Neighborhoods / Royal Golf Club, Lake Elmo, MN /One golfer’s perspective

Golfers play on the 5th green after the grand opening of the Royal Golf Club Golf Course in Lake Elmo which took place at the new club house and golf course founded by Hollis Cavner on Friday, May 18, 2018 with a facility open house and tour of the 18 hole course. The course designed by Arnold Palmer and Annika Sorenstam is located on rolling hills, mature trees and offers a golf club and Arnie’s restaurant along with spaces available for meetings and events. (Ginger Pinson / Pioneer Press)

Does Lake Elmo’s new Royal Golf Club live up to the hype? One golfer’s perspective.
(Reprint from Pioneer Press)

By: TAD REEVE

Twelve years ago, “over a few cocktails,” Hollis Cavner and Arnold Palmer started talking about buying the Tartan Park golf course in Lake Elmo and turning it into something special.

The 3M Company, which built the 27-hole complex in 1963 as a perk for its employees, wasn’t ready to sell, so Cavner and Palmer went about their business in other golf endeavors. And business was good.

“Golf was in great shape then and on rise. Everything was wonderful,” Cavner remembered. “Then 2008 hit, and everything changed.”

The Great Recession crippled seemingly solid companies and altered entire industries. Golf was among the hardest hit. Hard to justify paying for 18 holes and a cart when you didn’t know if you were going to have a job the next day. And it didn’t help that Elin Nordegren took a 9-iron to the car of golf’s grand ambassador in November 2009, just three months after Tiger Woods let the PGA Championship slip through his grasp at Hazeltine National.

Woods is only just now recovering from his disappearing act almost a decade ago, and so is golf.

Cavner and Palmer got another shot at the golf course they always wanted when 3M closed Tartan Park in 2015. Developers swarmed the property looking for a place to build million-dollar homes, much to the chagrin of the Lake Elmo City Council, which likes things nice and peaceful. So when Cavner made another offer on the property and vowed to remake the golf course, it was an easy sell.

Work on the Royal Golf Club started in March 2016. Cavner and Palmer added LPGA hall of famer Annika Sorenstam to their design team, with Sorenstam designing the front nine holes and Palmer the back nine. With those two living in Florida, Thad Layton of the Arnold Palmer Design Group moved to Minnesota to oversee their vision.

Palmer passed away in September 2016, just a couple of months after making the final tour of what would be his final golf course design. He spent a day walking the dirt fields at Royal tweaking his nine holes but never got to see the final product.

“I think he’d be very proud with what we’ve got here,” Cavner said Friday during a grand-opening event at the course, which officially opened to the public on Saturday. The course booked tee times for more than 200 golfers for both Saturday and Sunday, and the reviews will start pouring in soon.

What Cavner hopes golfer find is joy. “Play the course like Arnold wanted you to — have fun,” Cavner said. “That’s what he wanted this place to be about.” Though the new course has kept some of the bones of Tartan Park, it isn’t easy seeing them.

Cavner and Co. kept the original clubhouse but gutted it and replaced it with what looks like a brand-new building. Picture windows and a deck were installed on three sides of the building to provide a full view of the course.

“We trimmed the hill and cut down a lot of trees to create the view of the lake from the clubhouse,” Cavner said. “I’ve had 3Mers who played the old course for years come up and tell me they didn’t even know the lake was there.”

Cavner added state-of-the-art meeting rooms, a banquet hall, and a restaurant and bar to make sure the facility doesn’t have to live on greens fees alone. “We’ve already got 27 weddings and 33 corporate events booked,” he said. “You have to have a different revenue stream.”

And new customers.

Which is why Cavner is especially proud of the six-hole short course, which features holes from 34 to 98 yards. Kids age 18 and under can play the course for free, and you can bet it will be one of the most popular features at the club. Kids also get free use of golf clubs, checking them out at the pro shop.

“The par-3 course is a tribute to what Arnold is all about. He insisted on us having it,” Cavner said. “It’s my favorite part of this place. Every course should have one.”

But the main attraction is the big course, which uses five sets of tees to play from 3,907 yards to 6,901 yards and a par of 72.

“It’s all the golf you ever wanted,” Layton said, “whether you play it from 2,000 yards or 7,000 yards.”

“This course is for any golfer of any gender, any skill and any age,” Sorenstam said Friday. “We love for every hole to have its own story.”

A quick spin around the course on Friday left several first impressions, most of them good.

Perhaps the best thing about the course is the feeling of solitude, that you are in your own little space away from a metro area of 3 million people. It seems to fit the Lake Elmo vibe to a tee.

Upscale homes will be going up at four places along the course, and it’s hard to say how they will change the experience once the homes are built out. They don’t overwhelm the experience yet, but for now only Phase One is under construction.

Sorenstam’s front nine features some of the more distinctive holes, while Palmer’s back nine “is harder,” Cavner admitted.

The first hole is a good one, but the best are probably Nos. 5, 6 and 7, which make the most of elevation changes, water and doglegs around thick woods and hills.

Palmer’s back nine starts well with Nos. 10 and 11 running alongside Horseshoe Lake, which is now in full view after a major effort to clear out thick brush and trees to reveal what was a hidden gem of the property.

The course’s goal is to be family-friendly, and for the most part it is. But the green complexes are likely to vex less-experienced players, and certainly kids. Most greens feature a hump in the middle that makes for small landing areas, tricky putting and limited options for pin placement.

It is a classic Palmer design: wide fairways that make the game more manageable from tee to green, but a whole lot of hurt up around the green for imprecise shots. There are only 26 bunkers on the course, and one especially nice feature that runs throughout is the shaved areas around the greens, which makes chipping easier for most.

Though worse-than-bogey golfers may find the course difficult — especially around the greens — it is not overly hard. During the opening ceremony Friday, 63-year-old Joe Stansberry established the course record with a nifty round of 3-under-par 69. Of course, Stansberry is a former State Amateur and State Open champion who played briefly on the European Senior Tour. So he probably putted just fine.

That the course has been built at all is a minor miracle — and a testament to Cavner’s vision.

Royal Golf Club is the first metro-area course built since Windsong Farm opened in 2004 in Independence, in the western edges of Hennepin County. Before that, the last metro course opened was another Cavner creation, the TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, which opened in 1999 and has played host to the Champions Tour’s 3M Championship since 2001.

In the meantime, 48 courses in the state have shut down since 2003, according to the Minnesota Golf Association. The golf business seems to have stabilized over the past few years, but you can bet more courses will close over the next few years.

And the presence of Royal Golf Club isn’t likely to make things any easier on other public courses in the East Metro. StoneRidge Golf Club, which has a Stillwater address and runs along Interstate 94, is one course that could take a hit. The course is up for sale but isn’t going down without a fight. Greens fees there match Royal’s — $59 during the week for 18 holes without a cart.