The newest public course in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Twin Cities region may open as soon as June 2017, featuring the redesign of the former Tartan Park Golf Course by Arnold Palmer and Annika Sorenstam on a property that was once a resort owned by the 3M Company. PGA Tour event coordinator Hollis Cavner, who bought the property earlier this year, has proclaimed the new course will “be the best in the metro area” and capable of “hosting anything.”

 

The design team of golf legends Arnold Palmer and Annika Sorenstam hope to have “fun meet golf” when The Royal Golf Club at Lake Elmo, the newest public golf course in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. Twin Cities area, opens in Lake Elmo. Minn., the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. The course, formerly known as the Tartan Park Golf Course when it was part of a resort property operated by the 3M Company for employees, families and clients, could open as soon as June 2017, the Pioneer Press reported.

Amid flagging participation, even after 3M opened the course to the public in 2014, the company closed the facility last year, the Pioneer Press reported, and then sold it earlier this year to Hollis Cavner, a coordinator of PGA Tour events (http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2016/03/16/tartan-park-gc-become-royal-park-gc-lake-elmo-minn/). Locally, Cavner is best known for running the 3M Championship that took place in August at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minn. a course that Cavner teamed up with Palmer to develop.

Driveable par 4s, wide fairways, a nighttime par-3 course, and water hazards are among the features that the designers say will make the Royal Golf Club accessible to the average hack and help to inject a fun factor, while still being capable of hosting a PGA Tour-level event, the Pioneer Press reported.

On a property that when it was Tartan Park GC was known for its 27 holes, as well as tennis courts, lawn bowling, archery range and a clubhouse that stretched across 477 acres of rolling landscape overlooking Horseshoe Lake, Arnold Palmer Design Co. and Annika Course Design have teamed up to carve out an 18-hole track, driving range, practice area and 9-hole par-3 course, all surrounded by 310 new homes, the Pioneer Press reported. And they’re making bold promises, with Cavner proclaiming at the time of the sale that The Royal GC at Lake Elmo “will be the best golf course in the [Twin Cities] metro area”—a bold statement for a region that is about to host the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn.

On August 11th, as Palmer and Sorenstam toured the course to essentially sign off on the final designs before fairway grasses are planted, Cavner went even further, saying that he believes Royal at Lake Elmo will be a strong enough course to challenge the best in the world, the Pioneer Press reported. “We can host anything,” he said.

Yet, unlike modern championship courses that feature monstrous distances, The Royal GC at Lake Elmo will be capable of playing for any skill level, its designers say.

For example, from Tartan’s three 9-hole courses, a round of 18 could be played as short as 5,475 yards, or as long as 6,847 yards. In contrast, The Royal GC at Lake Elmo’s 18 holes will play 7,167 yards from the back tees or shorter than 4,000 yards from the front tees, Thad Layton, a senior course architect with Palmer’s firm and the lead designer at the course, told the Pioneer Press.

“We want it to never play the same way twice,” said Layton. “By changing the hole location and changing the tee locations, we can create vastly different golf holes.”

Layton’s charge was not to erase any trace of the former Tartan Park course, the Pioneer Press reported, but rather to work with the existing landscape and even the general confines of two previous 9-hole links, and reinvent the golf experience to make it accessible for all, he told the Pioneer Press.

“We didn’t set out to create a major championship course,” he said. “Our philosophy was to keep the natural beauty we already had here. And for the course, first, to make it fun.”

Noting that “It’s no fun to lose golf balls,” Layton said the fairways at The Royal GC at Lake Elmo will often be 50 yards wide, and common configurations will not force golfers to carry shots over water—“although there might be a reward if they do.” But hazard avoidance won’t simply offer detours for high handicappers, he added. “We [will] design the greens to be more receptive to those approaches,” he said.

In addition, Layton said the course will feature two short par-4 holes with driveable greens. The third hole is uphill, but at a mere 300 yards, reachable for big hitters who aim to cut a late dogleg. However, from that angle, the ball must carry a sand trap and stay put on a relatively small green made shallower by the angle of approach, the Pioneer Press reported. The restrained player can avoid the trouble by playing safely into the fairway, which offers up an approach to the green’s receptive side.

“It equalizes two very different levels of players,” Layton said.

That stretch of holes follows the landscape and direction of play as one of Tartan Park GC’s nines, and the topography likely will be recognizable to those familiar with Tartan Park, the Pioneer Press reported. However, the short par-4 third, for example, and the fourth, were drawn from what had been a long, uphill par 5 with a blind second shot. It was Sorenstam herself who objected to that hole as an arduous slog for golfers of average skill, Layton said, and with her input, that stretch of the course has been re-invented.

On the other hand, The Royal GC at Lake Elmo’s back nine, which will be located on the eastern half of the property, exhibits holes completely rebuilt on the land, the Pioneer Press reported. “That’s really new golf,” Layton said.

Because getting sand in your shoes and face doesn’t generally rate high on the “fun” scale, Layton said that The Royal GC at Lake Elmo, at this point, will only throw 30 bunkers at the golfer (compared to 107 at Hazeltine). While sand comes into play, general waywardness is not penalized with traps, he noted.

“You don’t need a ton of sand to have a great golf course,” he told the Pioneer Press. “Look at Augusta [National Golf Club]. It has 43 [bunkers].”

In addition, The Royal GC at Lake Elmo will offer a lighted, 9-hole “family par 3” course offering holes between 40 yards and 120 yards, the Pioneer Press reported. “We want people to play here when they have time,” Cavner said.

Greens fees for the new course have not yet been decided, the Pioneer Press reported.