John Fought, ASGCA (John Fought Design) has now designed both sets of 18 for Windsong Farm Golf Club, Maple Plain, Minnesota. The recent opening of the North Course compliments the South Course, which opened in 2002 and was renovated in 2015. “The North looks like a golf course that came from the early 1900’s,” Fought said. “It’s on a very small piece of land and I wanted to prove to people that length isn’t the only way to add drama to a golf course.”
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Windsong Farm owner David Meyer asked Fought to make the North Course different but just as good and fun as the South Course, which extends to more than 7,500 yards and features large greens with subtle undulations and collection areas inspired by the work of Donald Ross.
The new North Course is on a smaller piece of property—about 125 acres vs. 220 for the South—and pays homage to several different Golden Age architects, notably Seth Raynor. It’s a par-70 that can be stretched to not quite 6,500 yards but offers constant strategic challenge along with Fought’s take on several classic “template” hole designs, including an Eden green (2), Biarritz green (4), a Dell hole (8), Redan green (17), and a Cape (18). Holes 13 and 16 share a boomerang-shaped double green, most of the bunkers are rectangular with grass faces, and the fairways are broad and open with a strip of maintained rough that leads into thin and wispy fescue.
With views of Fox Lake and surrounding horse pastures, the North Course includes six par-3 and four par-5 holes. There is no repetition of holes by par until No.14, which is the first of three consecutive par-4’s. It is, says Fought, the most diverse course he’s ever built. And in another nod to courses from golf’s illustrious past, Fought’s North Course allows golfers to step off the green and onto the next tee, eliminating long walks between holes.
“This course is going to force you to think,” Fought said. “You can’t just get up and hammer it. You’ll have to think, ‘Do I want to hit driver here?’ Some of the greens are tiny, and others are huge. The Biarritz green at No. 4 is 17,000 square feet, where a normal green is 6,000. And I think golfers will use every club on the par-threes. We configured it to create the most diversity you can get on a golf course.”
In addition to a major bunker renovation and course improvement project in 2015, Fought recently updated the club’s practice area, which features East and West teeing decks, synthetic teeing areas, a teaching building, five practice putting greens, and a short game area built to the same USGA specifications as the golf courses.