Best golf courses near Bloomington, MN

The design lineage of Minnesota Valley is cloudy, but the club believes the Seth Raynor drafted plans for the course during one of his visits to Minneapolis in the early 1920s (it’s doubtful he was involved in the actual construction of the course). But the design if full of Raynor and C.B. Macdonald ideas, and no matter who gets original credit, Minnesota Valley now fully looks and plays like a Raynor course following a 2018 renovation by Bill Bergin that enhanced the character of holes like Short, Redan, Raynor’s Prize Dogleg and a Biarritz green at a par-4 rather than the usual par-3.

When Bobby Jones won the 1930 U.S. Open at Interlachen (completing the second leg of what would become the game’s first Grand Slam), fellow competitor Gene Sarazen insisted the course was tougher than everything but Oakmont. In the decades that followed a series of architects including Robert Trent Jones, Geoffrey Cornish and Brian Silva worked to keep Interlachen’s edge, but nothing could staunch the march of time that made the course one-dimensional through the shrinkage of greens and the maturation of the hundreds of trees that had been planted, shading fairways and masking the property’s natural land movements. Enter Andrew Green in 2023, who was given the resources to strip back the layers and rebuild the course based on the blueprints Donald Ross developed in 1922 when he remodeled the course. Interlachen’s edginess is back, with ominous, strategically arranged bunkers guarding greens and fairway lines, and the expanded putting surfaces presenting a range of come-and-get-me hole locations that haven’t been seen in ages. The restored bunkering shines a spotlight on Interlachen’s wondrous undulation, punctuating focal points like the shared promontory of the second and seventh greens and the majestic rise toward the fortress putting surface of the par-5 12th.

While Tom Fazio is best known for creating massive landscapes for his designs, Spring Hill required little manipulation of earth. Fazio utilized the existing rolling topography to form what is one of his most natural designs. Holes are isolated from one another by thick forests of evergreens and, in one section of the property, acres of maple trees that provide a brilliant color display each fall. With several tight fairways, marshland along some edges, many uphill approach shots into elevated greens and subtle movements in the putting surfaces, Spring Hill is also one of Fazio’s most challenging designs.

University of Minnesota’s Les Bolstad Golf Course plays tougher than you might expect from a course that’s just 6,300 yards from the tips, as its narrow fairways and small greens require accuracy. The course, host of the 1958 U.S. Junior Amateur, offers weekday rates under $40.

Midland Hills always suspected their course was designed by Seth Raynor in the early 1920s, but they had no records of what that course looked like. They could intuit what some of Raynor's original holes were, but the overall architecture had dulled and shrunk over the years. That changed in 2018 when superintendent Mike Manthey discovered a 1921 irrigation map hidden above the ceiling in his office. The drawing showed Raynor's vision for the course, including individual holes and bunkers, a roadmap that designer Jim Urbina used to recreate and sharpen the old templates like the Biarritz, Road and Eden. The improvements have helped vault the course into the Best in State rankings for the first time.

For most of its history, Golden Valley has been in a state of flux. Tom Bendelow designed the club’s first course before A.W. Tillinghast was hired in the 1920s to construct a new course. A number of his bunkers were removed in the 1930s to reduce maintenance costs (Tillinghast, by this time, was traveling the country on behalf of the PGA of America, advising clubs on ways to cut costs during tight economic times), and others were tinkered with and modified in one way or another. A series of mid-century renovations took the design further from the one Tillinghast put in the ground, but recent work, first by Ron Forse and, in 2023, by Kevin Norby, has gradually restored much of the architect’s ideology. Greens have been expanded to add new hole locations, trees have been thinned and Tillie’s lost bunkers have returned with their shapes redefined. This is a classic parkland expression of golf on a graceful property that demands drives be placed in the fairway and approach shots left below the hole.

Hazeltine might be the most controversial championship course of the modern era, designed by Robert Trent Jones for former USGA president Totton Heffelfinger, who used his considerable clout to bring the 1966 U.S. Women’s Open and 1970 U.S. Open to the then-very immature layout. Criticisms were so extreme that Trent Jones spent the next two decades remodeling it, straightening doglegs, relocating holes and rebuilding greens. Between 1987 and 2010, his younger son, Rees Jones, assumed the reconstruction, with even greater success—and today the layout, like many in the old man's portfolio, is more Rees than Trent. Hazeltine hosted the 2009 PGA and 2016 Ryder Cup, the latter a bright spot for the American team, which perhaps is why the PGA of America has already awarded the 2028 Ryder Cup to this Minnesota site. Davis Love III, longtime Ryder Cup player and victorious U.S. captain in 2016, will step in for Rees and make modifications to the course in preparation with his brother Mark and their lead architect, Scot Sherman.

Somerset Country Club in Mendota Heights is one of the best courses in Minnesota. Discover our experts’ reviews and where Somerset Country Club sits in our rankings.

In 1920, Donald Ross was invited to remodel this 1916 Willie Park Jr. design. For some unknown reason, Ross did not include Minneapolis GC in his resume. His work here wasn’t insignificant: Ross moved the clubhouse and reconfigured the routing, making it mostly his own, and the course was deemed strong enough to host the 1959 PGA Championship, won by Bob Rosburg. A recent renovation by Jeff Mingay altered the bunkering and recaptured many original green contours. It is well known in the Twin Cities as the “Player’s Club” because of the number of single-digit handicappers.

Something was in the air in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the 1920s. Call it an esprit de refaire (French for “repair”). Many of the prominent clubs in the market looked at their existing golf courses and thought, “we can do better.” The Twin Cities were an incubator for the first major movement of golf course reformation as courses laid out just years before by designers like Tom Bendelow, William Watson and Willie Park, Jr., were redesigned, most of them by Donald Ross. Interlachen (No. 1), White Bear Yacht Club (No. 4), The Club at Golden Valley (No. 15), Minneapolis G.C. and others. The Minikahda Club also falls into this category. Robert Foulis designed the original nine, and Watson was involved in some capacity, too. Then the club hired Donald Ross to completely revamp the course after Chick Evans dismantled the old design in the 1916 U.S. Open, shooting a then-record 286 using just seven clubs. Many more renovations ensued, but the club has perhaps settled on a lasting version after the work of Kyle Franz, who continued a program of thinning overgrowth, widening fairways and recreating bunker shapes and arrangements reminiscent of the club’s 1920s heyday.

Town & Country Club in St. Paul is one of the best courses in Minnesota. Discover our experts’ reviews and where Town & Country Club sits in our rankings.

Architect Ron Prichard took an existing layout by Charles Maddox and completely transformed it—with a brand-new course reopening in 2015 that is one of the best in Minnesota. Tyler Rae has done some renovation work in recent years to clear out a significant number of trees to open up sightlines and tweak green complexes to make some less severe. Still, Olympic Hills features intriguing greensites built in all shapes and sizes, with a good variety of holes.

Braemar is a player-friendly public track just south of Minneapolis that offers wide, forgiving fairways. One of our panelists notes that the two nines play quite different, with the most compelling holes on the back side. In 1979, Braemar hosted the third edition of the since-discontinued U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links.

A muny packed with history, Keller hosted the 1932 and 1954 PGA Championships, a Western Open, and for nearly 40 years, from 1930 to 1968, hosted the PGA Tour's annual St. Paul Open. On top of all that, it also hosted the 1931 U.S. Amateur Public Links. As one of our Minnesota course-ranking panelists described: "Holes 11 through 16 are as good of a stretch of holes as anywhere in the state."

Wayzata Country Club is one of the best courses in Minnesota. Discover our experts’ reviews and where Wayzata Country Club sits in our rankings.

Meadowbrook is a Minneapolis municipal located just west of the city. Originally built in the 1920s and renovated in the mid-1990s, the course plays over rolling hills with tree-lined fairways and a winding Minnehaha Creek that comes into play on a couple of holes. The course, which is an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, hosted the 1947 U.S. Amateur Public Links.