Tag Archives: lost golf courses

St. Cloud and neighbors III: Wildwood, Hillside

Lost golf courses,

Hate to break it to you, Stearns County and neighbors, but you were late to the party.

Fashionably late, let’s say. Not excessively late. But still, late.

While golf boomed in Minnesota in the 1920s — more than 120 courses were built in that decade, more than any other — Stearns County and neighbors mostly idled their Model T’s when it came to puttering out to the golf course.

In 1928, as far as I can tell, there were only three golf courses within 30 miles of St. Cloud: St. Cloud Country Club, established 1919; Little Falls Country Club, 1921; and Clearwater CC at Annandale, 1925. The short-lived campus course at St. John’s in Collegeville (1925-33) hardly can be included, nor can the three- or six-hole concoction at Rockville (1926). (Correction, July 2018: There were at least four. I hadn’t included the fairgrounds course at Princeton, which I learned about after this post was published.) The year 1929 brought more courses — Koronis Hills in Paynesville and three others, which I’ll write about shortly. A 1930 state golf guide lists courses in Eden Valley and Kimball, but I couldn’t find mentions of those clubs in 1929 or ’30 issues of their local newspapers.

Maybe there were more courses around St. Cloud in the early years of Minnesota golf, and feel free to upbraid me if you know of one.  But in any event, the area would not have been your house-afire hotbed of the game in the 1920s.

As bereft of golf as the area was in that period, the final year of the ’20s and first three years of the ’30s brought something most unusual — a golf micro-boom around St. Cloud and Stearns County. By my count, 11 more courses came on board in those three years.

Hello goodbye. Ten of the 11 are now lost courses, Koronis Hills being the only exception.

What follows in this post and the next few are glances at St. Cloud-area lost courses. They are split fairly neatly between west of the Mississippi River and east of it, so that’ll be my dividing line, too. Side note: Because I’m within chip-and-putt range of having identified 200 lost courses in Minnesota, I’ll assign each course a number as I approach — and then reach — that milestone.

I’ll start with the western group. taken in order of their year (or estimated year) of establishment. One caveat: Despite dozens upon dozens of attempts to reach folks who might have had firsthand knowledge of these places, I came up almost universally empty.

Wildwood Golf Course, 1929 (lost course No. 192)

Eight miles west of downtown St. Cloud lies the city of St. Joseph, prominently known as the home of the College of St. Benedict. (Yes, there are more Saints in Stearns County than on the favored side of the pearly gates.) And somewhere near St. Joseph, there once was a golf course.

“A lot of interest is being shown in the St. Joseph golf course,” the St. Cloud Times reported on Aug. 2, 1929. “The nine hole course will be known as the Wildwood golf course. There are nine sporty holes with sand, green and fairways. This is something new for St. Joe and the outlook for a large membership is good.”

Membership fee was $5, and a nine-hole greens fee cost 50 cents. “It looks good to go past the course which is located on the very edge of the village and see it dotted with enthusiasts,” the Times article concluded.

But which edge? Judging by a map of St. Joseph and its spasmodic boundaries, the “edge of the village” could have meant any of about 350 different places.

Here’s a wild guess, and the connections are admittedly thin. But I can offer no more than unfettered speculation at this point, so here it is:

Two miles west of St. Joseph, Wildwood Park lies alongside Kraemer Lake. Two miles north of St. Joe, there is a street named Wildwood Drive. Pure coincidence, most likely, and so is this: The Watab River runs near each of the aforementioned Wildwood locations. In between, the river nudges the western edge of the city, near Millstream Park. Just south of that park, across Minnesota 75, is a triangular-shaped plot of open farmland. The Watab runs along the northwestern edge of that plot. And a 1938 aerial photo of that triangular plot shows faint, possible signs of what could have been a golf course, with distinctive white dots that could have been sand greens, albeit their edges having become “fuzzy.” Which follows, if a golf course there had closed a few years before. All of the Wildwood connections at least hint the course could have been nearby.

Threadbare enough? That’s my theory, and I’m going with it.

The city of St. Joseph and its western edge in 1938. The light, triangular area near the top includes white spots that might have been sand greens on the lost Wildwood golf course. (John Borchert Map Library photo, University of Minnesota)

The Wildwood course had a membership of 30 in 1931, according to the St. Cloud Times, but it probably closed shortly after that. It did not, however, go down without a turf fight. In 1930, as St. Cloud contemplated building a municipal course that would become known as Hillside, a letter writer to the St. Cloud Times advocated for the new muni by referencing “people who drive to St. Joseph and play golf in a pasture.”

One O.D. Jaren of St. Joseph was not amused.

“I do take exception to the word ‘pasture’ as terminology for our location,” Jaren wrote in a Feb. 15, 1930, rebuttal in the Times. “… Some of the greatest golfers in the country (not including myself) have learned the game on a cow pasture course, such as we have here.

“We are not so fortunate as St. Cloud to have donations made to improve our location but such parties who came up here were more than welcome and with the improvements we plan for next year (from our $5.00 yearly fee) we hope to have more of our St. Cloud friends in with us and can assure all that they can enjoy a sporty game even tho a cow or horse has added an occasional hazard.”

Hillside Golf Course, 1930-45

Mr. Jaren’s protest notwithstanding, St. Cloud won out. Hillside Golf Course, one mile west of the Mississippi River on the south side of the city, opened on July 26, 1930, and had a decent run, through the 1945 season and probably outlasting Wildwood by a decade.

Hillside was a nine-hole course redesigned in 1937 by Hugh Vincent Feehan, better known as the original architect of O’Shaughnessy Stadium on the University of St. Thomas campus in St. Paul and original planner of the International Peace Garden near Dunseith, N.D.

1938 aerial photo of Hillside Golf Course. The course was west of Minnesota 75, just east of North Star Cemetery, and partly on what is now Calvary Hill Park. (University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library)

I won’t write much here about the Hillside course, mostly because I already did in “Fore! Gone.” But I was graced recently with a memory of the course from Ray Galarneault of St. Cloud, who caddied and played the course, including one day in Hillside’s final season.

“I was putting out on the eighth green at Hillside,” Galarneault said, “when sirens went off to say the Japanese had surrendered in August 1945.”

Club-and-ball photo by Peter Wong.

Next: West on 23.

 

St. Cloud and neighbors II: Short a few holes at Rockville

Lost golf courses,

Add “big rockpile” to the list of features occupying land that once was part of Minnesota golf, joining the likes of “elementary school,” “Target store parking lot” and “international airport runway.”

Rockville, Minn., is a city of 2,500 situated 10 miles southwest of St. Cloud on Minnesota Highway 23. It earned the Flintstonian name because of “granite rock formations on nearby streams,” Wikipedia notes, and the city of Rockville website chimes in with “granite is the heart of our city.”

John Clark was a prominent businessmen in Stearns County in the early 1900s. A Scottish immigrant who lived in St. Cloud, he and business partner J.B. McCormack opened a granite quarry at the southwestern edge of Rockville in 1907. That same year, he secured a contract to provide 250,000 pounds of stone for use in building the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Clark’s plot in Rockville consisted of 32 acres, according to a 1925 plat map, and on it he built a two-story house of pink granite from his quarry. Now known as the Clark and McCormack Quarry House, it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Clark and McCormack House, Rockville, Minn.(Joe Bissen photo)

Not that I am overly interested in Clark’s house, despite its distinguished appearance from the corner of Broadway and Pine. I visited Rockville in early May to try to quarry more information from a clip from the Minneapolis Tribune of May 16, 1926.

“Golf Club Organized By Rockville Players,” read the headline.

“Plans are being executed here to construct a six-hole golf course on the Clark estate south of town and organization of the Rockville Golf club is being completed,” the story opened. “The club started last season with three holes. Extreme improvements of the course will be made this season, as the interest in golf develops. The members signed up include Alex Milne, Bob Davidson, Robert Theis, Joseph Rausch, Dominick Rausch, Albert Hansen, Donald Clark, Gordon Clark, Herbert Schneider, Charles Johnson, Arthur Weisman, Alex Clark, Albert Rorthstein and Edward Taufen.”

John Clark, the granite magnate, had died the year before. It isn’t known whether he was a golfer, but as a Scottish immigrant, that certainly is a possibility, plus a possibility that he passed on an affinity for the game to his sons Donald, Gordon and Alex of the Rockville Golf Club. Other members of the golf club were associated with the granite industry, I was told at the Stearns County History Museum.

I never did find any more information, in Rockville, in other newspaper stories or at the museum, as to whether Rockville Golf Club ever expanded to six holes, much less nine or (highly unlikely) 18. An aerial photograph from 1938, the earliest available, shows no sign of a golf course on or near the Clark estate, though there is open land south of the house.

And there’s a big rockpile. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got on Rockville’s lost almost-golf course. Honestly, I don’t even know if the rockpile I saw from Rauch Road, in back of the Clark house, was part of the former golf grounds. When I add it all up, I really can’t count this as an actual lost golf course.

The rockpile.

(Footnote: The three lost-course sites mentioned in the opening paragraph are in Mound, St. Paul and Bloomington.)

Next: Lost, west of the river.

 

 

 

 

Who was Bim, and why was he here? (It’s not a mystery.)

Lost golf courses, ,

William Lovekin, long-deceased and itinerant Midwestern golf professional, built himself a solid résumé: accomplished player, longtime teacher and one-time (at least) course designer.

It also was said of Lovekin that he was well-schooled on golf club design. I have little doubt that’s true. In that regard, however, I would submit he can’t be considered a visionary.

Asterisk: small sample size.

The name of W.R. (William) Lovekin, better known as “Bim,”  is referenced in many old publications, and even a handful of modern ones. But the only one that I know of that reveals Lovekin’s character in any depth appeared in the May 14, 1932, edition of the Minneapolis Tribune. Keep in mind that Lovekin designed and built golf clubs with hickory shafts:

“There is a steady return to wooden-shafted irons throughout the country if Bim Lovekin, popular professional at Golden Valley, knows his clubs and golf, and he has a reputation for both,” the Tribune story began. “During the first Minneapolis league match last Wednesday at Golden Valley, Bim discoursed at length on the movement back to the hickory.

” ‘It is significant and pertinent to note that both Walter Hagen and Horton Smith have returned to wooden-shafted irons and are pushing them,’ offered Lovekin. ‘It is also to be observed that fully 60 per cent of the outstanding players throughout the country have been going the same way.

” ‘The general opinion is that irons with iron shafts were pretty much of a fad, but they have outlived much of their usefulness. …’ ”

Bim wasn’t exactly prescient on this one. Hickory-shafted irons (yes, an oxymoron, like metal woods) went the way of the horseless carriage, while steel became the shaft of choice.

The effort here is not to tarnish Bim Lovekin’s reputation, for we all have at some point supported bass-ackward notions, haven’t we? The anecdote is offered only as a small window into golf’s past.

Back to Bim Lovekin. Nine months prior, he had ventured 155 miles west of Golden Valley to Minneota, a Lyon County city of just over 900 residents, some of whom were expressing an interest in organizing a golf club and building a golf course.

Minneota Golf Club was established in late July 1931, with the Minneota Mascot reporting on July 31 of that year that the group, with Dr. R.J. Lundgren as president, was set to begin work on a 55-acre plot three miles south of downtown. The land, just west of the Hemnes church, was owned by Hans Teigland, where, according to the Mascot, “a very sporty course can be laid out there without much trouble.”

That’s where Lovekin came in. He surveyed Teigland’s property and laid out nine holes covering 2,767 yards, with a par of 35.

He also agreed with, or maybe even fostered, the Mascot’s assessment of the new golf course.

” ‘It is a mighty sporty course,’ Mr. Lovekin said, ‘and it’s one where good shots will be rewarded and bad ones penalized. There are natural hazards in abundance, and it’s a course you won’t get tired of playing.’ ”

1938 aerial photo of presumed site of Minneota Golf Club. Golf course site would have been on the left side of this photo, with County Highway 3 running north-south on the right side and the south branch of the Yellow Medicine River farther right (east). Best guess is that routings of many holes roughly followed the ravine that ran through the course. University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library photo.
Current photo, with Minneota at top and approximate area of golf course in maroon rectangle. (USGS)

It’s worth noting that Lovekin likely had a handle on what constituted a good golf course. He had played around the Midwest, and the Golden Valley Golf and Country Club that employed him had its course designed by famed course architect A.W. Tillinghast.

The first tee at Minneota Golf Club was at the southeastern edge of the course, where players embarked on a 452-yard par 5. The course also included six par 4s, ranging in length from 285 to 440 yards, and two par 3s of 150 and 155 yards.

The course featured willow trees, hills and four crossings of a ravine. Three of the holes were doglegs. “Those who traversed the course predict that a lot of balls are likely to be lost through the fence when short-cuts are attempted,” the Mascot reported.

Charter members of Minneota Golf Club paid dues of $10. The Mascot reported by way of comparison that Lovekin’s Golden Valley club charged dues of $110 and an annual membership fee of $400.

At Minneota Golf Club’s outset, no greens fees were charged. “Expenses are being kept to the minimum in launching the course here,” the Mascot reported, “and the intention is that people who have not played golf before be given an opportunity to do so at no cost whatever in order to stimulate interest in the game. An ideal course can be arranged within the next few years, but for a ‘starter’ only the simplest of preparations will be under taken.”

Minneota Golf Club did not last forever. My best guess is that, like three other lost courses in Lyon County — at Russell, Cottonwood and Tracy — it was abandoned by the early 1940s, which would match the timeline for many other lost courses in southwestern Minnesota. A 1932 Minneapolis Tribune ad from Minneota GC solicited purchase of a mower. An April 1936 entry in the Minneota Mascot referenced the club, with Dr. C.E. Eastwood as president and Carl Strand as secretary. I found no later references to the club. Golf in Minneota reappeared in 1964 with the opening of Countryside Golf Club, on the western edge of the city.

More of Lovekin’s story deserves to be told. The native Scotsman’s bio included stops at no fewer than eight clubs: Rockford, Ill. (1906), Woodmont of Milwaukee (1907-14), Fox River of Green Bay, Wis. (1921-26), Ozaukee of Milwaukee (1925), Golden Valley (1928-36), Montevideo (1937-38), New Ulm (1939) and Worthington, where he was employed until his death in 1952.

Lovekin had the unusual distinction of playing in two U.S. Opens 24 years apart — in 1906 and 1930 — and won the 1922 Wisconsin State Open. A 1972 column in the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D., reported that Lovekin had been among the professionals at Worthington who had worked with an up-and-coming player named Joel Goldstrand, who would matriculate to the University of Houston, then the PGA Tour, then a career as Minnesota’s most prolific golf course designer, with around 50 courses to his credit, most of them in Minnesota.

Lovekin, meanwhile, was credited with having designed 18 other courses as of the 1931 Mascot story. I haven’t run across any other mentions of courses he designed, but regardless, he did leave a mark on the state’s golf history.

 

Albert Lea, Part II: A little recreation, a little history

Lost golf courses,

George Klukow and Oliver Flesche had the right idea, if you ask me.

In early 1930, Klukow and Flesche launched a golf course just north and west of the Albert Lea city limits, about a mile north of the since-closed Albert Lea Country Club. Their intent seemed clear, reading between the lines of an Albert Lea Tribune story from May 14, 1931.

“This is the kind of course that the city has needed for some time,” read one sentence in the Tribune.

In other words, the kind of course that everyone could play. A public course.

Until 1931, Albert Lea’s only golf courses (yes, I wrote courses, plural, and I’ll get to that) had been private, with Albert Lea CC standing prominently in southeastern Minnesota. But as it was with most country clubs, membership there was an impossible financial reach for the Toms, Dicks and Olavs of the day.

That’s why I liked Klukow and Flesche’s idea — make golf available to everyone in Albert Lea. Their 1931 creation likely was one of the first three or four daily-fee golf courses in southeastern Minnesota.

To boot, they had another excellent idea in naming for the course. Perhaps in looking to appeal to a less formal side of the game, Klukow and Flesche chose a name devoid of pretense.

“Recreation Golf Course Open to Public Tomorrow,” read a headline in the May 2, 1931, Albert Lea Tribune.

“Yielding to the increased demand of players the Recreation golf links will be open to the public tomorrow,” the story began. More details followed: the course would be open to the public, would consist of nine holes, and a few temporary tees would be employed until new ones could be grown in.

“The course is large, having a yardage of 3,165 and par on the course is 36,” the story continued. “The rolling ground adds to the attractiveness of the course.”

The May 14 Tribune story added more. The course would have sand greens, at least to start (that was the norm for Minnesota’s public courses of that era). There would be one par 5, of 475 yards, and one par 3, of 181 yards. There would be “a few natural hazards and one or two constructed traps.”

“Too much cannot be expected the first year as it takes nearly five years to make a good course.”

Klukow and Flesche retained Jack Gallett, who had been hired earlier in the year to become Albert Lea Country Club’s professional, to design the course. The grounds were situated “north of the Wedge Seeds warehouse,” the Tribune reported.

Grounds of Albert Lea’s Recreation Golf Course, 1931-circa early 1940s. In current parameters, the course was bounded by 225th Street on the south, Richway Drive/740th Avenue on the east and Bluegrass Road on the west, with the northern edge stretching not quite up to what is now Interstate 90. (John Borchert Map Library aerial photo)

Klukow and Flesche’s creation lasted only about a decade and met a fate similar to that of many comparable courses. Longtime Albert Lea resident Andy Dyrdal recalled in a telephone conversation with me that he had played the Recreation course long ago, and he was paraphrased in a 2013 Albert Lea Tribune as saying, “With many young men gone during World War II, it was plowed under to become farmland.”

EARLIER — AND EARLIER THAN THAT

Before the Recreation course, there was Albert Lea Country Club, established almost two decades earlier, in 1912.

Albert Lea CC was a golf course of historical standing in Minnesota. It was one of the first 20 courses in the state, according to records I am keeping. (They aren’t “official” records, I suppose, but I’ll be honest: I doubt anyone has a more accurate list. If so, kudos.)

But Albert Lea Country Club wasn’t even the first course in town. What was?

Hint-hint, read the March 10, 1904, edition of the Albert Lea Tribune.

“A golf club meeting will be held at the Elk club rooms Tuesday, March 15 … for investigating as to sentiment, opportunities and organization.”

In other words, Albert Lea, polish up those spoons. And not the ones in your silverware drawers, either.

The aforementioned meeting was “quite well attended,” the Tribune reported on March 16. C.D. Cowgill, who judging by records was an executive with Western Grocer Co., was appointed president. A committee was established to “look up grounds.” It was estimated it would take $500 to establish and maintain grounds in the club’s first year, and the club was seeking a membership of 50 at $15 each, or $5 each for “ladies.”

None of which was proof that a pre-Country Club golf course actually existed in Albert Lea. A Tribune story from one year later, however, clears up the matter, at least in my mind.

“The Albert Lea Golf Club has held its annual meeting,” the Tribune reported on March 6, 1905. “The club has arranged to enlarge the grounds by using the land west of the ball park.”

A Minneapolis Journal story the next week, presumably a summation of the Albert Lea Tribune story, reported that W.A. Morin was the club’s new president. William Albert Morin owned many large tracts of land in and around Albert Lea at the turn of the 20th century; he also helped bring the Illinois Central railway into town.

As for location of the Albert Lea Golf Club grounds, determining the site of “the ball park” is vital. Searches through newspapers showed that Albert Lea’s baseball stadium changed places multiple times through the 1890s and early 1900s. In 1900, however, a new ballpark opened on West Clark Street, west of downtown, apparently near the city’s rail yard. Best guess on the site of Albert Lea’s first golf course, then, is that it was just northwest of what is now the intersection of Clark Street and Minnesota Highway 13.

I don’t know that for sure. Nor do I know how long Albert Lea Golf Club lasted. Skimming in two sessions a multitude of late spring-early summer editions of the Tribune from that era revealed no mentions of local golf, even through 1911, the year before Albert Lea Country Club was established, and it is at this point that I must apologize. My appetite for researching was diminished shortly after I came across an advertisement, the likes of which was common from that era in newspapering, that began:

“Educate Your Bowels.”

Photo at top of post by Peter Wong.

Albert Lea, Part I: Back to the ’50s, and a naked truth

Lost golf courses,

A couple of nuggets of Minnesota golf history:

Albert Lea was one of Minnesota’s first cities with a golf course.

Albert Lea Country Club was established in 1912.

Careful. Don’t link those two sentences too closely together. You could be jumping to a conclusion.

If you read carefully, you’ll note that I never wrote that golf in Albert Lea started in 1912. Because it didn’t. But that’s another matter for another day. I will explain — just not now.

Regardless of its status in city golf history, Albert Lea Country Club, born 1912 passed away 2006, holds a position of prominence as a pioneering Minnesota golf course. It ranks roughly among the first 20 to 25 organized sites in the state upon which were struck glorious drives and fat approach shots. In southeastern Minnesota, only Winona, Rochester and Faribault had golf courses before Albert Lea Country Club opened for business, pre-World War I, in a clubhouse that was a converted horse barn.

Albert Lea Country Club, postcard dated 1954. The green to the right of the clubhouse was No. 6. Property of Joe Bissen.

Albert Lea Country Club survived — nay (or neigh, if you go for misspelled and misguided horse barn references), thrived — through 95 years. Its shortstop was long one of southern Minnesota’s prime tournaments, at one time attracting fields approaching 200 players. (One notable winner was 1957 champion John Eymann of Forest City, Iowa, who golfed cross-handed.)

And like any golf course worth its weight in either gold or just plain auld sod, Albert Lea Country Club created memories.

Most of the posts on this web site revolve around golf courses that were abandoned in the first half of the 20th century. It is admittedly biased reporting — I prefer to focus on lesser-known clubs and courses from long ago, those that vanished because of tolls taken by the Great Depression and the advent of World War II.

The 1950s? Hardly a notable era in terms of shuttered Minnesota golf courses. But that isn’t to say there aren’t tales to tell.

“One of the things about the 1950s is that you didn’t need a whole lot of money to play golf,” Dex Westrum, who spent much of his youth on the grounds of Albert Lea Country Club, said in a recent phone interview. “Guys were playing in Army fatigues and white T-shirts. For people that were just hackers, they could buy five irons, two woods, a putter and a cheap 50 cent golf ball and have a wonderful time. Now they’ve got to spend thousands of dollars.”

Westrum is a retired college professor who lives in South Milwaukee, Wis., and is the son of the late Lyle Westrum. The latter was the professional at Albert Lea Country Club for a short time in the 1950s after having caddied there in the 1930s, going off to World War II, then returning after the war and turning professional upon finishing second in the Albert Lea shortstop. Lyle Westrum, his son noted, also had been a prominent Albert Lea hockey player and all-conference fullback in football.

Young Dexter Westrum followed his father onto the golf course in the 1950s. Among his memories of Albert Lea Country Club:

“After the war, there was a great interest in golf,” Dex Westrum said, “and a lot of women, if they wanted to spend time with their husbands, they took lessons. He (Lyle Westrum) had 12 to 15 lessons a day, and most if not all of them were to women. Men would prefer to do it their way.”

Albert Lea CC’s many sand bunkers presented hazards for its golfers. The driving range presented a hazard for young Dex.

“Lesson balls had to be shagged, and I was elected to stand in the practice fairway collecting balls in a shag bag while the people took aim at me,” Westrum says in reading from a passage he penned for “Minnesota Memories 2,” written and compiled by Joan Claire Graham. “Once in a while I would lose sight of a ball in the sun and get hit. But fortunately, most people couldn’t hit the ball straight until the lesson was over.

“I received 40 cents for a half-hour lesson, which resulted in quite a sum by the end of the day. I immediately spent half of my earnings at the Ben Franklin store on new comic books. I eventually had more than 300 comics, which my mother threw away shortly after I left (Albert Lea).  …”

Westrum recalled a relaxed atmosphere surrounding golf in the 1950s, with ladies days on Tuesdays and Wednesday men’s days including steak dinners after a round of golf.

Another notable experience took place every year on the Albert Lea CC grounds.

“The highlight every summer was the Fourth of July, because the country club was where the fireworks were shot off,” Westrum said in reading from “Minnesota Memories 2.” “The whole town turned out, cars lining up on old Highway 13 along No. 3 and the driveway along No. 4. People sat elbow to elbow along No. 7 hill. …

“Best of all, there was free ice cream for all the kids. … It was rich and it was cold, and one dip was plenty. In the morning, caddies would find cardboard remnants of the fireworks. Sometimes they found them in the bushes by the clubhouse. One year, there was a bunch of stuff on the clubhouse roof.”

Dare it be said that one of Westrum’s ALCC memories tops all others.

“The Edgewater (Cottage) was so close to No. 7, it provided my father with a challenge on the morning after the high school prom in 1961,” Westrum wrote for the memories book. “He went to take the dew off the greens so they could be mowed when he discovered two naked teenage lovers on the green. Fortunately, he was more than a hundred yards away when he saw them. He didn’t want to embarrass them or himself, so he went back to the pro shop, picked up his wedge and practice ball bag and returned to hit balls at them from a safe distance until they woke up and ran on.”

Albert Lea Country Club fostered some excellent players in those days. The 1952 Albert Lea High team won the state championship (as did the 1982 team). Individual state champions from Albert Lea included Clayton “Bumper” Westrum (Dex’s uncle, 1950 and ’52, and later the designer of the Northern Hills course in Rochester),  Craig Clauson (1954), Dex’s teammate Dick Jones (1962), Mark Knutson (1973) and Chad Adams (1989). On the girls side, Donna Boom won a state title in 1994.

The old Albert Lea Country Club course required shotmaking. Dex Westrum relates a memory from the shortstop:

“Neil Croonquist (former University of Minnesota standout and two-time State Amateur champion) and some of the other guys who were playing decent amateur golf in the Twin Cities, they came down and they did not tear that Country Club course apart,” Westrum said in the phone interview. “It wasn’t long, but it was really hilly and had very small greens. You miss the hole by 30 feet in Minneapolis, you got a 30-foot putt. You miss the hole by 30 feet in Albert Lea and you’re in the trap.”

One year, Westrum said, “Neil Croonquist was medalist with 69; nobody else broke par. … Bud Chapman … a hell of a good player. He came down to the Albert Lea shortstop, and he qualified for the fifth flight. That was the year the wind blew and it took something like 83 or 82 to make the championship flight. He came back the next year and won the tournament to distinguish himself, and he never came back.”

The Albert Lea HS team that Westrum played on as a junior and senior featured Jones and four others who could break 40 for nine holes, he said. “So we were a formidable lot. In fact, I don’t think we ever lost a home match. … Teams would come and play us, and they just couldn’t handle the uneven lies. There were hardly any holes where you were going to hit off a flat surface.”

Dex Westrum shows fine form in playing a shot from one of the “yawning traps,” as he referred to them, as a youth at Albert Lea Country Club. The bunker was on No. 6; the shot was observed by Dick Davies Jr., and Westrum says it finished within a foot of the hole. (Photo courtesy Dex Westrum)

Westrum went off to college, then to a teaching career that covered 50 years, 10 schools and five states. His final memory of Albert Lea Country Club comes from the pages of “Minnesota Memories 2”:

“On my first visit back to Albert Lea Country Club after I heard the course was going to be destroyed, I took my 7-year-old son … for a walk on the old holes 7, 8 and 9. Stakes all over the landscape marked what I assumed were planned housing sites. This is where I was  a little boy and where I was a high school kid.

“I tried to explain what the holes looked like in the 1950s and 1960s and that the course had been one of the most distinctive nine-hole layouts in Minnesota. It had small greens, narrow fairways and sand traps you could get lost in.

“I never saw the additional nine or played another version of the course after the final high school meet of the 1963 season against Red Wing.”

Next: Two other lost courses in Albert Lea, including the very first.