As a battle-worn veteran of four years on the worst golf team in Minnesota, I was pleased to open a package from the University of Minnesota Press and find a copy of Rick Shefchik’s new tome From Fields to Fairways: Classic Golf Clubs of Minnesota. Here are a few of the fun (and not-so-fun) facts about golf in Minnesota that I picked up from Shefchik’s book, which will be an eye-opening, entertaining read for any Gopher State golf buff. Shefchik will be presenting the book at a release event on April 14 at Theodore Wirth Golf Club.
• Though many country clubs around the country have historically restricted membership and participation by women, women have always been well-represented among Minnesota golfers.
• The first golf course in St. Paul was the Town & Country Club; the first course in Minneapolis was Bryn Mawr.
• The Town & Country Club was indirectly an offshoot of the St. Paul Winter Carnival—the club was founded in 1887 by a Carnival crew looking for year-round recreation in the Capital City.
• Looking to make golf more accessible to the masses, just after the turn of the 20th century, T&C members suggested that St. Paul build a municipal golf course near Como Park. The St. Paul City Council unanimously voted the proposal down. Golf was not at the time considered a reputable pastime in St. Paul: a local columnist wrote that golfers were “dudes, idlers, fools, degenerates.” It took almost 20 years for St. Paul to finally open a public course, at Phalen Park.
• When the Minikahda Club began hiring boys as caddies early in the century, both white and African-American boys were among the young employees (though it was not until the 1950s that rules mandating the integration of Minnesota clubs began to be put in place). The boys would hide in the woods when women golfers came looking for caddies, since women were thought to be slower players and to often quit before finishing a round—in which case their caddies wouldn’t make the promised 15 cents for the round.
• America’s first fairway watering system was invented by Minikahda greenskeeper Charles Erickson. It was in part thanks to Erickson’s invention that Minikahda played host to the U.S. Open in 1916.
• The Northland Country Club was organized near Duluth in 1899, with an unusually tight set of rules for conduct: no gambling, drinking, or swearing was allowed on the new course.
• Minneapolis native Patty Berg learned to play golf at Interlachen, and went on to become a founding member of the LPGA and one of the sport’s all-time great players.
• Zelda Fitzgerald was a much better golfer than her husband F. Scott, but both were champion partiers, living it up “Jay Gatsby style,” according to one biographer. They lived in the White Bear Lake Yacht Club clubhouse during the summer of 1922, wrecking such havoc that they were finally kicked out.
• The University of Minnesota purchased its golf course in 1926, at the urging of University President Lotus Coffman—who told the regents that recreational facilities including a golf course would inspire “morality, clean living, good sportsmanship, high ideals, and even studentship.” The most successful alumnus of the U of M’s golf program is Tom Lehman, winner of the 1996 British Open.
• When Keller began hosting the St. Paul Open professional tournament in 1930, to cover the tournament KSTP pushed a radio transmitter around the course in a baby carriage.
• After practicing at Hazeltine in 1970, Jack Nicklaus declared the course to be the most difficult he’d ever played in a U.S. Open. Many of the leading pros played poorly in that tournament, and criticized the design. Course architect Robert Trent Jones shot back, “If it’s short, flat, dull courses that the pro golfers prefer, they can order them out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog.” Hazeltine proved much more popular among both pros and fans when the tournament returned in 1991: that U.S. Open set a new record for merchandise revenue.
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