Golfweek’s Best golf courses you can play in Minnesota

Among the gems in Minnesota golf is Hazeltine National Golf Club, which has hosted everything from the Ryder Cup to USGA championships.

In a state known for snow – my wife loves to tell a story of her hair freezing solid as a new student at Macalester College – Minnesota offers a wide array of top golf courses that might surprise players not familiar with the Land of 10,000 Lakes. And yes, those lakes certainly come into play on more than a few holes.

But even at a resort known for skiing, it’s not the slopes that pull golfers off the highway. It’s the sand.

The Quarry at Giants Ridge in Biwabik opened in 2003 atop an old sand and gravel excavation site. Course architect Jeffrey Brauer – who also laid out the resort’s Legend course – fashioned wide fairways and severe hazards on the 7,201-yard Quarry. With significant elevation changes, a retained sense of the site’s history with brown spoil piles still in play, and a dramatic set of par 5s, the Quarry provides a much tougher test than the Legend track.

Golfweek’s network of raters certainly approves, voting the Quarry as the No. 1 public-access course in Minnesota on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list each year since 2015. Golfweek ranks courses by compiling the average ratings – on a points basis of 1 to 10 – of its more than 750 raters to create several industry-leading lists of courses, including the popular Best Courses You Can Play list.

Giants Ridge Golf (Quarry course) in Minnesota (Courtesy of Giants Ridge/Brian Oar)

The Quarry also ranks No. 119 on Golfweek’s Best ultra-elite list of modern courses in United State built after 1960.

The Legend certainly isn’t to be forgotten, though. Built by Brauer in 1997, the 6,930-yard Legend ranks No. 10 in the state on the Best Courses You Can Play list. The Legend and the Quarry make for a potent combo that shouldn’t be missed in Minnesota.

And Brauer wasn’t done leaving his mark in Minnesota. His Wilderness at Fortune Bay opened in 2004 in Tower, also to rave reviews. The course, which skirts Lake Vermillion and plays through woodlands laced with exposed rock, is the No. 2 course in Minnesota on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in 2020. It also ranks as No. 7 on Golfweek’s Best 2019 list of casino courses in the U.S., and it is No. 200 on Golfweek’s Best 2020 list of modern courses.

Giants Ridge (Legends course) in Minnesota (Courtesy of Giants Ridge/Brian Oar)

Both the Quarry at Giants Ridge and Wilderness at Fortune Bay also rank inside the 2020 Top 100 Best Courses You Can Play list in the U.S., the Quarry at No. 43 among all U.S. public-access courses and Wilderness at No. 72.

Those are heady successes for a state that sees an annual average of 70 inches of snow in some places. But Minnesota is full of surprises when it comes to elite golf.

Golfweek averaged the ratings of its top five 2020 Best Courses You Can Play in each state this year to compare elite public-access golf around the country, and the North Star state ranked an impressive 16th. Oregon tops that list, but Minnesota ranks ahead of sunny destinations such as Texas and Georgia and narrowly trails Arizona.

It all proves that good golf, even in a state where the golf season typically runs only from April to October, is where you find it.

Wilderness at Fortune Bay in Minnesota (Courtesy of Fortune Bay)

Golfweek rater comment

  • The Quarry at Giants Ridge is the headliner at this northern Minnesota resort. Jeff Brauer’s second (course) for Giants Ridge is probably his masterpiece, laid out over the remains of a sand quarry that provide a compelling canvas. The effect of returning an already-altered landscape to a connection with nature resonates and presents a truly unique result. Each hole presents a question, and the variety of these questions keeps the experience fresh each round one plays here. – Jake Marvin, Eden Prairie, Minn.

Each year, we publish the three lists that are the foundation of our course-ratings program: Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 200 Classic Courses, Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 200 Modern Courses and Golfweek’s Best 2020: Best Courses You Can Play.

Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play 2020 in Minnesota

1. Giants Ridge (Quarry)

Biwabik (No. 119 m) 

2. The Wilderness at Fortune Bay

Tower (No. 200 m)

3. Breezy Point Resort (Deacon’s Lodge)

Brainerd (m)

4. Chaska Town Course

Chaska (m)

5. *The Preserve at Grand View Lodge

Nisswa (m)

6. Rush Creek

Maple Grove (m)

7. The Classic at Madden’s on  Gull Lake

Brainerd (m) 

8. Dacotah Ridge

Morton (m)

9. Meadows at Mystic Lake

Prior Lake (m)

10. Giants Ridge (Legend)

Biwabik

* New or returning to the list; c: Classic, built before 1960. m: Modern, built in 1960 or after

Golfweek’s Best Private Courses 2020 in Minnesota

1. Interlachen

Edina (No. 63 c)

2. White Bear Yacht Club

White Bear Lake (No. 78 c)

3. Hazeltine National

Chaska (No. 78 m)

4. Spring Hill

Orono (No. 79 m)

5. Minikahda Club

Minneapolis (c)

6. Windsong Farm

Independence (m)

7. Golden Valley

Golden Valley (c)

8. Northland

Duluth (c)

9. Minneapolis GC

Minneapolis (c)

10. Somerby

Byron (m)

* New or returning to the list; c: Classic, built before 1960. m: Modern, built in 1960 or after

Golfweek’s Best 2020

How we rate them

The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged together to produce a final rating for each course. Then each course is ranked against other courses in its state, or nationally, to produce the final rankings.