The most unusual finish in golf? This club might have it

It’s a cold, rainy Monday in October in St. Paul. Not ideal for golfing, but perfect for exploring. I do both.

I plop my bag on the 14th tee of Town & Country Club, the oldest golf course in Minnesota. It’s nestled right against the Mississippi River and features rolling hills and sweeping views of the Minneapolis skyline, but I’m here specifically to watch this five-hole finale, which is anything but conventional.

The par-3 14th is the start of one of the most unusual final stretches in the country. Here, three par 5s are played in a row, and they are bookended by a pair of par 3s. Fight through the first 13 holes at Town & Country and a 3-5-5-5-3 finish awaits.

Pretty cool, right? They think so too.

“The holes really fit with the strange typography, because it is strange typography,” says architect Jeff Mingay, who worked with longtime Superintendent Bill Larson to complete a recent restoration of the golf course. “It’s a tight venue. There are serious canyons and elevation changes. It warms my heart a little bit because it’s like, OK, these are the holes that fit here. We really don’t care if the par on the back-to-back holes is similar, we don’t care about the overall par, we don’t care about balancing the nines. We just have a very dramatic venue and this is where the holes work.”

Town & Country is one of the 20 oldest golf courses in North America. It opened in 1893 with six holes marked by tomato cans and fishing rods. A few years later it evolved to nine holes and, after purchasing more acreage, the club expanded to 18 holes in 1907. The current routing has been in existence since 1920. The course has undergone minor adjustments over the past century, although the largest and most recent change was completed in May 2025, when Larson and Mingay put the finishing touches on the Town & Country’s Golf Course Enhancement Project.

Today’s course is perhaps the best version of Town & Country, a private club with about 575 members. The course is in an urban but scenic area with short walks from tee to green. It doesn’t take long, there are minimal water hazards and fast greens are the biggest defense. It has never been re-grassed and there are more than 30 different types of grass, including bentgrass from Scotland, giving it unique colorations on the fairways and greens that Larson says adds character. A ravine cuts through the terrain, separating the front and back nines and creating a height difference of 25 meters.

The evolution to this version started years ago, when Larson was on vacation in Canada and stopped by the Victoria Golf Club, which, like Town & Country, is well over a century old. Larson loved how Mingay revived an old-world look that was authentic to the heritage. He thought Town & Country could benefit from a similar update, so he contacted Mingay and they got to work in 2016. At first they were small projects, involving five years of work every spring and fall to restore bunkers or greens; “messing around,” as Mingay puts it.

But members were happy with the changes and were curious to see what else Mingay could do with the property. He came up with a plan and in 2024, Mingay and Larson dug in. Every hole in the site was touched as they returned the trail to its original architectural intentions and preserved it for the future.

A large part of the process involved tree removal, which started slowly with the removal of trees that were detrimental to the agronomy (no sun on the grass), complicated the maintenance of the course or harmed playability (in 2012 about 150 were also removed due to the Emerald ash driller, a destructive beetle). As the work progressed, beautiful sight lines opened up. The aesthetic of the course is very different from years ago, when choked trees made most holes appear as separate entities and masked the dramatic typography. Now it is open with expansive views extending beyond the property to downtown Minneapolis, the Lake Street Bridge, the Mississippi River and the bustling city.

Some members were resistant to cutting down the trees, but most came around.

“All of a sudden you think, ‘Wow, look at that view,’” says Larson, who recently retired after 36 years at Town & Country. “The members really got used to it and saw that the long views are important. The move really opened everyone’s eyes, and then you get an architect like Jeff, who is really good at restoring old golf courses. He comes out here and says, ‘Wow, these views are incredible.'”

(A small but interesting subplot to all this: In 2022, St. Thomas, a private, Catholic university just a few blocks away, offered $61.4 million to buy the 96-acre golf course — not the clubhouse or pool — to build a new hockey arena, as well as baseball and softball fields. After speaking with members, the club’s board of directors said unanimously rejected the offer.)

The restoration was tricky – like putting together a hundred-year-old puzzle, Mingay says – because of all the small changes in direction that occurred over decades.

“What we tried to do was figure out the best features and the best functional elements of the golf course throughout its history that will work best today and hopefully move forward in the long term,” said Mingay, who also spent time in Minnesota leading a restoration at Minneapolis Golf club. “We tried to make it all feel cohesive. That’s what made the project so interesting, trying to take all these really good elements from over 80 years and still trying to connect the dots in terms of how it all worked stylistically.”

One thing that didn’t change during the restoration? That epic finish.

CITY & COUNTRY IS NOT THE ONLY COURSE with an unconventional number of holes. Cypress Point has back-to-back par 5s and par 3s, and Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes has back-to-back par 3s that play along the Pacific (both are among the four par 3s on the back nine). Inwood Country Club in New York has three consecutive front par 5s. Osaka Golf Club in Japan finishes 3-5-3-5-3. And “The Other Course” at Scottsdale National never repeats a hole with the same par.

How important is routing to a golf course? And what’s the difference between a good one and a gimmicky one? Mingay says it’s hard to explain. It’s more of a feeling.

“A flow is created towards a very good routing where, as a golfer, when you walk from the tee to the green, from the green to the next tee, it feels like you are should walking around that particular property,” says Mingay. “And I think Town & Country fits that description 100 percent.”

Few if any routes in the United States end like Town & Country. And while the five-hole stretch plays the starring role, it’s important to know what precedes it to nail this finish.

The course starts with a short par 4 and is followed by back-to-back par 3s — You see, more unconventional goodness – a par 5 and, perhaps one of the most improved holes, the par-4 5th that plays into the ravine and back uphill. Mingay softened the height difference, restored the ridge line and created a punchbowl green to create a hole that looks as if it fell from the east of Scotland. The 6th, the most difficult hole on the course, goes down the same ravine over and over again and calls for a blind shot into the green, and numbers 7-10 are all par 4s that offer their own challenges. (Ten, despite not being the subject of this story, is so good it’s worth at least one sentence, so here it is, down the wide, forgiving fairway that leads to a narrow and elevated green built into the side of a hill.)

Eleven is a par 3 where a miss on the right is called “The Valley of 5”. Twelve is a par 5, which brings us to 13, an important foretaste of the final stretch. That’s because the par-4 13th is just 303 yards from the back tees, and while there are some issues looming, this is a birdie hole (especially since they removed a pesky tree in the middle and replaced it with a top shot bunker). An important birdie too, as you’ll likely give up a stroke on the long par-3 14th that kicks off our five-hole headliner.

Fourteen is a 234-yard par 3 that looks even tougher thanks to the top shot bunkers that Mingay has added. He says that this hole used to look like a cemetery with just grass to green, but he added these bunkers to decorate the foreground with a strong visual element. Mission accomplished. There is an easy fairway of 50 meters before the green, but it doesn’t look like that.

Fourteen is the most difficult hole of the last five, giving way to a more forgiving trio of three straight par 5s that run parallel to each other with fairways adjoining at points, a new aesthetic following the renovation that saw the removal of roughness and trees.

“It now feels more like a landscape to play golf than three separate holes,” says Mingay. “Just a big area with contours and closely mowed slopes. I just like that whole look of a big landscape for golfing instead of sending people through corridors, and I think that became a very unique feature of that back nine.”

On 15, a good drive puts you in position to get to the green in two and set up one of the most fun, lip-licking swings of the day. It is a blind shot on a green that is in a valley, a total drop of approximately 60 feet that begins 300 feet from the putting surface. When going for the green in two, it is common to land your ball on the slope on the left side of the fairway, let it trickle and drive it into the left to right corner of the fairway and green. The only bad thing about the 15th is that you have to wait 17 holes before you can play it again.

On 16 you’ll need to avoid some of the remaining pesky trees that might stop you from going for it in two. The terrain flows downhill as you get closer to the green, although not nearly as extreme as the 15th. There are no bunkers around this green, but it is still one of the most difficult areas to get up and down on the course.

“If you look at the routing on a scorecard, those par 5s just look straight,” Larson says, “but they’re completely different holes.”

The 17th – Larson’s favorite – is the most authentic three-shot par 5 of the trio. A blind tee shot must avoid bunkers on the left and a second shot must avoid bunkers on the right. Perhaps the best part of the hole is on the green, where you sit high and can see the Minneapolis skyline shining in the background.

The par-3 18th finisher is 170 yards and downhill. With a green that slopes sharply from back to front, you can’t miss for long. To the right of the green are Adirondack chairs. They’re empty when I play, but on most days it’s a dreamy place to experience the finale of this unique finish. Here at Town & Country, where the new merges with the old, there is plenty to sit and enjoy.

Josh Berhow welcomes your comments at joshua_berhow@golf.com.