All posts by Joe Bissen

About Joe Bissen

Joe Bissen is a Caledonia, Minnesota, native and former golf letter-winner at Winona State University. He is a retired sports copy editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press and former sports editor of the Duluth News-Tribune. His writing has appeared in Minnesota Golfer and Mpls.St.Paul magazines. He lives in South St. Paul, MN. Joe's award-winning first book, "Fore! Gone. Minnesota's Lost Golf Courses 1897-1999," was released in December 2013, and a follow-up, "More! Gone. Minnesota's Lost Golf Courses, Part II" was released in July 2020. The books are most readily available online at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble (bn.com). He continues to write about lost courses on this website and has uncovered more than 245 of them.

Southview Country Club: A visit with Tom

Golf history, Just plain old golf, Lost golf courses,

Been awhile, Tom. Good to see you again.

Truth be told, I never knew Tom. Never met him. Don’t think I’ve ever even met someone who met him. Tom, who died in 1938, was from a different era and a decidedly different social circle. But how could I not feel a connection?

Tom is Tom Vardon, one of the four most important figures in the early development of Minnesota golf. Depending on your point of view, Vardon, the brother of six-time British Open champion Harry Vardon and former longtime head professional at White Bear Yacht Club, is either A) one of the most prolific and gifted course architects in Minnesota golf history or B) the most prolific and gifted architect of lost golf courses in Minnesota history.

I’ll concede that I may be the only person alive with the “B” viewpoint, but whatever.

Vardon designed or contributed to the design of at least 40 courses in his native England and the Upper Midwest. Among them were five lost courses that were covered in “Fore! Gone.” — Bunker Hills, Matoska, Ortonville, Quality Park and Westwood Hills — plus more than 20 still-existing courses in Minnesota, including University of Minnesota-Bolstad, St. Cloud Country Club, Stillwater CC and Phalen Park.

Before this weekend, I hadn’t set foot on a Vardon creation in probably three years, since I left an old Westwood Hills green site hidden on the grounds of Westwood Hills Nature Center in St. Louis Park. But the weekend offered a new opportunity to peruse another of Vardon’s gifts to Minnesota golf: Southview Country Club.

Southview is where, over the weekend, I reacquainted myself with Tom Vardon. The venue on the southern edge of West St. Paul is the annual host of the Tapemark Charity Pro-Am tournament, which features not only outstanding golf by many of Minnesota’s top players but also outstanding contributions to the community — the Tapemark benefits organizations that help people with disabilities and has raised, according to its website, $7.2 million since the tournament’s inception in 1972.

The Southview that golfers see today — green and lush and tree-lined — is most certainly not the Southview on which Vardon and Walter Hagen faced off in a 1925 exhibition match, prompting Hagen to comment, according to Rick Shefchik’s “From Fields to Fairways” book on Minnesota’s classic courses, “I never thought I’d play an exhibition in a nanny goat pasture.”

Nanny goats be gone: After opening with nine holes in 1922 and expanding to 18 (with sand greens) in 1924, Vardon conducted the first hands-on, professional design of Southview in late 1927. The club adopted some revisions offered by A.W. Tillinghast in 1936, and Jerry Pirkl engineered a significant redesign in 1967. Today, the course is known as a relatively short (6,404 yards off the back tees) but challenging test because of the strategy required in negotiating its doglegs, changes in elevation, trees and hazards.

I presume there are elements of Tom Vardon’s design golf that remain on the Southview grounds, whether it be in routing or green structure or bunker placement. Until last weekend, I never had been closer to the Southvew playing grounds than within a few steps of the first tee. But afforded an opportunity to walk the grounds during Sunday’s final round of the Tapemark, I took in some impressive greensward and thought about my old friend Tom.

These are the sights I saw, offered in no particular order other than the order in which my strides decided to take me. I’ll keep the commentary limited, as I’m not familiar enough with the layout to offer many details.

First tee — dogleg-right par 4, 353 yards.

Elevation change comes into play everywhere at Southview. Miss the green to the left here, and you’ve found trouble. It’s about impossible to see, but there is a ball lying about 8 feet from the cup on this short par 4. The player smartly landed his approach shot well to the right of the flagstick and let it feed toward the cup.

More elevation change. Thank you, tree, for offering brief shelter from the rain.

Ninth tee. This par 4 was played from a forward tee for the final round of the Tapemark, I believe measuring at 315 yards. This is the highest point on the Southview grounds, at 1,027 feet above sea level. (Lowest point is 942 feet.) From this vantage point, one can see beyond the green to a water tower in South St. Paul and then across the Mississippi River (not visible) to a ridge in Woodbury, with a look at power lines ascending the ridge.

Ninth fairway.
Ninth green, clubhouse in background.

18th hole — tee box down the fairway to the right, green atop a rise back home. (Sadly, I’m too technologically limited to be able to offer a wider view of this panoramic photo. I’ll work on it …)

 

 

Clearwater Country Club, Annandale: Another look

Lost golf courses, ,

Maybe it’s just me.

OK, it’s just me.

But one of the compelling things — to me, just me — about rummaging around for Minnesota’s lost golf courses is occasionally coming across something quite unusual — an old scorecard, an old photo, an old duffer buried and petrified beneath the surface of an ancient pot bunker from which he could not extricate himself (OK, haven’t come across one of those yet).

There is satisfaction, too, in sharing a find with two or three people who might care.

Sometimes as many as four.

The downside is that for every find, there can be more questions raised than answers revealed.

Case in point:

In August 2015, I wrote about the former Clearwater Country Club of Annandale, in central Minnesota’s Wright County. A couple of months ago, a friend who shares an interest in Minnesota golf history alerted me to an eBay auction for an old Clearwater CC postcard.

Old postcards of old golf courses in Minnesota aren’t unusual. There are plenty available from the state’s first course, Town & Country Club of St. Paul. There may be even more available from another early and historic course, Minikahda of Minneapolis. (Maddeningly, close to half of the postcards from the latter course mangle the spelling of the course’s name, going with Minikhada or the even more common ultramangling, Minnekahda.)

But postcards from other lost courses don’t show up every day, and they often offer little more than a dim view of a shoreline or a clubhouse. I was drawn to this Clearwater CC postcard because of the clear view of the terrain and Clearwater Lake in the background, and the clear depiction of a golf course, even if no greens or 22-handicappers are visible nearby.

So I bid on the postcard and was fortunate enough to win it, for something less than the price of a new Callaway driver, which I wouldn’t be able to hit worth a damn anyway. A look at the card, and a long-ago view of Clearwater Country Club, is presented below.

Best guess is that the photo was taken from near the center of the golf course, looking northeast and toward Clearwater Lake. Wright County Highway 24, which was more or less the southern border of the course, would be behind the photographer, as would the clubhouse. There is a better look at the entirety of the golf course in an aerial photo of the course on my original post on Clearwater CC (see link above).

But it seems like I can never come up with one nugget from a lost golf course without more unsolved mysteries arising. So it is with Clearwater CC.

I reported in my original post that Clearwater Country Club “opened before 1942, most likely.” I’m never crazy about being so vague, but is inevitable in this line of work/folly because absolute confirmation of “facts” can be difficult to come by. The postcard above, however, suggested that Clearwater CC was in fact founded well before 1942. The date on the postmark, though partially obscured, appeared to be 1932. Short of trying to contact Mr. Martin Syphrit (spelling?), to whom the postcard was mailed and who presumably has long since ceased to become reachable via a valid postal address in Brookville, Pa., I thought I would try to be more precise with the founding date of Clearwater Country Club.

Browsing through issues of the Annandale Advocate from 1932 held on microfilm at the Minnesota History Center revealed nothing — no mention of a golf course. Across the hall from the History Center’s microfilm room, however, is the Gale Library, with a wonderful collection of books, magazines and other resources. Included among those holdings is an Annandale centennial book, issued in 1988 and titled “Community with Spirit.”

The centennial book cleared up for me the exact date of Clearwater Country Club’s founding. An entry reads:

“1925: Agitation for a golf course. In 1925, Mrs. L. Longfellow was the President of the first golf club in Annandale. The first golf course in the area was located near Clearwater Lake. It was a nine-hole course with sand greens, and has since been platted for lots, and many homes have been built on the land.”

As far as I can tell, a 1925 opening would have made Clearwater Country Club the first golf course in Wright County.

Of course, if I had come across the centennial book in the first place, I never would have had to speculate that Clearwater CC was founded “before 1942.” But you never know in which order you’ll find these little gems, so you do what you can with what you have.

Anyway … it may be small potatoes, but there you have it. A cool, old view of Clearwater Country Club, plus the knowledge that someone first striped a drive there in the year 1925.

 

Dispatch from Augusta: Down Magnolia and Memory Lanes

Just plain old golf,

Author’s note: With the 2017 Masters opening today, it came to me yesterday that this year marks the 20th anniversary of my first trip to Augusta. What follows is the column I wrote for the Duluth News-Tribune of April 10, 1997. 

———————-

AUGUSTA – I did it I did it I did it I did it!

I told you I would. I told you.

I knew that someday, some glorious day before I left God’s occasionally green earth, I would just take off and cover the greatest sporting event of all, the Masters golf tournament.

The day has arrived. The tournament starts today, and I am in Augusta! Can you believe it?

Tell me you don’t envy me. A wife, three kids, a job, a back yard to bail standing water out of … and I just took off for Augusta, unannounced.

Amen Corner, here I come!

How’d I do it? Just jumped in a company car, punched the gas pedal and headed south. Simple as that.

Why’d I do it? Why drop that great office routine — editing NHL roundups, changing times from Eastern to Central on NBA standings, trying to figure out voice mail — and cover a golf tournament 1,300 miles from home?

I got tired of waiting for the phone to ring, that’s why.

Some of you (those who should get a life) may remember my Masters columns of the past two years, Nos. 9 and 10 in an annual series. I tried for interviews with pro golfers, but Phil never called. Fuzzy never called. Lumpy never called. (That’s Mickelson, Zoeller and Herron, for all you surname-challenged readers.)

This year, we’ve got this spanking new computer device called Phone-Disc. It’s supposed to list every phone number known to mankind, but I couldn’t find “Eldrick Woods” or “Fred Couples” in the darn thing. There was a “COUPLES, F” in Kalamazoo, Mich., but I don’t think that’s the one I was looking for.

So if the hotshot pros won’t come to me, I’ll come to them.

Augusta or bust!

On the road

Maybe it was the anticipation of finally getting to Augusta, but the drive didn’t seem that long. The trip to Georgia takes days, but this felt like hours. I was never sleepy, never bored, never tempted to run one of those slowpoke Chevettes off the passing lane.

Now … it’s too good to be true … I’ve reached my destination.

The road sign announcing “Augusta” is a deep, lush green, the same blazing hue I’ve seen on my TV screen each and every April. There are no billboards blaring “HOME OF THE MASTERS” or roadside vendors selling green golf balls, which is exactly as I’d expected. The genteel folks running the tournament would never allow something so crass.

And maybe all that anticipation wasn’t good, because, frankly, Augusta isn’t what I expected. The town isn’t bustling, the azaleas aren’t blooming, the breeze isn’t warm and gentle and … can it be?? … the grass isn’t green? It feels like March in the Midwest, not April in Augusta.

This being a spur-of-the-moment decision, I didn’t prepare well for the trip. I don’t know where anything is in Augusta. But I do know I’m hungry. I’ll eat lunch on Lincoln Street, Augusta’s main drag, and find out how to get to Augusta National.

Searching, searching …

The Road Haus Cafe is painted dark green, darker even than the color of Augusta National’s wavy 16th green. The menu, though, is somewhat disappointing. I wanted to order a pimento cheese sandwich, the staple at Augusta National during Masters week, but the cafe isn’t in the Masters spirit. It doesn’t serve pimento cheese sandwiches. There’s cheese everywhere — cheeseburger, cottage cheese, cheese curds — but no pimento cheese.

Lunch is filling, and it’s time to go to work. I turn to the waitress.

“Can you tell me where the golf course is?”

She is puzzled. “Golf course? In town? Linda, is there a golf course in town?”

Linda, hauling hash in the other aisle, says no. I guess they’re not golf fans, but how can they not know about the Masters?

Minutes laker, walking across the street, I see a well-groomed, middle-aged man in an antique shop wearing a green jacket. Masters champions wear green jackets. Could this be … Charles Coody, the 1971 Masters champ?

I approach.

“Excuse me, sir, are you a golfer?”

“I have golfed.”

“Can you tell me where the golf course is?”

“In Augusta? There’s no golf course here.”

Very strange. If that really was Mr. Coody, he’s been out in the Augusta sun too long.

Across the street again. What luck! A man wearing a sweatshirt with the word “GOLF” etched across its back is sitting in a local bar.

He must know where The Shark and Gentle Ben and The Golden Bear are this week. I enter Country Dave’s Saloon.

“Excuse me. Are you a golfer?”

“Sometimes.”

“Can you tell me where the golf course is?”

“What course?”

“Augusta National.”

(Thin smile.) “There is none.”

“There is none?”

“There is none. Not here. Not in this Augusta.”

It hits me. In the words of Roberto de Vicenzo, who lost the 1968 Masters after signing an incorrect scorecard, “What a stupid I am.”

I am ashamed and embarrassed. I am in Augusta, Wisconsin, not Augusta, Georgia!

The other Augusta

I’m not kidding. While looking to hook up with the freeway out of Eau Claire, I’ve taken a wrong turn down U.S. Highway 12 and ended up in the wrong Augusta — a quiet little town of 1,500 smack-dab in the middle of Dairyland.

What a stupid I am.

Well, as long as I’m here, I can still do some reporting.

Dennis Frank is the fellow in Country Dave’s. He’s from Fall Creek, the town up the road from Augusta, and is both a golfer and a golf fan, as his sweatshirt suggests.

“Yeah, I’ll watch some,” he says of the Masters TV coverage. “Hey, I’ve gotta see if Tiger Woods is going to win. Him or Nick Faldo.”

It turns out Augusta, Wis., isn’t much of a golf town. There’s no Augusta National here, not even an Augusta National Bank. The nearest golf course is in Osseo, 10 miles to the south. Frank and some others built a couple of holes on flat land out behind the high school and hoped to build more, but the idea never took off.

Augusta National North? Alister Mackenzie, who designed the real thing back in 1932, would not have approved.

The big event in Augusta, Wis., isn’t a golf tournament. It is, according to city clerk and treasurer Sandy Boettcher, Bean and Bacon Days, held on 4th of July weekend and featuring packed streets and a 300-unit parade. The event is named in honor of Bush’s Best Beans, which as a plant in Augusta and is the town’s largest employer.

The town’s notable sporting accomplishments come from the Augusta Beavers, who won the 1989 Wisconsin Division 6 high school football championship, and the Augusta Athletics town baseball team, which won the 1994 state championship.

Boettcher says Augustans are proud of their town. “It’s a nice little town; people come here to retire,” she says. She laughs and says City Hall occasionally gets calls from people wondering about the Masters — seriously.

Well, I can’t promise I’ll be back, now that I’ve looked at the map and know how to get to that other Augusta.

Guess I’ll just turn around, head back to the frozen north, and sit in front of the TV all weekend.

What a stupid I am.

—————–

Postscripts, nigh upon 20 years:

— I seriously did write a pre-Masters column for 10 consecutive years for the News-Tribune. One year, I stumbled across the phone number for 1959 Masters champion Art Wall, who was gracious and engaging in granting an interview. Wall died in 2010.

— If I’m not mistaken, this was my last byline and certainly my last column for the News-Tribune. I had by this time committed to taking a position at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and I remember vacillating about whether to invest a workday and then some on a lame-duck folly such as this. I did, and I’ve never regretted it, even though one of my closest Duluth golfing friends, who preferred his journalism direct and sober, told me post-publication that he was not amused.

— Within hours of publication, 21-year-old Tiger Woods had stolen my thunder with a 30 on the back nine at Augusta National — the one in Georgia — en route to a spectacular 12-shot victory over runner-up Tom Kite for his first of 14 major championships. I wonder where Tiger is today. …

— I have been back to the Augusta in Wisconsin once since 1997. Sadly, I have never been to the Augusta in Georgia.

Silver Creek Golf Club, Rochester: Pioneering and vanishing act

Lost golf courses, ,

Of the 135 verified lost golf courses in Minnesota (update: 248 as of January 2024), six very early renditions share a common, significant characteristic.

No, the correct answer is not “failure,” even if that is a technically accurate answer for almost any lost golf course.

These six courses, all of them shuttered by 1918 — well, those that had clubhouse doors or windows to shutter — shared this commonality: All bore seeds that were whisked away after the course’s demise and sprouted one or 10 or 100 miles away, helping give rise to the game of golf in Minnesota.

To wit:

Winona Golf Club was the state’s first lost golf course, a sliver of light that flickered for mere months in 1897. WGC led the next year to the establishment of Winona’s Meadow-Brook Golf Club, which in 1901 was host of the first Minnesota State Amateur tournament. Bryn Mawr Golf Club (1898-1910) in western Minneapolis was the Halley’s Comet of early lost courses, shining brightly before famously spawning first Minikahda GC in 1899 and then Interlachen CC in 1910). Roadside Golf Club (1897-1902) in St. Paul was Minnesota’s most female-friendly early course. Merriam Park (1900-1906) was, like Meadow-Brook and Bryn Mawr, a charter member of the Minnesota Golf Association.

The other member of the lost-course sextet similarly left its mark on Minnesota golf at the turn of the 20th century before dissolving in the year … well, danged if I know.

So much for historical precision. Onward …

The first known mention (by that I mean known by me) of golf in the southeastern Minnesota city of Rochester was made by the Rochester Post and Record of May 11, 1900: “There is no reason why Rochester should not have a golf club,” the newspaper story began, and reported that a group of 12 people had begun efforts to organize one.  Membership was to cost “$10 for a gentleman alone or $15 for lady and gentleman together.”

The story speculated that a grounds would be established on land owned by F.R. Van Dusen southwest of the city, in a pasture straddling the Zumbro River. Judging by later stories, however, it appears the Van Dusen grounds never were used for Rochester’s first course. Coincidentally, judging by an 1896 plat map, that site appears to be near the current Soldiers Field Golf Course grounds.

By late June 1900, the organization of Rochester’s first golf club was imminent. “The game of golf grows greater in popularity with an increasing number of Rochester people,” the Olmsted County Democrat reported on June 29. “The golf links between the State Hospital and St. John’s cemetery have seen more people in the last three weeks than at any other period in known history. … Golf is a most healthful form of exercise and is much enjoyed by all who have the leisure to play.”

A week later, a group of 23 people met at the home of milling company owner John A. Cole and organized the city’s first golf club. On July 6, 1900, the Post and Record and the Olmsted County Democrat both reported on the organization of the first golf club in Rochester.

“The ‘Silver Creek Golf Club’ is now firmly established in this city,” the Post and Record reported. “The foundation stone has been laid, and the nucleus is formed from which a flourishing and prosperous club will grow.

“The present links are situated about a mile from the city (remember, this is 1900 Rochester, population 6,843, not the current sprawl of 100,000-plus), just north of the Northwestern railroad tracks, and this side of the State hospital. At present, there are only five holes laid out, but owing to the constantly increasing membership, the club finds it necessary to lay out two or three more holes. …

“Never was a golf club formed under more favorable circumstances; never were members more enthusiastic and persevering. If this counts for any thing, as we know it does, then who can doubt the bright future of ‘The Silver Creek Golf club.’ ”

Yeah. Maybe, maybe not.

The club was so named because of its proximity to Silver Creek, which runs from east of Rochester into the city before emptying into the Zumbro River near Silver Lake. The course’s grounds are presumed to have lain near what is now 5th Street Northeast and 15th and 17th Avenues Northeast — east of Calvary Cemetery, which went by the name St. John’s Cemetery until 1940.

1896 plat map of Rochester, Minn., courtesy of John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota. Area inside red rectangle at right shows presumed approximate grounds of Silver Creek Golf Club. At the upper-left corner is downtown Rochester.

The first set of Silver Creek club officers made for a distinguished foursome in Rochester business and professional society. Cole was the founding president. Arthur F. Kilbourne, the club’s vice president, was superintendent of the Rochester State Hospital. Secretary John H. Kahler was a prominent Rochester hotelier; one of the businesses his family started still operates in downtown Rochester as The Grand Kahler Hotel. Treasurer George J. Stevens owned a carpet and window-hanging business.

Though the club’s founding members were well-to-do, its golf grounds were modest. “This pasture was maintained by a herd of sheep and a few goats with the greens given more attention by hand mowing,” wrote local golf historian James Gardner, the former longtime greens superintendent at Rochester Golf & Country Club, in 1988. The course “expanded” from five holes to six at some point.

Modesty aside, in its second season of operation, Silver Creek Golf Club helped make Minnesota golf history. On Aug. 29, 1901, representatives of seven golf clubs met in Winona and formed the Minnesota Golf Association. The founding clubs were Bryn Mawr and Minikahda of Minneapolis, Town & Country and Merriam Park of St. Paul, Tatepaha of Faribault, Meadow-Brook of Winona …

… and Silver Creek.

Silver Creek was referred to as Rochester Golf Club in Winona newspaper stories documenting the formation of the MGA and as “Rochester Club” in the minutes of the MGA meeting. But as sure as Jordan Spieth can putt, the Rochester club that was a founding MGA member had its grounds on the Silver Creek site — and was not Rochester Golf & Country Club, a point of confusion in some Minnesota golf quarters.

Rochester’s first golf club is referred to as Silver Creek in a St. Paul Globe story of Aug. 30, 1901, that reported on the formation of the MGA. The newspaper reported that “Cole” — presumably John A. Cole — was elected an MGA director. The minutes of the MGA meeting list “Ireland and Terry” as delegates of “Rochester Club” — and H.J. (Harry) Terry and W.W. Ireland also were listed as Silver Creek members in Rochester newspaper stories from 1900.

And then, poof. Almost as soon as Silver Creek Golf Course came onto the scene, it disappeared.

Or didn’t. Take your pick.

There may be more musty records in a vault somewhere, but advancing past 1901, I could not find a shred of firm evidence that Silver Creek Golf Club saw the dawn of 1902. An archivist’s search at the Olmsted County Historical Society revealed no mention of Silver Creek golf from 1902-15. I contacted three golf historians, including Gardner, and none could confirm that the course existed during that 1902-15 “dead period.”

Silver Creek, a nondescript stream as it runs through the eastern part of Rochester today, once lay alongside Rochester’s first golf course. (November 2016 photo)

The years 1915-17 marked a pivotal period in the development of Rochester golf. There are slightly different versions of stories afoot, but the essence is that Rochester Golf Club was formed, and play began on the club’s current site two miles west of downtown, known today as Rochester Golf & Country Club. Harry Turpie, professional at Red Wing Country Club, designed the original nine holes at the current site, and famed golf-course architect A.W. Tillinghast designed an expansion to 18 holes in the late 1920s. Today, RG&CC is one of Minnesota’s preeminent courses, having hosted the MGA State Amateur Championship five times.

And what of the Rochesterians who in 1900 pumped drives into Silver Creek or fanned mid-mashies into the cemetery? Those people were not one-year golf wonders. As with others at early Minnesota lost courses, many took up the game at new venues, and some became promoters and pioneers of the game.

Gardner confirmed that Silver Creek members Kilbourne, Ireland and Terry also were early Rochester Golf & Country Club members. Harold J. Richardson, a University of Minnesota law student in 1900 who “suffered a ‘swipe’ in the face with a golf stick” at Silver Creek, according to the Olmsted County Democrat, recovered to become a prominent attorney, moved to St. Paul, and had memberships at Town & Country Club, Minikahda, Somerset and White Bear Yacht Club.

Certainly, there were other Silver Creek members whose games emigrated to other courses. And so, Silver Creek joins a group of Minnesota lost golf courses that are gone but should not be forgotten.

POSTSCRIPT

Since my original posting, I have come across a few more references. Unfortunately, they make the history of early Rochester golf as crystal-clear as a dank day in London.

In order, with commentary and amateur analysis:

— The Minneapolis Tribune of Aug. 30, 1901, reported on the forming of the MGA in very similar fashion to the St. Paul Globe of the same date, and also referred to the Rochester Club as Silver Creek.

— The Minneapolis Journal of May 6, 1901, confuses the issue. “The local golf club, which has just been organized, has laid out its links in the southwestern part of the city, and the game promises to be a very popular one this summer.” The geographical reference is befuddling. Silver Creek was/is decidedly in the eastern part of Rochester. Unless Rochester’s first golfers abandoned the Silver Creek layout after the 1900 season and reorganized in 1901 in another location, perhaps on the Van Dusen land southwest of the city, there is a geographical contradiction at play here. And the “just been organized” reference also is confusing, because there was a Rochester club the year before, and the club still was referred to as Silver Creek later in 1901, when the MGA organized. Why would there be “Silver Creek” references in 1901 if the club had relocated?

— I was wrong about references to golf in Rochester vanishing in late 1901. Despite going through many issues of two Rochester newspapers from 1902 and 1903 and then 1914 to no avail, I did find a Minneapolis Journal story reporting on the 1903 MGA state tournament that reads in part, “Two new golf clubs, those of Rochester and St. Cloud, have been added to the state association during the last year.” There was no mention of Silver Creek in the Journal story.

— Yet that story seems to contradict an early document. In 1920, the MGA compiled a list of all member clubs, current and former. “Rochester Golf Club, Aug. 29, 1901,” the document reads, referencing its founding date as an MGA member. “Resigned 1902.”

Resigned. That’s a good word. I do believe I am resigned to not understanding what in the name of Francis Ouimet Rochester residents were doing with their club or clubs and its name or names from 1901 to 1903, not to mention beyond. Further information would, of course, be most welcome.

Seven founding MGA members – and one left by the roadside

Lost golf courses, ,

Minnesota golf history: On the evening of Aug. 29,1901, seven clubs became charter members of the Minnesota Golf Association when the organization convened in Winona for the first time.

Should have been eight.

Roadside got snubbed.

You might not know about Roadside Golf Club. But to channel Rumack to Elaine Dickinson in “Airplane!” — “Roadside, what is it?!” — that’s not important right now.

What is important — well, in a trivial sense, which of course makes no sense at all — is that, at 8 p.m. on that 1901 evening, seven clubs came together to form the MGA: Bryn Mawr of Minneapolis, Meadow-Brook of Winona, Town & Country Club and Merriam Park of St. Paul, Minikahda of Minneapolis, Tatepaha of Faribault (also spelled in some historical entries as Tapeta) and Rochester/Silver Creek (more on that course in a post coming soon).

One more club should have been invited to the party but never was. The St. Paul Globe of Aug. 30, 1901, explained:

“The Roadside club, of St. Paul, was not invited through misunderstanding,” the newspaper reported, “and the secretary was directed to notify that club of the action taken tonight.”

There is no indication from MGA records that Roadside ever joined the organization, and by 1903, the golf course was gone.

I suppose, almost 116 years later, this piece of clerical oversight is entirely inconsequential. But when I came across the Globe entry recently, I just found it curious, so I thought I would waste five minutes of your life that you’ll never get back with the revelation.

As you were.

P.S. 1: In case you’re truly interested in Roadside, Ms. Dickinson, a little bit about the place:

Roadside Golf Club, situated off Summit Avenue in what is now St. Paul’s Merriam Park East neighborhood,  was formed in May 1897 by members of St. Paul’s Town & Country Club, Minnesota’s first golf course. As the T&CC members decided to branch out and put another club on the map, they established Roadside 2.5 miles to the east. Its clubhouse address was listed as being on the 1100 block of Summit Avenue. The image below, an inset from an 1898 plat map of Hennepin and Ramsey County and held by the John Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota, shows the approximate location of Roadside Golf Club within the red boundary.

Though exact starting dates of Minnesota’s earliest golf courses (as opposed to golf clubs) can be debated, Roadside appears to have been among the first five courses established in the state. It was a 12-hole layout that prominently featured play from Town & CC’s female membership, and it lasted until 1903, when residential St. Paul expansion squeezed it out of existence.

P.S. 2: Below is a copy of the first page of the minutes of the first meeting of the Minnesota Golf Association, as held by the MGA. The minutes likely were not transcribed directly at the meeting but were re-recorded before 1910. Thanks to the MGA and Warren Ryan for permission to use.