A rare golf finish? City and country may have it

It’s a cold, rainy October Monday in St. Not good for golf but good for exploring. I do both.

I put my bag on the 14th tee at the Town & Country Club, the oldest golf course in Minnesota. It’s tough against the Mississippi River, it features rolling hills and a great view of the Minneapolis skyline, but I’m here specifically to check out this five-hole finish, which is normal.

The par-3 14th is the most unusual closing tee in the country. Here, three par 5s are played back-to-back, and are booked in pairs on the par 3. Battle through the first 13 holes at Town & Country, then finish with a 3-5-5-5-3 wait.

Cool, right? They think so, too.

“The holes really fit the unknown typewriter, because it’s such a complex system,” said architect Jeff Mingay, who worked with longtime superintendent Bill Larson to complete the golf course’s recent renovation. “It’s a tight spot. It’s got tough canyons and elevation changes. It warms my heart to say, OK, these are the holes that fit right here. We don’t really care about the holes from back to back, we don’t care about the perfect fit, we don’t care about measuring the strings.

Town & Country is one of the 20 oldest courses in North America. It was opened in 1893 with six holes marked with tomato cans and fishing poles. A few years later it changed to nine holes and, after buying more acres, the club grew to 18 holes in 1907. The current route has been in existence since the 1920s. The course has undergone minor changes over the past century, although the most recent major change was completed in May 2025, when Larson & Mingay completed the Golf Town & Mingay Project.

Today’s course is arguably the best version of Town & Country, a private club with about 575 members. It is located in an urban yet scenic area with a short walk from tee to green. It is not far, there are small water hazards, and the fast vegetation is a great protection. It has never been grassed and has more than 30 types of grass – including Scottish bentgrass – giving it distinctive colors on fairways and greens that Larson says add character. A canyon cuts through the course, separating the front and back nines and helping to produce an 80-foot elevation change.

The evolution of this version began years ago, when Larson was on vacation in Canada and stopped at Victoria Golf Club, which is more than a century old, like Town & Country. Larson loved how Mingay evoked an old-school look that was true to its heritage. He thought that the City and the country could benefit from a similar review, so he contacted Mingay and they started working in 2016. At first they were small projects, from restoring bunkers or greens every spring and autumn for five years; “paddling,” as Mingay puts it.

But members didn’t like the changes and wanted to know what else Mingay could do with the property. He came up with a plan, and in 2024 Mingay and Larson caught on. All areas of the area were touched as they restored the area to its architectural purpose while preserving it for the future.

A large part of the process was the removal of trees, which started slowly by removing those that harmed the agronomy (no sun reaches the grass), made it difficult to maintain the courses or damaged the play (about 150 were also removed in 2012 because of the Emerald ash borer, a destructive beetle). As the work progressed, amazing eyes were opened. The beauty of the course is very different from previous years, when the dense trees made many holes feel like separate objects and hid the amazing typography. It now opens with sweeping views that extend beyond the area to downtown Minneapolis, the Lake Street Bridge, the Mississippi River and the bustling city.

Some members did not agree to the removal of the tree, but most came.

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

(A small but interesting tidbit to all of this: In 2022, St. Thomas, a private Catholic university, just a few blocks down the street, offered $61.4 million to buy a 96-acre golf course — not a clubhouse or pool — to build a new hockey rink and baseball and softball fields. After talking to members, the club’s board of directors rejected them unanimous board of directors.

The restoration was tricky — like putting together a 100-year-old puzzle, Mingay says — because of all the little changes the courses have added over the decades.

“What we’re trying to do is find all the best features and all the best performance features of a golf course throughout history that will work very well today and hopefully continue for a long time,” said Mingay, who while in Minnesota also spent time leading the restoration at the Minneapolis Golf Club. “We tried to make it all feel like it fit together. That’s what made the project so interesting, which was trying to take all these really great elements over an 80-year period and still trying to connect the dots about how it all worked.”

One thing that hasn’t changed with the restoration? That’s an epic finish.

TOWN AND COUNTRY IS NOT JUST A LESSON boasting unusual holes. Cypress Point has back-to-back par 5s and par 3s, while Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes has back-to-back par 3s that play close to the Pacific (both are among the par 3s on the back nine). Inwood Country Club in New York has three straight par 5s on the front side. Japan’s Osaka Golf Club finishes 3-5-3-5-3. And “Other Courses” at Scottsdale National have never had the same repeated hole.

How important is the route to the golf course? And what is the difference between good and bad? Mingay says it’s hard to explain. It’s like a feeling.

“There’s a flow to a really nice fairway where you go like golf from the tee to the green, from the green to the next green, it feels like that’s the way to do it. it should walk around that area,” Mingay said. “And I think the City and the country 100 percent fit that description.”

Few, if any, routes in the United States are as complete as Town and Country. And while the five-hole expansion is the star, it’s important to know what comes before it to properly combine this finish.

The course opens with a short par 4 followed by back-to-back par 3s — you see, more unusual beauty – par 5 and, arguably one of the most advanced holes, the par-4 5th plays down the river and backs up. Mingay smoothed the elevation change, restored the ridge line and created a green punchbowl to create a hollow that looks like it was abandoned from the east of Scotland. The 6th, the most difficult hole on the course, climbs up and down this ravine and calls for an unsightly shot to the green, while Nos. 7-10 are all par 4s that provide their own challenges. (Ten, despite not being the subject of this story, is so beautiful it deserves at least one sentence, so here it is, about the wide, forgiving road that leads to the narrow and steep green path pushed up the side of the hill.)

Eleven is a par 3 where the miss to the right is called the “Valley of 5.” Twelve is 5, which brings us to 13, an important drink before closing. That’s because the par-4 13th is just 303 yards from the back tees, and while there’s some trouble ahead, this is a birdie hole (especially since they’ve removed a critical tree down the fairway and installed a high-shot bunker). An important birdie, too, as you can get a stroke back on the long par-3 14th that begins our five-hole head start.

The fourteenth is 234 yards on a par 3 that looks even tougher because of the high fairways put in by Mingay. He says that the pit used to be like a cemetery with green grass but he added these sites to decorate the front with a strong visual element. Mission accomplished. There is an easy 50 yards of fairway in front of the green, but it doesn’t look like it.

Fourteen is the most difficult hole in the closing five and offers the opportunity for more forgiveness of three straight par 5s that run parallel to fairways that are linked in certain areas, a new post-renovation beauty that removes the bushes and trees.

“It feels like a world of golf now instead of three different holes,” Mingay said. “Greater fairways and shorter slopes. I just like the look of the big golf world instead of sending people down the aisles, and I think that’s been a unique aspect of that back nine.”

On the 15th, a good drive puts you in a position to claim the green twice and sets up one of the most exciting, lip-smacking moments of the day. It’s a blind shot from a green set in the valley floor, a total drop of 60 feet that starts 90 yards from the putt. If you want a double green, a common play is to put your ball on that downslope to the left of the fairway and let it roll back and ride the angle left to right of the fairway and green. The only downside to 15 is that you have to wait 17 holes to play it again.

On the 16th, you’ll need to avoid the few remaining trees that may prevent you from getting a double. The terrain slopes downhill as you approach the green, though not as extreme as the 15th. There are no bunkers around this green but it is still one of the most difficult areas to get up and down from the course.

Larson says: “When you look at the course on the scorecard those par 5s look straight, but they’re completely different holes.”

The 17th – Larson’s favorite – is the truest three-shot par 5 of the three. The blind shot should avoid the bunkers on the left and the second shot should avoid the bunkers on the right. The best part of the hole may be the green, where you sit up high and can see the Minneapolis skyline in the background.

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

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