Most unusual finish in golf? Town & Country can have it

It’s a cold and rainy October Monday in St. Not ideal for golf, but perfect for exploring. I’m doing both.

I fill my bag on the 14th hole at the Town & Country Club, Minnesota’s oldest golf course. Facing the Mississippi River, it features rolling hills and a great view of the Minneapolis skyline, but I’m here specifically to see this final five holes, which is anything but conventional.

The par-3 14th is the start of one of the most unusual closing stretches in the country. Here, three par 5s are played side by side, and they are backed up by a pair of par 3s. Battle through the first 13 holes at Town & Country and expect a 3-5-5-5-3 finish.

Very nice, isn’t it? They think so too.

“The holes really fit the weird topography, because it’s a weird topography,” says architect Jeff Mingay, who worked with longtime superintendent Bill Larson to complete a recent restoration of the golf course. “It’s a tight spot. There’s severe valleys and elevation changes. It warms my heart in a way that it’s like, OK, these are the holes that fit here. We really don’t care about the level like par, we don’t care about the overall level, we don’t care about the balance of the nine. We just really have this dramatic page.”

Town & Country is one of the 20 oldest courses in North America. It opened in 1893 with six holes marked by tomato cans and fishing poles. A few years later it evolved to nine holes and, after purchasing more acreage, the club expanded to 18 holes in 1907. The current course has been in place since 1920. The course has undergone minor changes over the past century, although the biggest and most recent change was completed in May 2025, when Mininga laid out Golf and Larwns’ Larwn. Course Expansion Project.

Today’s course is arguably the best version of Town & Country, a private club with a membership of about 575. It’s set in an urban yet picturesque setting with short tee-to-green walks. It’s not long, there are minimal water hazards and the fast greens are the biggest defense. It’s never been regrassed and has over 30 different types of grass — including bentgrass from Scotland — giving the fairways and greens unique coloring that Larson says adds character. A ravine runs through the property, separating the front and back nines and helping to produce 80 feet of elevation change.

The evolution of this version began years ago when Larson was on vacation in Canada and stopped at the Victoria Golf Club, which is more than a century old, just like the Town & Country. Larson loved the way Mingay revived an old-school look that was authentic to her heritage. He thought Town & Country could benefit from a similar update, so he contacted Mingay and they got to work in 2016. At first it was small projects, forgoing the restoration of bunkers or greens every spring and fall for five years; “Whirling,” as Mingay says.

But members liked the changes and were curious about what else Mingay could do with the property. He came up with a plan, and in 2024 Mingay and Larson dug in. Every hole on the property was touched as they returned the course to its original architectural intent while also future-proofing it.

A big part of the process was tree removal, which began slowly by removing those that were either harming the agronomy (the sun wasn’t shining on the grass), complicating course maintenance, or harming the game (about 150 were also removed in 2012 due to the Emerald ash borer, a destructive beetle). As the work progressed, wonderful views opened up. The aesthetic of the course is much different than years ago, when overgrown trees made most holes feel like separate entities and masked the dramatic topography. Now it’s open with long views that stretch across the property to downtown Minneapolis, the Lake Street Bridge, the Mississippi River and the bustling city.

Some members were resistant to removing the tree, but most came around.

“All of a sudden you go, ‘Wow, look at that view,'” says Larson, who recently retired after 36 years at Town & Country. “The members really got used to it and saw that the long view is important. The removal really opened everyone’s eyes, and then you get an architect like Jeff who is really good at restoring old golf courses. He comes out here and says, ‘Wow, these views are incredible.’

(A small but interesting subplot to all this: In 2022, St. Thomas, a private Catholic university just a few blocks away, offered $61.4 million to buy the 96-acre golf course — not the clubhouse or the pool — to build a new hockey arena, as well as baseball and softball fields. After talking to members of the club’s board of directors. unanimously rejected the offer.)

The restoration was complicated — like putting together a 100-year-old puzzle, Mingay says — because of all the little course changes that added up over several decades.

“What we tried to do was find all the best features and all the best functional elements of the golf course throughout history that will work best today and hopefully carry forward for the long term,” says Mingay, who while in Minnesota also spent time leading a restoration at Minneapolis Golf Club. “We tried to make it all feel like it fit cohesively. That’s what made the project so interesting, which was trying to take all these really good elements from an 80-year period and still trying to connect the dots in terms of how it all worked stylistically.”

One thing that didn’t change with the restoration? That epic finish.

CITY AND COUNTRY IS NOT THE ONLY COURSE which boasts an unconventional hole layout. Cypress Point has par 5s and par 3s, and Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes has par 3s that play along the Pacific (both are among four par 3s on the back nine). Inwood Country Club in New York has three straight par 5s on the front side. Osaka Golf Club in Japan finishes 3-5-3-5-3. And “The Other Course” at Scottsdale National never has a hole with the same par repeated.

How important is a journey on a golf course? And what is the difference between a good one and a scam? Mingay says it’s hard to explain. It’s more like a feeling.

“There’s a flow to a really good drive where as you’re walking as a golfer from tee to green, from tee to tee, it feels like it’s MUST to walk around that special property,” Mingay says. “And I think Town & Country 100% fits that description.”

Few, if any, roads in the United States end like Town & Country. And while the five-hole stretch is the star, it’s important to know what comes next to properly nail that finish.

The course opens with a short par 4 and is followed by back par 3s — see, more unconventional goodness – a par 5 and, perhaps one of the most improved holes, the par-4 5th that plays down into the ravine and back uphill. Mingay smoothed out the elevation change, restored the ridge line and created a green to create a hole that looks like it was dropped from eastern Scotland. The 6th, the hardest hole on the course, descends and climbs the same valley and calls for a blind shot to the green, and No. 7-10 are all par 4s that offer their own challenges. (Ten, despite not being the subject of this story, is good enough to be worth at least one sentence, so here’s the wide, forgiving fairway that leads to a narrow, elevated green pushed up into the side of a hill.)

Eleven is a par 3 where a fairway is called the “Valley of 5”. Twelve is a par 5, which takes us to 13, an important appetizer before the closing stages. That’s because the par-4 13th is only 303 yards from the back tee, and while it has some issues, this is a birdie hole (especially since they removed a pesky tree down the center and replaced it with an overhead bunker shot). An important birdie, too, as you’ll likely return a shot on the long par-3 14th that kicks off our five-hole title.

Fourteen is a 234-yard par 3 that looks even tougher thanks to better bunkers added by Mingay. He says this hole used to look like a graveyard green, but he added these bunkers to decorate the fairway with a strong visual element. Mission accomplished. There’s an easy 50-yard fairway in front of the green, but it doesn’t look like it.

The fourteenth is the most difficult hole of the closing five and gives way to a more forgiving trio of three straight par 5s that run parallel to each other with the fairways tucked in at certain points, a new aesthetic after the renovation that removed the roughness and trees.

“It feels more like a golf landscape now instead of three separate holes,” Mingay says. “Just a big area of ​​contours and cut slopes. I just like the whole look of a big golf landscape instead of sending people down fairways, and I think that became a really unique feature of that back nine.”

On the 15th, a good drive puts you in position to go for the green in two and creates one of the most lip-smackingly fun swings of the day. It’s a blind shot to a green set down in a valley, a total drop of about 60 feet that starts 90 feet from the putting surface. If you go for the green in two, the usual play is to land your ball on that down slope on the left side of the fairway and let it flow and cross the left-to-right corner of the fairway and green. The only downside to the 15th is that you have to wait 17 holes to play it again.

On the 16th, you’ll need to avoid some of the remaining pesky trees that might prevent you from going for two. The terrain slopes downhill as you approach the green, although not as extreme as the 15th. There are no bunkers around this green, but it’s still one of the more difficult areas to get up and down the course.

“If you look at the driving on a score card, those par 5s look just straight,” Larson says, “but they’re completely different holes.”

The 17th — Larson’s favorite — is the truest three-stroke par 5 among the trio. A blind tee shot must avoid the left bunkers and a second shot must avoid the right bunkers. The best part of the hole may be on the green, where you sit high and can see the Minneapolis skyline shining in the background.

The par-3 18th is 170 yards and downhill. With a green that slopes steeply from back to front, you can’t miss long. To the right of the green are the Adirondack chairs. They are empty when I play, but on most days it is a dreamy place to take in the finale of this unique ending. Here at Town & Country, where the new meets the old, there’s plenty to sit back and enjoy.

Josh Berhow welcomes your comments at joshua_berhow@golf.com.