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Head pro Jock Hendry (1925-1960) was in his fourth year at the club when KSTP radio broadcast the 1929 Minnesota State Amateur tournament from Town & Country Club, the first time a U.S. tournament was covered by live remote.
Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society
There are nearly 600 golf courses in Minnesota, several of them -- Interlachen, Hazeltine, Woodhill -- with celebrated status. Those courses, along with a number of other private clubs, are profiled in a new book "From Fields to Fairways" from the University of Minnesota Press.
The book is an exhaustive compendium of rare photos and little known details of some of Minnesota's most beautiful and exclusive golf courses and how they were the precursors to the state's many public courses.
Author Rick Shefchik told Morning Edition's Cathy Wurzer that Minnesota has a long history with golf, paralleling the game's development in the United States.
Shefchik will launch his book and hold a presentation and book signing on Saturday, April 14 at 2 p.m. at the Theodore Wirth Golf Club in Minneapolis.
Click on the audio link above to listen to his conversation with Cathy Wurzer.
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Generations of University of Minnesota students, faculty members, and public golfers from around the Twin Cities have enjoyed playing the golf course that Tom Vardon designed on Larpenteur Avenue in 1928.
Courtesy University of Minnesota Archives
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Head pro Jock Hendry (1925-1960) was in his fourth year at the club when KSTP radio broadcast the 1929 Minnesota State Amateur tournament from Town & Country Club, the first time a U.S. tournament was covered by live remote.
Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society
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Women played early and often at the Town & Country Club, Minnesota's first golf course. One of the earliest known photographs of golf in Minnesota, this image dates from 1898 and has often been identified as taking place at Bryn Mawr, the first golf course in Minneapolis. It has also appeared in history books from the Minikahda Club. When the Minneapolis Tribune used the photograph to accompany a 1950s story on early golf in Minnesota, it identified it as a scene from the Town & Country Club, and a photograph in Town & Country's history book, "The First Hundred Years," appears to feature the same women standing by the same tee, though viewed from a different angle.
Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society
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