SXSW x MN GOLF

Discover the many playable courses along the I-90 corridor in southwestern Minnesota, where women golfers are integral to the game’s history in the area.

Magazine

Mary Jo Graphenteen has no pressing desire to break course records or play golf at tournaments like a U.S. Open champion.

“I don’t need to keep score,” says Graphenteen, known as “MJ” to her fellow golfers. “I just like improving.”

Graphenteen, a member of Luverne Country Club, plays golf “every day, all day” in season, she says. And if she can’t quite play like a U.S. Open champion, she surely can play alongside one. Graphenteen’s frequent playing partner is Jerilyn Britz, who came out of Luverne High School and Luverne CC to compile a successful LPGA Tour playing career, highlighted by a two-stroke victory in the 1979 U.S. Women’s Open. Britz remains a Luverne CC member, spending time in both Minnesota and Oklahoma.

The two women didn’t meet until Graphenteen was in her 30s and took up golf. She and Britz met by chance on the course. “We happened to be on the same hole or something,” Graphenteen says. “We kindled a really deep friendship, and she’s been my mentor ever since.”

Mentorship meant Britz passing along golf’s finer points to Graphenteen, a gifted natural athlete, longtime physical education teacher and highly successful varsity volleyball coach at Luverne High before retiring in 2016. Britz helped Graphenteen discover there was more to golf than merely propelling the ball forward.

“I was very athletic,” she says, “and I did teach golf in my phy-ed classes, so I knew what to do. It just kind of took off from there ... I didn’t really know the golf game until Jerilyn came along and taught me the ins and outs of the swing. I felt like I really grew into being a golfer rather than just an athletic hitter of the golf ball.”

Graphenteen has gone on to win five club championships at Luverne CC, where she says, “It’s just a new shot every time. There’s never a repeat.” She ranks as a prominent figure at her home club. 

Across a 100-mile stretch of southwestern Minnesota, hugging Interstate 90 and the Iowa border, golf courses abound, with many other women contributing to the game and their clubs.

A Historic Club Under New Ownership
Sarah Totzke, a board member at Fairmont’s historic Interlaken Golf Club, was among those who helped guide the formerly member-owned club through its sale last fall to Minneapolis air transportation executive Nick Swenson. 

“We’re all, I think, very excited about it,” Totzke said in March of the sale. “It’s a good time to get a little bit of revitalization back into the club.”

Interlaken ranks near the high end of the I-90 courses that are distinctive for being satisfying to play yet not brutally difficult. Most are parkland-style, their routings adorned with older trees. Also, they are relatively affordable, with weekend, 18-hole greens fees ranging from $20 at Minn-Iowa in Elmore to $45 at Interlaken. Most of the courses are semi-private.

Interlaken boasts impressive architectural credentials. The club celebrated its centennial in 2019; the original nine holes were laid out by the renowned and prolific Tom Bendelow. A 1968 expansion to 18 holes was worked by Don Herfort. Among the featured holes is the dogleg 17th, 376 yards off the shortest tees and 468 off the longest. “It’s a shorter par 5 for women, so I tend to enjoy that hole,” Totzke says.

“We’re trying to get a lot more young women and young families to come in, so we started a ‘little extra things’ to do with the 5 o’clock round,” she continues. “Maybe you start off with a putting lesson and then go out and play your round, or maybe there’s a chipping contest and you go out and play. I think especially for women, we gravitate to that, and we will get involved rather than just go out and play your round.”

Up for a Challenge?
Five miles northwest of Interlaken is Fairmont’s other course, Rose Lake Golf Club. Established in 1957, it was expanded to 18 holes in 1987 by the late Joel Goldstrand, a Worthington native and prominent Minnesota designer.

Club board member Jeannie Green describes Rose Lake as a challenging course. It is less tree-lined than others in the area, but water and out of bounds come into play. Featured is a “gauntlet,” as club manager Jack Von Bank describes it, the 11th through 13th holes. The par-5 11th is only 469 yards maximum, but water hugs the left side and out of bounds the right.

The par-4 12th has an approach over an inlet and past a large tree on the right. The 13th is more benign from the front tees but otherwise is a carry of 160 yards over water.

105 Years and Counting
GreatLife Golf & Fitness Club, formerly known as Worthington Country Club, is another historic venue, dating back to 1919. Playing from 5,282 yards to 
6,282, its No. 10 is the signature hole, says Laura Ailts, longtime member and former club president.

“It’s a par 3, not completely surrounded by water, but three-quarters of it is,” she says. “That’s a fun hole. The other hole that’s kind of unique is 14—that’s a par 3 for men but it’s a par 4 for women. The women actually tee off behind the men. So, it’s kind of funny when people who play here are from out of town—you’ll see [men] pull up to the red [tee] marker.” 

The Labor Day Classic tournament is a staple of southwestern Minnesota golf, heading for its 71st year in 2024. “The caliber of golfers we get is wonderful, so that says a lot about the course,” Ailts says.

Lucky Number Seven
Windom Country Club dates back to 1947, a nine-hole layout measuring 5,130 yards off the front tees and 6,118 off the back. Tara Smith, a Windom native, is a board member, former Winona State player and has won the past 12 women’s club championships. She calls her home layout a “fun little nine-hole course with a lot more trees than some people are used to, so you have to have a good punch shot in order to play well.” 

Among the holes she singles out is No. 7, a par 3 of 107 to 163 yards with water fronting the green and sand on either side. The club’s website touts it as one of the most scenic holes in southwestern Minnesota.

Ladies’ Choice
Fox Lake Golf Club, one mile north of Sherburn and a half-mile north of I-90, is a relatively short nine-holer, only 2,174 yards off the red tees. Ann Jacobsen and her husband, Gary, who operate the course, see that as an asset. Ann says women “enjoy coming to our golf course because of the distance they can play ... and not have to struggle to get from the tee-off to the green on every hole.”

Gary adds, “A lot of people play it because they can play nine holes and go about their days.” That might include fishing, boating or camping at nearby Fox Lake. Water recreation, incidentally, is a nearby companion at most of the I-90-area courses.

Fox Lake GC was established in 1939 and expanded in 1986. Gary Jacobsen says the course at one time might have been considered “links-like,” but now trees are never far away. Two holes require navigation around oaks that stand in the fairway.

Scenic Settings
Riverside Town & Country Club in Blue Earth is a nine-hole course that’s easy to find from all directions, four miles north of I-90 and hard by U.S. 169 to the east. Though the Blue Earth River just to the south doesn’t come into play, it does provide an accompaniment to the nine-hole, 3,178-yard layout (2,555 off the front tees) that is liberally sprinkled with trees. Riverside was established in 1921.

Perhaps the most distinctive course along this I-90 corridor is Adrian Country Club. Seventeen miles west of Worthington, Adrian CC is an anomaly in that it’s a nine-hole course, yet can play like an 18-holer because of alternate tee areas that set up a variety of tee and approach shots. It has a links-style feel, and three ponds and a smattering of bunkers add a strategic factor.

Jackson, situated midway between Fairmont and Worthington, features two nearby nine-hole courses: Jackson Golf Club, just north of the city, and Loon Lake Golf, 3.5 miles southwest. Water activities are abundant nearby on the Des Moines River, on Loon Lake or just across the Iowa border on Spirit Lake or the Okoboji lakes.

Minn-Iowa Golf Club, just north of Elmore, is—no surprise—a tree-lined nine-holer, 2,797 yards off the front tees and 3,215 off the back. The course’s southernmost point is only 1.02 miles from the Iowa border. 

Land of the Lost
They’re everywhere. Figuratively and not literally, but still ...

The number of lost—that is to say, abandoned—golf courses in Minnesota stood at 246 as of April 2024, as documented by the only person loopy enough to try to document such a thing (that would be me). In southwestern Minnesota, a fertile ground for lost golf courses as well as corn and wheat, the prairieland roughly stretching from Ortonville to Mankato to the Minnesota-Iowa-South Dakota border intersection is home of eternal repose to 33 lost courses, all but five of them having perished before 1950.

It’s a phenomenon easily explained. Organized golf in southwestern Minnesota essentially didn’t exist before 1915. The 1920s saw a statewide boom in the game, as economic prosperity yielded more spare time, more disposable cash and more inclination to establish golf clubs, often in smaller cities and towns where leased farmland was turned into golf venue.

The year 1929 changed that. The Great Depression and its decade’s worth of effects claimed many golf courses in Minnesota, and subsequent U.S. participation in World War II, with citizens occupied both overseas and stateside in the war effort, claimed many more. 

The game recovered and prospered again starting in the mid-1940s, but courses had been left behind. To name just a few affected cities in southwestern Minnesota, courses disappeared in the likes of Ortonville, Mankato, Tracy, Heron Lake, Jackson and Luverne.

A statewide map of Minnesota’s lost golf courses can be found by searching for “Minnesota lost golf course map” online. —JB