Minnesota Golfer - Summer 2024 - 25

M
ajor championship golf in
Minnesota would have gone
the way of the stymie were it
not for Totton P. Heffelfinger.
Heffelfinger was the visionary behind
Hazeltine National Golf Club, founded in
1962 for the express purpose of bringing
the U.S. Open back to Minnesota for the
first time since Bobby Jones won that title
at Interlachen Country Club in 1930.
Heffelfinger, a longtime Minikahda Club
member and president of the United States
Golf Association (USGA) in 1952-53, realized
that the state no longer had a course
tough enough to challenge the long-hitting
new breed of top golfers, nor a club with
enough space to handle the infrastructure
demands of modern
crowds and television coverage.
A new course was needed,
and Heffelfinger-strong-willed,
tirelessly forward-thinking and
deeply connected, both socially
and politically-was determined
to make it happen.
Heffelfinger was born
into
wealth
as
the
second son of
Peavey Grain president Frank
Totton Heffelfinger. Totton was
Frank's mother's maiden name;
Totton Peavey Heffelfinger disliked
his given name and insisted
on being called Tot. He grew up
in a 23-room mansion on Lake
Minnetonka named " Highcroft, "
graduated from Yale and became
a second lieutenant in the Navy
Aviation branch of the Army.
Then he joined his father's company
and his country club.
A skilled
amateur
player,
Heffelfinger absorbed the rich golf culture
at Minikahda and joined the long tradition
of Minikahda members giving back to the
game. After serving as a Navy commander
in World War II, Heffelfinger became
deeply involved with the administrative
end of the USGA, ultimately becoming the
organization's youngest president in 1952.
A Bold Vision
It was during this time that Heffelfinger
devised the idea of building a new championship
golf course. Working with golf
mngolf.org
an investment group to buy the land. " I
felt that this was just too good a thing to let
drop, " Heffelfinger said.
Heffelfinger's group, put together as
a subsidiary of the Peavey corporation,
executed the options on the Chaska land,
but more financing was needed. Two more
groups-one
headed
by Minneapolis
banker Robert Fischer-ultimately were
brought in to get the project off the ground.
Fischer was friendly with Robert Trent
the most prominent golf course
Jones,
architect of the era, and invited him to
course architect Robert Bruce Harris, he
located a 350-acre parcel of land on the
edge of Hazeltine Lake in Chaska and
brought his plan to the Minikahda board
of directors. He suggested the club could
build a second course for major tournaments,
or even sell its current location on
Lake Calhoun and move the entire operation
to Chaska.
" The time to build more golf courses is
now, before the problems of land become
too great, " Heffelfinger said at the time.
The members of Minnesota's second-oldest
golf club gave the proposal thoughtful
consideration and turned it down. Twice.
Undeterred, Heffelfinger put together
inspect the Chaska property. Jones was
enthusiastic about the site, and Heffelfinger
agreed to sever ties with Harris and bring
Jones aboard as a founder of the new club.
Socially, the club was a ground-breaker.
There was no pool or tennis court, and
there were no restrictions on who could
be a member-unlike most Twin Cities
golf clubs at the time, where Jews were
not admitted.
" When Hazeltine was getting started,
[Heffelfinger] insisted that membership
be available to anyone, regardless of religious
background or gender, " says Reed
Mackenzie, a past Hazeltine president and
former USGA President.
The course that opened in 1962
was a nascent brute, with severe
doglegs on more than half the holes,
all with the intent to lessen the
advantage of long drives.
" We hope within a few years to
bring the National Open here, "
Heffelfinger said. " This will be the
finest course in the middle west, the
golfing mecca of our area. It will be
a championship course adaptable
for big-time tournaments and for
membership play. "
Indeed, the U.S. Open did come
eight years after Hazeltine
opened-and by everyone's estimation
but
Heffelfinger's, the
course was not ready. The late
Warren Rebholz, a club president
at Hazeltine and a 20-year executive
director of the Minnesota
Golf Association, acknowledged
that Heffelfinger's friendship with
USGA executive director Joe Dey
was the primary reason the immature
course was selected.
" In those days, golf associations were
funny things in that, if you had an executive
director who's strong-and Joe Dey
was-he pretty much ran it and the executive
committee kind of stamped what he
did, " Rebholz said.
The late Dave Hill is still remembered
for his caustic comments about Hazeltine
during the playing of the 1970 U.S. Open,
but he merely vocalized what most of the
players-including
Jack Nicklaus-privately
thought about the course's multiple
Summer 2024 MINNESOTAGOLFER 25
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Minnesota Golfer - Summer 2024

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