Minnesota Golfer - Directory 2012 - 30

of watching his father create the original
Town & Country golf course from a spot
below the current 18th tee:
" He took a driver and drove the ball
out of sight. Surprisingly, he found it and
then took another wood and belted the
ball out of sight. When he found that, he
took a mid-iron and hit it again as hard as
he could. Where the ball landed, he put a
stake in the ground and said, 'This is the
fi rst hole.' "
" We rambled back and forth on that
plateau crossing the big ravine a couple of
times and ran nearly up to Cretin and St.
Anthony, " Peet recalled.
The holes were coffee cans and the fl agsticks
were fi shing poles with red rags tied
to them. There were few trees and bushes;
the major moveable obstructions were
Eberhardt's cows, which kept the grass
grazed to ideal height for golf. The fi rst
summer, only a handful of men played the
game; the second summer, a few dozen
gave it a try. Many considered the game
" sissifi ed, " according to Peet, but the golfers
persuaded one member after another
to pick up a club.
They had little idea how to play the
game, but with McCree as their coach,
they gradually improved. Peet wrote in
1930 about coaxing C. Milton Griggs,
Stewart pleaded with the club's executive
committee for $50 to buy real cups and
fl agsticks, a hole cutter and a lawn mower.
They met stiff resistance from committee
member Charles Gordon, who called golf
" a damn silly game which could not possibly
last. " But Gordon-who would found
Somerset Country Club a quarter century
later-tried the game and was gradually
won over. He pushed through a request to
" We played the ball where it
lay, no matter where it lay,
and it seldom laid well... "
-Nathaniel Langford
a recent Yale baseball captain, to try a
shot: " His mind and muscle coordinated
perfectly . . . He grasped my driver with
a Babe Ruth stance, hit the ball a mighty
swat straight and far and continued to hit
it with the most awful form conceivable
but with deadly accuracy until he completed
the course in what was, I am sure,
the course record. "
Peet and fellow club member Dick
lease Eberhardt's pasture in 1895 and improve
it into a real golf course. E.J. Frost,
an amateur golfer and later a U.S. Golf
Association delegate from Chicago, was
hired to lay out the nine-hole course.
At this point, the local press began taking
an interest. The August 25, 1895, St.
Paul Daily Globe hyperbolically reported
that the club had a " golfi ng green " which,
in the opinion of " those who know what
28
MINNESOTAGOLFER Directory 2012
they are talking about, is second to none
in the country . . . they even go so far as
to say that it is fully equal to some of the
famous grounds in Scotland. "
Long-time club members remembered
things differently. Nathaniel Langford
played every Sunday in 1896 with his
brother George. Nearly 40 years later, in
the club newsletter, he wrote about those
early conditions:
" We had no watered course or greens.
We played the ball where it lay, no matter
where it lay, and it seldom laid well . . . In
the hot summer days the greens became
baked, the holes were seldom changed,
and where the green was slanting, if you
missed the hole the ball often slid back to
where it started from. When you missed a
drive and landed in those hummocks you
often stayed there a long time . . . "
In 1897 the club members authorized
$2,000 for an entirely new layout that included
bunkers and mounding. The September
17 Minneapolis Morning Tribune
reported that " the club is anticipating
a visit from [H.J.] Whigham, the present
[U.S.] amateur champion, and from
[C.B.] Macdonald, who was champion in
1895. If [they] come it will be for the sole
purpose of aiding the golf committee of
the club in improving and rearranging the
club links and in giving the members the
benefi t of their experience in the game.
www.mngolf.org
http://www.mngolf.org
Minnesota Golfer - Directory 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Minnesota Golfer - Directory 2012
