Interlachen Country Club

Willie Watson laid out Interlachen Country Club's original routing in 1911 on a piece of Edina, Minnesota land outside Minneapolis. Donald Ross redesigned the course in 1919, working through his northern Minnesota commissions during the post-World War I expansion of American club golf. The Ross-era routing is substantially the course modern players walk, with continuous restoration work through the 1990s and 2000s that has preserved the original architectural vocabulary. The course is famous for hosting the 1930 U.S. Open — the championship where Bobby Jones won the third leg of his grand slam, the calendar-year sweep of the U.S. Open, British Open, U.S. Amateur, and British Amateur that has never been matched.

The course plays around 7,000 yards par 73 from the back markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. Interlachen hosted the 1935 U.S. Women's Amateur (Glenna Collett Vare), the 1953 Walker Cup, the 2002 Solheim Cup (U.S. won), the 2008 U.S. Women's Open (Inbee Park), and the 2017 Walker Cup. The fourth hole is a 525-yard par-5 — the famous hole where Bobby Jones reportedly skipped his second shot across the natural pond on Saturday of the 1930 Open. The seventeenth, a 187-yard par-3 across a natural pond, is the routing's most-photographed mid-round hole.

Interlachen 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 club's early-1900s era. The hospitality model is traditional country club and the Jones-1930 history is part of the institutional identity that the membership has preserved through generations.

Minneapolis climate compresses Interlachen's playing window into April through October. The course closes through Minnesota winter and reopens when the soil thaws — typically late April. The mature tree canopy keeps the routing cooler in mid-summer than the open prairie courses elsewhere in the Twin Cities. The autumn color through October is part of the routing's seasonal photographic signature.