Golden Valley Country Club

William Watson laid out Golden Valley Country Club's original routing in 1915 on a piece of Golden Valley, Minnesota Twin Cities suburban land west of Minneapolis. The course has been redesigned multiple times since the original opening, with significant work through subsequent decades — most notably a Tom Lehman-supervised redesign in the early 2000s that brought the routing into modern Tour-rotation readiness. The PGA Tour Champions' 3M Championship (now defunct under the renamed 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities) was played at Golden Valley through the 1990s and 2000s.

The course plays around 7,200 yards par 72 from the championship markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. The redesigned routing carries the architectural framework of multiple eras — Watson's original strategic-design principles overlaid with subsequent modifications and the Lehman-supervised updates. The fifteenth hole is a 521-yard par-5 along a natural creek; the seventeenth, a 215-yard par-3 across a natural pond, is the routing's most-discussed one-shotter. The mature tree canopy through the property gives the routing its parkland character.

Golden Valley Country Club is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional Twin Cities business and professional families with multi-generation ties through the early-1900s founding. The Champions Tour rotation hosting through the 1990s and 2000s is part of the institutional identity, and the Tom Lehman connection through the redesign era gives the club a particular Minnesota-golf institutional character.

Minnesota Twin Cities climate compresses Golden Valley's playing season into April through October, with the firmest conditions in late July and August. The course closes through Minnesota winter and reopens when the soil thaws — typically late April. The mature tree canopy through the property gives the routing cooler summer conditions than the open prairie courses elsewhere in the Twin Cities.