As has been discussed on this blog, I love golf course architecture. Growing up as a caddy at a Raynor (heavily designed in the 60s unfortunately) I got to see world class architecture up close and personal. I got to see how width and angles can affect strategy as well as how large green complexes can make for scary approach shots. I have fallen in love with architecture so much that I continue to read books about it as well as apply to small local firms in the Twin Cities area for internships or jobs.
Due to the Covid19 quarantine, we are all stuck inside and in Minnesota that also means no golf courses are open. So I decided to make my own golf course and I thought it would be cool to share where I am at currently and what I did step by step.
The first step that I did was find a piece of land. That’s right, this golf course is designed on a real piece of land that is for sale. This piece of land is located in Swift, MN and would run someone about $575,000. It is located just 10 minutes south of Warroad, Minnesota along Highway 11 and is 295 Acres. That is plenty of land to build a quality golf course on.
Once I found the land, I carefully traced the property lines, located the trees and wetlands and also looked up topographic maps. Once I had all of these combined on a site map, I double checked everything was to scale and made copies.
After that, I started laying out different routings taking a lot of things into consideration. How many trees were going to have to be removed? What land was the best land for golf? What was the ideal location for the clubhouse? Are there any cool features of the land that should be used? Below are some pictures of the final layout that I created but if you want to see a more complete set of pictures including the yardages, head over to my instagram (@aspoiledwalk).
As fun as this has been, there are numerous reasons why this course would never be built. The first reason would be that this course is in the middle of nowhere. We are talking under a half an hour to Canada and almost 6 hours from the largest metropolitan area in the entire state of Minnesota. The second reason would be because of all the densely wooded areas of the north. The cost of removing all of the trees and associated brush would make this project’s cost increase all too quickly. To try and alleviate this, the last 5 holes are routed super oddly and that is to attempt to limit the amount of tree removal. I really enjoyed this exercise and still need some help. Are there any good Names for this place? Let me know if you have any creative and fitting names for this little layout.
As always, thanks for reading. The blogs have been lacking length and editing this week as I am writing daily this entire week. This was a personal challenge I imposed on myself to keep me accountable to writing as well as working the “writing muscles” in my head. So thank you for the grace in that. If you enjoyed, please share with your friends, subscribe to the blog or follow me on twitter or instagram (@aspoiledwalk) and let’s talk some golf. I always want some good social interaction surrounding the game, especially in a time of quarantine.
Thanks,
A Good Walk Spoiled 