Tag Archives: St. Paul golf

Hillcrest memories: Tell me about it

Lost golf courses,

With Hillcrest Golf Club about to join the ranks of Minnesota’s lost golf courses as one of its most distinguished members, it would seem a shame to just let it fade off into the
late-October sunset.

Hillcrest is scheduled to permanently close its 18-hole layout at the end of the month, bowing out after its 97th season in the very northeast corner of St. Paul. Some of the course’s regulars are understandably downhearted about the closure, as Dave Orrick of the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted in a tribute to Hillcrest published shortly after the news of its demise was announced in late July.

I would be interested in hearing from more golfers who remember Hillcrest. What will you remember most? The players? Staff? The course? Any favorite holes? Any holes you will curse until your dying day, even if you generally loved the place? Any tournaments you won? Any tournaments you didn’t win (I’ll bet there were plenty)? Ever play it during a torrential rainstorm or snowstorm or withering heat wave? (Or all three, considering, well, this is Minnesota?)

Natalie Klasinski tees off on the 18th hole at Hillcrest Golf Club. (Valerie Reichel photo)

Respond to this blog post or send me an email (my last name, my first name, at gmail) and I’ll publish your thoughts. I also would love to post a photo or four. Surely you can do better with photos than what’s in my “stash,” which consists of two photos — I don’t even know which holes they’re of — taken while lurking around Hillcrest’s perimeter for 10 minutes in late September. (Update, Oct. 12: Valerie Reichel outdid my by 500 miles on the photo front. My two photos are posted below. Her much better photos are interspersed.)

In the meantime, though I never had the privilege of playing the course, here are a couple of other tidbits about Hillcrest, as it relates to other lost courses:

— Hillcrest was established in 1921 and notably designed by Tom Vardon. Sad to see Vardon’s design work slowly fading away. His lost courses in Minnesota now number eight : Hillcrest, Bunker Hills (the one in Mendota Heights, not Coon Rapids), Ortonville, Shattuck (Faribault), Matoska (Gem Lake), Sauk Centre, Quality Park (St. Paul) and Westwood Hills (St. Louis Park).

— Before it was bought by Steamfitters Pipefitters Union 455 in 2011 for $4.3 million, Hillcrest was known through much of the 20th century as the Jewish golf club in the eastern half of the Twin Cities. But it wasn’t the first Jewish golf club in the east metro. That distinction belonged to Northwood in North St. Paul, about a mile northwest of Hillcrest. Northwood was established in 1915 and spent 30 years as the east metro’s Jewish golf club before the membership bought Hillcrest in 1945 and made Hillcrest, formerly a public course, private and Jewish-affiliated.

— How many lost courses in Minnesota’s capital city? Hillcrest is the fourth, that I know of. The others: Quality Park (1925-unknown), Merriam Park (1900-06) and the historic Roadside Golf Club (1897-1903).

So, let me know about Hillcrest. Thanks in advance.

Looking upon the No. 8 green at Hillcrest. (Valerie Reichel photo)

Charlie Leavitt comments, 8-13-2018:

My family belonged to what was then known as Hillcrest Country Club from the mid 1950s through 1970.  I have hundreds of memories of Hillcrest!  These are a couple of “forgotten facts” about Hillcrest:
  • While the original design was by Tom Vardon, Arthur W. Tillinghast completed an extensive restructuring of the golf course in 1937. One doesn’t hear of Tillinghast courses being “plowed under” very often.
  • The Club pro, during my youth was Ray W. Hill who was the Medalist in the 1949 PGA Championship.  Ray reached the quarterfinals of match play before bowing out to Lloyd Mangrum. Ray won two State Opens and two State PGAs in the 1950s and early 1960s. He had the most distinguished tournament record of any of his club professional contemporaries.
Ray Hill was born in 1912, had a brief but somewhat successful time as a touring pro, served in the US Army Air Force during WW II and died much too young in 1974.  Ray gave the Club a distinguished feel and an identity that it lost after his passing.  He mentored many successful pros including Mike Zinni and Ron Benson. Ray often brought young pros up from Texas to work at Hillcrest. One of my favorites was a man named Howard Buchanan who had a little dog named Bogey.  He was keeping the dog for a friend who couldn’t afford to feed him. The friend’s name? Lee Trevino!
I could go on and on about Hillcrest. I have so many wonderful memories of that place. I get a queasy feeling when I think it will soon be unrecognizable as a golf course.

 

Nick Brozak comments: I’ve had the honor of working at Hillcrest on the grounds crew for the past 7 years, the last 3 as the assistant superintendent, and I just wanted to share what Hillcrest meant to me. I will never forget Hillcrest. It’s where I got my start working in the golf industry and it’s where I learned to love and respect the game of golf more than I ever had. When October 31st came and Hillcrest was officially closed it was one of the saddest days of my life, and I know I wasn’t the only one that felt that way. The location of the course was far from prime, but when you got onto the course you would forget about all the commotion of St. Paul and take in the beautiful scenery of the course. The course wasn’t super long but the hills and doglegs would still give you a challenge and the greens didn’t curve every which way but they were quick and true. (My favorite greens ever.)
Like I said earlier I will always remember Hillcrest for what it has done for me in my profession and my love of golf!

Seven founding MGA members – and one left by the roadside

Lost golf courses, ,

Minnesota golf history: On the evening of Aug. 29,1901, seven clubs became charter members of the Minnesota Golf Association when the organization convened in Winona for the first time.

Should have been eight.

Roadside got snubbed.

You might not know about Roadside Golf Club. But to channel Rumack to Elaine Dickinson in “Airplane!” — “Roadside, what is it?!” — that’s not important right now.

What is important — well, in a trivial sense, which of course makes no sense at all — is that, at 8 p.m. on that 1901 evening, seven clubs came together to form the MGA: Bryn Mawr of Minneapolis, Meadow-Brook of Winona, Town & Country Club and Merriam Park of St. Paul, Minikahda of Minneapolis, Tatepaha of Faribault (also spelled in some historical entries as Tapeta) and Rochester/Silver Creek (more on that course in a post coming soon).

One more club should have been invited to the party but never was. The St. Paul Globe of Aug. 30, 1901, explained:

“The Roadside club, of St. Paul, was not invited through misunderstanding,” the newspaper reported, “and the secretary was directed to notify that club of the action taken tonight.”

There is no indication from MGA records that Roadside ever joined the organization, and by 1903, the golf course was gone.

I suppose, almost 116 years later, this piece of clerical oversight is entirely inconsequential. But when I came across the Globe entry recently, I just found it curious, so I thought I would waste five minutes of your life that you’ll never get back with the revelation.

As you were.

P.S. 1: In case you’re truly interested in Roadside, Ms. Dickinson, a little bit about the place:

Roadside Golf Club, situated off Summit Avenue in what is now St. Paul’s Merriam Park East neighborhood,  was formed in May 1897 by members of St. Paul’s Town & Country Club, Minnesota’s first golf course. As the T&CC members decided to branch out and put another club on the map, they established Roadside 2.5 miles to the east. Its clubhouse address was listed as being on the 1100 block of Summit Avenue. The image below, an inset from an 1898 plat map of Hennepin and Ramsey County and held by the John Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota, shows the approximate location of Roadside Golf Club within the red boundary.

Though exact starting dates of Minnesota’s earliest golf courses (as opposed to golf clubs) can be debated, Roadside appears to have been among the first five courses established in the state. It was a 12-hole layout that prominently featured play from Town & CC’s female membership, and it lasted until 1903, when residential St. Paul expansion squeezed it out of existence.

P.S. 2: Below is a copy of the first page of the minutes of the first meeting of the Minnesota Golf Association, as held by the MGA. The minutes likely were not transcribed directly at the meeting but were re-recorded before 1910. Thanks to the MGA and Warren Ryan for permission to use.