The two-hour drive West from the twin cities in Minnesota out to New London is largely featureless. Sure, once off the freeways you pass some nice-looking farmland and pretty lakes, but there’s nothing that jumps out at you and suggests there is a world class golf course just over the horizon.
Our first glimpse of the site came during the Covid lock downs, when our client, Mark Haugejorde, managed to get a drone up in the air to fly across the property. To say we were impressed would be an understatement. Even at three hundred feet we could sense the scale of the rolling terrain and the canyon and creek which ran through a third of the property, looked like something from a hiking commercial.
Tepetonka will be the newest private member club in Minnesota and our second new course to commence in the US.
The course is laid out over two parcels of land, totalling around 250 acres and split by the Shakopee River. The larger of the two looks a lot like ‘cups country’, the sand dunes found near the beach an hour south of Melbourne, so we were surprised to hear that they weren’t sand and instead were formed by glacial activity. The undulations here are perfect for golf…big enough (30 to 40 feet) for dramatic effect and broad enough that it allows golf to be played between the dunes as well as across them.
Ground was broken in April 2024 and by September we had shaped around 14 holes. With the snow now melted in 2025, we have returned to site to complete shaping and should have all features grassed and under grow-in around summer or early fall 2025. Tepetonka will be open for member play in 2026.