Category Archives: Just plain old golf

Now available: “More! Gone.”

Golf history, Lost golf courses,

So many more lost golf courses, so many more stories to tell.

So why not? I decided to tell a few more, with quotes like this, one of many regarding a  colorful gentleman who put up a nine-hole course, designed by a Minnesota Golf Hall of Famer, on his ranch-slash-farm-slash-racecourse in Pine County:

“He drove a 16- cylinder Cadillac … big as a railroad train.”

My second lost-course book, “More! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, Part II,” is finished and on its way to Amazon’s website via its KDP publishing platform. (If you’re interested in self-publishing, KDP is a great venue for it.)

I’m expecting Amazon to activate a link to “More! Gone.” by the end of the weekend, or maybe earlier. I’ll publish that link here as soon as it’s available.

UPDATE, July 16: The book is now available for ordering on Amazon. Here is the link:

More! Gone. is available here.

An Amazon link to my first lost-course book, “Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999,” is below, and below that, a list of cities and towns with lost courses covered in the second book.

Order Fore! Gone. here.

Cities with courses in “More! Gone.”:

Ada

Albert Lea

Cass Lake

Cold Spring

Deephaven

Donehower / Dakota

Fergus Falls

Foley

Foreston

Hastings

Hinckley

Lakeville

Luverne

Madelia

Marshall

Milaca

Minneapolis

Oakdale

Pokegama Township, Pine County

Pine City

Princeton

Red Lake Falls

Richmond

Rochester

Rush City

St. Augusta

St. Cloud

St. Joseph

St. Paul

Sauk Rapids

Shorewood

Twin Valley

Winona

And one outlier.

 

Jimmy Johnston and the 1929 U.S. Amateur: One more thing

Golf history

Watching this year’s U.S. Amateur wind down to the final match (Devon Bling vs. Viktor Hovland) at Pebble Beach Golf Links, it’s hard for me to take my eyes off the unrelenting beauty of the golf course and Monterey Bay. It’s also hard for me, when the coverage turns to the final hole, to take my eyes off the spot, a little more than halfway up No. 18, from where St. Paul’s Jimmy Johnston hit the Shot on the Rocks that helped propel him to victory in the 1929 U.S. Amateur.

I wrote about Johnston’s historic shot in last week’s St. Paul Pioneer Press — twincities.com/2018/08/11/shot-on-the-rocks-st-paul-golfer-jimmy-johnstons-quest-to-win-a-major-championship/ — and keep thinking about Johnston and his caddie standing on the rocks 89 years ago and sizing up the recovery shot that led to a par and the halve of the hole in Johnston’s championship match against Oscar Willing (Johnston ultimately won, 4 and 3).

Oh, about that caddie …

A phone call last week from a Johnston family member called my attention to a piece of Pebble Beach-U.S. Amateur trivia.

The fellow standing alongside Johnston in the 1929 final was a Pebble Beach caddie named Dede Gonsalves. When the U.S. Amateur returned to Pebble in 1961, a 21-year-old from Upper Arlington, Ohio, arrived at the tournament and, according to the story I was told, went searching for the best Pebble Beach caddie he could find.

The golfer’s name was Jack Nicklaus. He went on to win the tournament — and, of course, a few more. The caddie Nicklaus had been lined up with was one Dede Gonsalves — the same man who had looped for Johnston en route to the championship 32 years earlier.

Below, a photo of Gonsalves and Nicklaus in the 1961 U.S. Amateur, taken from the pages of Neil Hotelling’s book “Pebble Beach: The Official History.” (Original photo credit PBC-Graham/Brooks)

St. Cloud golf: A picture is worth a thousand … pars?

Golf history,

I could stare at this old golf photo for hours. Well, minutes, for sure, and that’s still saying something.

The image was forwarded to me by Tom Steman, university archivist and professor at St. Cloud State University. He dug this out of the SCSU catacombs or more likely old folders and passed it along to me after the two of us had a long discussion about the likely location of the lost course on the St. Cloud State campus.

The photo is not from the campus course. Steman noted, “We have the print of this image that appeared in a pamphlet/booklet advertising St. Cloud State that dates circa 1919.  The published photo appears in a section that shows images from around St. Cloud.  The caption simply says ‘Golf Links.’ ”

In all likelihood, this photo is of St. Cloud Country Club, perhaps in its inaugural season of 1919 (and more than a decade after the birth and death of St. Cloud Golf Club), which was not the same place. I have no other information or speculation to offer.

No more words. Take a look and, I hope, enjoy. (You can click on it for a larger view.)

One firm request: The photo is courtesy of the St. Cloud State University Archives and needs to be credited as such if anyone is inclined to share it.

Midland Hills: More from the drop ceiling

Golf history,

When I interviewed Midland Hills Country Club course superintendent Mike Manthey in mid-March for my St. Paul Pioneer Press story about the historic find in the drop ceiling, I quickly realized I was not only onto a singular tale but was talking with someone keenly familiar with the history and workings of classic golf architecture.

Inside page from St. Paul Pioneer Press sports section of April 29, 2018, showing photos from the current Midland Hills Country Club and photos from the recently discovered original blueprint of Seth Raynor’s planned layout for the course. (Photos for Pioneer Press courtesy of Midland Hills)

That made the conversation all the more compelling to me. Classic golf design is a particular interest of mine — it isn’t No. 1 on my list but is sort of a 1AAAAAA golf interest next to my admittedly peculiar fascination with Minnesota’s lost golf courses — and it was clear Manthey knew his stuff.

I follow on Twitter a handful of sharp knives, local and national, who tweet about golf architecture and course maintenance, both classic and modern. A few of my favorites are Bill Larson at Town & Country Club, Chris Tritabaugh at Hazeltine, Gary Deters at St. Cloud Country Club and, nationally, Anthony Pioppi, whose prolific pen has covered subjects including the history of Minikahda Golf Club.

And now, Manthey. The Faribault, Minn., native and former course superintendent at the A.W. Tillinghast-designed Golden Valley Golf Club, Manthey is not only a good Twitter follow, his Midland Hills Turf Blog is revelatory for both its coverage of the renovation/restoration that’s in store for Seth Raynor-designed Midland Hills and for its insight on classic golf course architecture.

I saved a few outtakes from my conversation with Manthey. Didn’t work them into my Pioneer Press story because I was already treading on thin newsprint ice over the length of what did make it into the paper. My questions, paraphrased or conversely put into long form, are in bold.

Meh. Capital M, capital E, capital H. (Me being facetious.) Why should anyone who isn’t a paid Midland Hills member care about the discovery — a blueprint of original plans for Raynor’s MH layout and its irrigation system?

Manthey: “It is a significant find not just for Midland Hills but for architecture and for Seth Raynor (historians). … It directly ties the Seth Raynor heritage to Midland Hills forever. We knew we had that connection to Seth Raynor, which is significant in the architectural world, but we never had anything physical. We always thought … everything was just lost over time. A lot of clubs have a lot of historical photos and documentation, but not many have the original drawings, or a copy of them.”

How closely will the Raynor blueprint be followed in the impending renovation/restoration of Midland Hills led by Raynor expert Jim Urbina?

Manthey: “How much of that map will be restored, that’s hard to say. Golf courses evolve way more than people realize, because when you play a golf course daily, year after year, you don’t see that change because it happens so gradually. It’s a living, breatihng thing, and it moves. So some of these (course features) have changed so much that I don’t know if we’re really capable of getting them all back, but for us to be able to give (Urbina) that original drawing, it expands his creativity corridor exponentially. It’s quite rare.”

Most notable, in my mind, were Manthey’s ruminations on the evolution of golf and golf courses since famed architects like Raynor plied their craft in the 1920s and ’30s.

What’s to be gained from a restoration of a classically designed golf course?

Manthey: “We do know that classic architecture, whether It was Raynor or (Alister) MacKenzie or (Donald) Ross, their strategy was created off of angles, angles of play, so they gave you a lot of width off the tee, and that width created playability, but then the angles created the strategy.

“If the fairways were almost twice as wide as they are now, the balls would roll and create an angle that was extremely difficult into the green.  Over time, with the planting of trees in the ’50s and the corridors shrinking and fairways shrinking, now the ball doesn’t go that far off line. So those angles are reduced. So the golf course almost becomes more one-dimensional. You can only play it down the middle. Well, we don’t really understand that game of angles anymore because it’s not very common in golf.

“If you look at the top golf courses in the country, a lot of them have been restored. A lot of what’s been restored is widening out those corridors and re-creating those angles into the greens, which was the original architecture.

“People are learning more about the history of their golf courses and wanting that original strategy back.”

 

 

 

Peter Wong photo

Golf in Marshall, Part II: You won’t believe how far back it goes

Golf history, Lost golf courses

Peter Wong photo

——————-

History can reveal itself in unusual ways.

Backward, for instance.

My path to uncovering what was almost certainly the first golf course in southwestern Minnesota, and one of the first 20 in all of Minnesota, was traveled in a decidedly backward direction. A few sideways steps here and there, but mostly backward.

If you can hang with me, you’re about to endure a journalistic storytelling practice known as “burying the lede.”  Actually, it’s more like journalistic malpractice. Editors hate it. Burying the lede involves taking the most compelling information available and plunking it so deep into the story that it stands a darn good chance of getting lost.

Well, “lost” is what I do, after all. So here I go, burying away with that lede. Editors, go ahead and hate me. I’d like to think that in the end, the excavation will be worth it.

The best way I can think of to tell this story is, well, backward.

————–

Late last year, Randy LaFoy, a fellow Minnesota golf history buff who researches courses that were aided by Works Progress Administration labor during the Great Depression, told me about a golf course site he had noticed in a historic aerial photo of the city of Marshall. That led me, albeit months later, to a post about the “rebirthing” of Marshall Golf Club, which moved its grounds from the northwestern part of the city to the southwest in 1941.

It’s a fairly standard relocation story, except it got me to thinking more about Marshall Golf Club. The bulk of the Internet entries on the club, and even the club’s web site, state that Marshall GC was founded in 1942. That’s true, in the sense of the club’s current iteration (with nine additional holes opened in 1972). But I had to wonder if there wasn’t an earlier version of club history, maybe even pre-1940, when the good folks of the Lyon County seat first played golf on the northwest edge of town.

A few phone calls ultimately led me to Ron Labat, a longtime Marshall Golf Club member who perhaps has the best working knowledge of the club’s history. Some years ago, Labat shrewdly recovered and preserved some old club documents shortly before the clubhouse was remodeled and the documents destroyed.

Labat was aware that the club’s origins dated to before 1940. He has a copy of what is called Marshall Golf Club’s original Certificate of Incorporation, dated April 24, 1930, and registered in Lyon County. Labat said annual dues ranged from $10 to $50, and he included this wonderful nugget that accompanied the 1930 “establishment” of the club: “The bylaws said indebtedness (of the club) could not exceed one dollar,” Labat said.

Cool. So Marshall GC dates to 1930.

Except …

… Being interested in finding out more about the club’s establishment, I spent a couple of minutes   a bundle of hours at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, spooling and unspooling microfilm of Lyon County newspapers. The year 1930 revealed these entries on Marshall Golf Club from the News-Messenger:

April 13, 1930: Story headlined “Golfers Improve Greens and Prepare For Busy Season” and mentions sand was being delivered for the greens at Marshall Golf Club.

June 6, 1930: “Local interest in golf is increasing for the1930 season, with 60 members registered.”

Well, fine, but those stories implied to me that 1930 was not Marshall Golf Club’s first season, either.

Now unspooling the 1929 reel …

June 28, 1929: “William Wik made a record score on the Marshall golf course Tuesday, when he shot a 33, two strokes below par. On his second round of the nine holes, his score was a 37, giving him a 70 for the 18 holes.”

Nice round, Bill. (Is it OK if I call you Bill?) But I bet the course wasn’t established in 1929, either.

How about the 1928 spool?

June 8, 1928: “Golfers Plan A Tombstone Tourney Here.” Story about an upcoming tournament at Marshall, featuring a format more complicated than most Google algorithms. (I’ll not try to explain it.)

OK, now I’m going to keep digging backward until I really find out when Marshall Golf Club started.

July 1, 1927: Headline: “Monte Golfers Win.” (That’s short for Montevideo.) William Wik of Marshall shoots the low score, an 81, at Marshall course. (Nice round, Bill, but I bet you can do better. Keep plugging away.)

Somewhat exasperated by the continued retreat through the years, I decide to start retreating two years at a time …

Feb. 6, 1925: Annual meeting of Marshall Golf Club is detailed in the newspaper. George Lowe is elected president. A $10 admission fee for non-resident members. 64 members. “… Considerable money was expended last year on the grounds and club house, and the course is in fairly good condition for after but one year’s work. … Additional traps and bunkers will be built.”

Well, there’s a strong hint — right? — that Marshall Golf Club dates to 1924. And the May 16, 1924, News-Messenger proves especially revealing:

“Increased interest is being taken locally in the game,” the newspaper reports, “and with the improvements being made at the local course more practice and better play is noticeable.

“The new Marshall course is being worked into better shape. Greens are in fair condition and the course is being well marked. A large mower has been added recently to the equipment and new turf will be noticeable by next spring from mowings made this spring. A club house has been erected which will provide storage room and locker space for 24 members. … The new course has a total length of 2,792 yards negotiated in par in 36.”

“New course.” There you go. Marshall Golf Club goes all the way back to 1924. Makes a lot of sense, actually. That would place MGC’s founding solidly in line with a large group of other southwestern Minnesota courses that were established in that era, including Worthington (1919), Olivia (1920) and Canby (1920) and dozens more. The first club of all in southwestern Minnesota has generally been regarded to be Interlaken Golf Club of Fairmont, in 1917 and/or 1919, according to conflicting information on the club’s own web site. (Note, 9/16/17: Graceville Golf Club in Big Stone County appears also to date to 1917.)

Anyway, the search for Marshall Golf Club’s founding is beginning to tread on historic ground.

And then the next passage in the 1924 News-Messenger story drops the bombshell.

“The course,” the newspaper reported, “occupies practically the same ground used by Marshall’s first Golf club which flourished in 1900 and 1901, after which the game was abandoned in Marshall until the organization of the present club four years ago. The club has a membership of about 60.”

Whoa. That’s a passage almost beyond belief. Whether formally organized as Marshall Golf Club or not, golf in this southwestern Minnesota city dates not to 1942, not to 1930, not to 1927 or ’25 or ’24 …

… but to 1900 or 1901.

I have to say I was floored by that last passage. If true, golf in Marshall predated golf anywhere else in that corner of the state not by two or three years, but by more than 15. This, if credible, is a historic revelation.

Back to the microfilm.

As my late, great mother might have exclaimed, excuse my French. But damned if the 1924 story wasn’t right.

I scrolled through about the first seven months of 1900 editions of the News Messenger and found no references to local golf. But 1901 was a different story.

May 17, 1901: “The golf craze is about to hit Marshall, and will probably hit it hard. A number of would-be golfers who don’t as yet know a golf stick from a hay rake have been talking golf the past week and are now preparing enthusiastically to order outfits and lay out a ground — or is it ‘green’ or ‘links.’ The ground now being considered is on the east side of the river, and nine links will be made to start with.  … Soon the members will be wrestling with the golfer’s jargon, and the uninitiated will be wondering at foozles, bunkers, tees, drives, caddies, etc.”

(Foozle. That’s a new one to me, even after 35 years of writing about golf. Definition: “a clumsy or botched attempt at something, especially a shot in golf.”)

May 24, 1901: “A golf club was organized last Saturday evening at a meeting held in Dr. Van Tassel’s office. Mr. Van Tassel was elected president and Julius Humphrey secretary. A committee on grounds … was instructed to look for grounds at once, and ascertain the probable expense of securing and preparing them. The grounds now being considered are the railroad land on each side of the Northwestern, beyond the Marshall Milling Company’s plant.

“… The membership will be limited, and ladies will be honorary members, their number also being limited. Soon the natives will be wondering at the antics of the golfers, and wondering where the fun is in chasing a ball all over the prairie with a crooked stick.”

June 7, 1901: “The golf club is about ready to begin golfing.”

Aug. 9, 1901: “The golf links continue to attract a number of golfers every day and evening. Bert Welsford has lowered the score twice this week, putting the best score yet made on the course at 57, most of the golfers playing around 75.”

Golf in Marshall. In 1901. It’s true.

Whether or not there was a formally organized Marshall Golf Club in 1901 — the newspaper clips imply it but don’t make it clear — Marshall now occupies a historic perch in Minnesota golf history. My records show only 12 courses in state history having been in operation before 1901: Town & Country Club, Roadside and Merriam Park, all of St. Paul; Winona GC and Meadow-Brook of Winona; Burton Private Course of Deephaven; Bryn Mawr and The Minikahda Club of Minneapolis; Northland of Duluth; Lafayette Club of Minnetonka Beach; Silver Creek of Rochester; and Tatepaha of Faribault. (Update, 2020: The first St. Cloud Country Club should also be on this list, so make it 13.)

Take a bow, Marshall, as the now-presumed birthplace of golf in southwestern Minnesota.

Postscripts:

— I didn’t find in the 1901 newspaper clips any mentions of the golf course shutting down, but I don’t have reason to doubt the 1924 story suggesting it.

— It’s likely that the course didn’t first reopen in 1924 but in fact even earlier than that. A blurb in the Minnesota Golfer Magazine 2012 Directory — Marshall Golf Club was honored as 2012 Minnesota Golf Association Club of the Year — reported that “the club in Marshall was in operation as early as 1922, according to the April 7 edition of Marshall’s News Messenger that year.” (I’m done unspooling on Marshall for now and won’t attempt to verify or disprove.)

— I don’t intend for any of this to reflect negatively on Ron Labat’s documentation of Marshall Golf Club’s history. Matter of fact, if Labat hadn’t preserved the documents that he did, the club would be much poorer for it. As for his Certificate of Incorporation being dated 1930 and not earlier, my guess is that the certificate pointed toward some kind of more formal organization, or reorganization, of the golf club within the city of Marshall.

— April 2020: I’m confused over the reports of the club’s 1901 site, reported as east of the river in the May 14 story but on either side of the railroad tracks and near the Marshall Milling Company in the May 21 story. From what I can gather, the latter site would have been at the north end of what is now downtown, near the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office — and decidedly not east of the Redwood River. If that’s true, the 1901 and 1924 sites would not have been all that far away from each other.

Can someone please help me clear this up?!