful in any direction. To the north are the well-known riches around Brainerd and in the Arrowhead area. To the south, there are more than a half-dozen fine tracks along the scenic Mississippi River Valley from Red Wing to Winona. To the west, Dacotah Ridge in Morton is Minnesota’s finest prairie-style course, and a ferry ride across the par-4 eighth at Stonebrooke in Shakopee is a signature moment in Minnesota golf. To the east, Anderson recommends a visit to the wondrous, daunting foursome of courses in the Kohler, Wisconsin, area: Blackwolf Run (Meadow Valleys and River courses) and Whistling Straits (Irish and Straits courses).

At the End of the Day . . .
Let’s be honest. You can play the most beautiful course, but if you’re not playing well, all that golf bliss goes down the drain. Good equipment can help. Williams made a visit to Totally Driven in Oakdale where a high-tech process called “pureing” refits club shafts onto their optimal swing points. “You hit your shots straighter,” she says of the results. “The first day I played, I hit everything perfectly straight except my three-wood.” It turns out that was her one club that hadn’t been “pured.”