The Minikahda Club

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.