Hazeltine National Golf Club, Minnesota
The tee shot at Hazeltine National’s signature hole, the par four sixteenth.
For all intents and purposes, Minnesota is home to me. I’ve lived in the state for all but four years of my life, spending a couple in Texas and Missouri along the way. Like its weather and track record in professional sports, Minnesota is imperfect. The North Star State, however, has its fair share of natural beauty scattered throughout the state.
The golf scene is electric in Minnesota. There are hundreds of thousands of diehard players in the state. Interlachen, Spring Hill, Hazeltine, Northland, and White Bear Yacht Club are probably the five best private courses any way you look at it. The state doesn’t fall short in its excellence of public tracks, though. The Giants Ridge Quarry course, The Classic at Madden’s, and The Wilderness at Fortune Bay are all consistently rated as three of the finest daily fee facilities America has to offer. On top of that, there are A1 public courses like Deacon’s Lodge, Giants Ridge Legend, The Jewel, and Dacotah Ridge. Simply put, the depth of golf in Minnesota is ridiculously good. I’ve been a member at a club outside the Twin Cities metro area that isn’t as highly regarded simply because of the sheer depth of courses around Minneapolis-St. Paul. The course would likely be among the top dozen or so layouts in many other states.
As far as championship golf courses in America go, there are few more recognizable than Hazeltine National in Chaska. I have been lucky enough over the years to take on the beast over one hundred times, dating back to my childhood as a nearby resident. The most notable achievement of my golfing life occurred on the grounds of Hazeltine, as I was able to put together three straight days of stellar play to take first place in the junior boy’s club championship. Today, it is an honor to walk in the clubhouse and see my name etched among some of the most historically relevant in golf history. As I mentioned in my intro post to this series a year ago, this is the magic of golf, that a schmo like me can have his name listed near the likes of Tony Jacklin and Payne Stewart and Billy Casper and Luke Donald.
I suppose I should mention at some point my wedding reception was held at Hazeltine. Come to think about it, the sentence above deserves its own paragraph. My blog, my rules.
Anyway, back to the golf at Hazeltine. The 1962 Robert Trent Jones, Sr. design has hosted US Opens, PGA Championships, and is slated to become the only course in the United States to have held the Ryder Cup twice. It was among Golf Digest’s Top 100 courses in America for an impressive thirty-year stretch until its recent departure. Still, Hazeltine is regarded as one of the premier modern parkland layouts in the country by nearly every publication.
Accolades aside, Hazeltine is a fine walk because of its stellar conditioning and the fact that it is one of the fairest tests in golf. Nothing is tricked up on the property and there are few subtleties. Hazeltine is hard-nosed, straightforward golf. The course can beat you over the head without flash, and I think that’s a rarity in twenty-first century golf.
There are plenty of good holes. My personal favorites are the two on Lake Hazeltine, the tenth and the sixteenth. Standing over your second shot on ten and hitting your tee ball on sixteen are without question the biggest thrills of a round here. The sixteenth butts up against the lake on the right, but your golf ball can still meet its Waterloo in a thin creek on the left side. Driver isn’t always the safest option on the only bunker-less hole at Hazeltine.
Some of the better inland holes include the par-five seventh, a beautiful approach with a hazard to the left and what seems like five million bunkers on the right. The next hole, the eighth, is either the best or second-best par three on the course—depending on your opinion of the penal seventeenth—and will record scores of two through six on any given day. If the Carver County wind is howling, you can bet that area of the course, among the most exposed, will play even more difficult.
My only real knock against Hazeltine is that there’s not much memorability beyond the best holes. Numbers two through five and thirteen through fifteen fit that mold of not being particularly special. The recent introduction of the elevated sixteenth tee box gives off the impression the club wants to improve its vistas, and it succeeds. Another improvement Hazeltine has made is the removal of unnecessary trees, something I noticed particularly when I played the course earlier this year. Even sitting in the dining area after my round, I noticed you could see about seven different flagsticks from your table. The course has changed a lot since the first time I played it in 2005.
Memorability is an issue I’ve written about in this series at least one other time. Land in the Midwestern United States is often flat and uninspiring. Simply put, you can do a lot more to improve memorability if the land you’re given has elevation changes, variety, or Pete Dye-esque bulldozing capabilities. Many would argue Hazeltine’s land is more about accommodating fans for big time events than it is to influence golf architecture purists. At least they’ve picked a lane, I suppose. The golf is good, even if uninspiring to old heads.
Hazeltine’s fame is only part of the reason you should never decline an invitation to walk the grounds. Underneath all its history is a beautiful course you will get beat up by and tell everyone you know how difficult it is. The highest compliment I can give Hazeltine is that it belongs in the conversation of top-tier championship courses in America. The word ‘Hazeltine’ is synonymous with other championship greats known by one word like Medinah, Merion, Oakmont, Valhalla, Baltusrol, and a host of others. That’s not to say the RTJ design should necessary be held in the same regard, but rather it’s worthy of hosting the best players in the world. That’s nothing to be upset about. Professional golfers can be prima donnas, so that they willingly go to Hazeltine and enjoy the course is endorsement enough. Hazeltine is a stellar championship golf course.