Course of the Week: Minnesota’s Stillwater CC

Stillwater Country Club in Stillwater, Minn., has been renovated 90 years after it first opened in 1924.

According to architect Kevin Norby, the course, like most of those built in the golden age of architecture at the beginning of the 20th century, had lost a significant amount of its classic character and charm.

In 2014 Norby was retained to create a renovation plan geared primarily towards reducing maintenance and the reconstruction of the bunkers. Working closely with Tom West of Hartman Golf, a certified member of the Golf Course Builder’s Association of America, Norby redesigned the bunkers, including the removal of some existing bunkers and the addition of some new bunkers.

One of the more significant improvements occurred on the par-3 13th hole, which was redesigned to play as a redan.

“The slope of the green set up perfectly for a traditional right-to-left redan, but the bunkering was all wrong and none of the historic photographs indicated that the hole ever played as a redan,” Norby says.

Other changes include the repositioning of a centering bunker on the par-3 seventh hole and the addition of new fairway bunkering on the fourth, fifth and 12th holes.

“Overall, we reduced the amount of sand, we improved drainage and we created something that will differentiate Stillwater Country Club from other private clubs in the area,” Norby says.

The club was first established with a nine-hole course laid out by Tom Vardon, who was the brother of Harry Vardon and golf pro at Minnesota’s White Bear Yacht Club. The course was built with the assistance of many of its new members and was opened with temporary greens in April of 1925.

According to a news release, Stillwater CC suffered hard times during the 1930s and ’40s, but in 1957 Paul Coates began to design another nine holes on land it had purchased a few years earlier.

In 1976 the Minnesota Golf Association held the Minnesota State Golf Championship at Stillwater CC, and many of the MGA annual events have taken place at the club.

Kevin Norby is the owner and senior architect of Herfort Norby Golf Course Architects and also recently completed renovations at Minnesota Valley CC, a 1924 Seth Raynor design, and Coal Creek GC in Colorado.