Windsong Farm Golf Club in Independence, Minn. will be the only private club in the Twin Cities with two 18-hole courses. The new layout is being built on a 125-acre tract north of the club’s existing course on land comprised of rolling farmland, forests and wetlands.

Construction on a new 18-hole golf course at Windsong Farm Golf Club in Independence, Minn., began four months ago, the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal reported, and when complete, Windsong will be the only private club in the Twin Cities with two 18-hole courses.

Club + Resort Business originally reported on the plans for a second golf course in December 2022.

Matt Kleinbrook, Director of Golf at Windsong, told the Business Journal the club has been contemplating what to do with the land, but the resurgence of golf following the pandemic pushed them to pull the trigger on building the new course.

“Now that golf is back and booming, it was the right time to build a new course,” he said.

The new course will give the club a competitive advantage over other clubs that are shifting away from golf in some capacity to focus on other amenities like pickleball, health and wellness, and family activities to attract new members, Jonathan Abbott, Director of Operations and Membership at the club told the Business Journal.

“Windsong, from a cultural standpoint, is all golf all the time. Our emphasis is always going to be on the golfer. That is where we position ourselves in this highly competitive Twin Cities country club market, and adding a second course will strengthen our position of golf-focused membership,” he said.

The current initiation fee at Windsong is $75,000, making it one of the most expensive clubs in the metro area, the Business Journal reported. The club has 280 members and an active waitlist. But both the number of members permitted and the price it costs to join could change with the new course.

“Nothing has been decided yet,” Abbott said.

The privately funded course is being built on a 125-acre tract of land north of the club’s existing course on land comprised of rolling farmland, forests and wetlands, the Business Journal reported. Construction of the new course is progressing at a faster-than-expected clip because of the dry summer, Abbott said.

“We are flying. It has not been a great year for keeping my lawn green, but it has been absolutely phenomenal for building a golf course. To make this much progress in this short of time is truly incredible,” he said.

The goal for the new course is to complement the existing course by giving golfers a different set of challenges, course designer John Fought, who helped design Windsong’s first course, told the Business Journal.

The existing course is long, playing more than 7,500 yards from the championship tees. The new course will be shorter and force players to play more strategically, Fought told the Business Journal. The new course will be a par 70 with six par 3s and four par 5s, and will play around 6,600 yards from the championship tees.

“This golf course is not dependent on length to be challenging. It is really going to require some thought on where you place shots, and these greens have more movement in them than the original golf course,” he said. “The course is going to challenge players without having to force them to hit a long shot on every hole.”

The course will also have bigger greens with more undulation than the existing course, like the green on hole 4, which will be 18,000 sq. ft., the Business Journal reported. Fought said he drew inspiration from classic golf courses of the 1920s designed by the likes of Seth Raynor and Donald Ross.

“There are holes inspired by great classical designs,” Fought said. “This is the ultimate kind of classic golf course. There is nothing like it in Minneapolis.”