Less “Fore!” More “Gone.”

No need for much editorial commentary on this one. Golf courses, for better or worse, come and go — although it is disconcerting to see this many of them going.

Links Magazine rehashes numbers issued by the National Golf Foundation: “According to the NGF, only 14 courses (in 18-hole equivalents) opened in the U.S. last year, while 157.5 closed.”

I don’t have exact numbers in Minnesota, but the proportion in the past 13 years has to be similar, if not worse. I know of four Minnesota courses that saw their final rounds of golf in 2013 (Parkview in Eagan, Sauk Centre Country Club, and Lakeview and Red Oak in Mound), and I know of zero new courses that opened. (Update, Feb. 18, 2014: Sundance Golf & Bowl in Dayton and Elm Creek in Plymouth also have closed.)

In 50 years, after I’m long gone, someone could have some pretty solid material on hand for the sequel to “Fore! Gone.”

Here is a link to the Links Magazine post on the NGF numbers:

http://www.linksmagazine.com/the-buzz-article/of-courses

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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.

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