Joel Goldstrand: Minnesota's Quiet Master of Public Golf

Joel Goldstrand never chased the spotlight. The Minnesota architect, who died in November 2022 at age 83, spent more than three decades laying out affordable public courses across the Upper Midwest while bigger names took the prestige work along the coasts. The result: nearly 100 designs and renovations, the vast majority of them within a day's drive of the Twin Cities. Stymie currently tracks 49 of his courses still operating across Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

From the PGA Tour to the Drafting Table

Goldstrand grew up in Worthington, Minnesota, three hours southwest of Minneapolis. He played golf and basketball in high school and was part of the 1957 Minnesota state championship team. A scholarship to the University of Houston followed, where he played on multiple NCAA championship teams under Dave Williams alongside future Tour pros.

He qualified for the PGA Tour in 1965 and competed for eight seasons. His best moment came at the 1970 U.S. Open at Hazeltine National in his home state, where he finished tied for 12th. He played the 1971 Masters and won the Minnesota State Open in 1973 and again in 1985. He was also the first player on Tour to put PING irons in his bag, a footnote that says something about his willingness to back ideas other pros dismissed.

In 1973 he stepped off the Tour and took the head pro job at Minneapolis Golf Club, where he stayed for 16 years. Course design started as a side project and grew steadily until 1989, when he closed out his pro career and went full-time as an architect.

Designing for Walkers, Not Magazine Covers

Goldstrand built courses for the people who actually played them. That meant routings that walked well, greens that putted true through long Minnesota winters, and bunkering that punished bad shots without burying mid-handicappers. His budgets were typically modest. His clients were typically municipal parks departments, family-owned semi-private clubs, and resorts in lake country. He worked with what the land offered rather than against it, which in the Upper Midwest meant prairie, glacial moraine, hardwood forests, and a lot of wetland to route around.

A signature trick: reversible nines. At Dakota Magic Casino in the Dakotas, he laid out the Sisseton and Wahpeton routings so the same ground could be played in two directions. It is the kind of solving-for-constraints work that does not show up on Top 100 lists but tells you a lot about how he thought about acres of dirt and a fixed budget.

The Twin Cities Anchors

Goldstrand's most-played design is probably Bunker Hills Golf Course in Coon Rapids, opened in 1971 and a fixture of the Twin Cities public-golf scene for half a century. North of the metro in Ramsey, the Links at Northfork stretches to nearly 7,000 yards with a 141 slope, one of his most demanding layouts. Heritage Links Golf Club in Credit River and Cannon Golf Club in Randolph Township round out the south-metro group, both built in the 1990s when Goldstrand's design practice hit full stride.

Resort Country and the Great Northwoods

North of the Cities, Goldstrand became the architect of choice for Minnesota's lake-country resorts. He drew the original 1990 Pines layout at Grand View Lodge in Nisswa and returned in 1993 to add the second 18, giving the resort the Lakes Woods Course and the Marsh Lakes Course. Grand National Golf Course in Hinckley plays 7,149 yards from the tips, the kind of championship length that lets a casino property host real tournaments. Up near the Canadian border, the Falls Country Club in International Falls dates to 1998. Blueberry Pines Golf Club in Detroit Lakes is another lake-country regular that walkers favor.

Beyond Minnesota

Goldstrand's reach extended into the surrounding states. Lakewoods Forest Ridges in Cable is his Wisconsin showcase, set in the hardwood forests near Lake Superior. In North Dakota, the Pioneer Course at Manvel and Memorial Park Country Club in Lamoure brought his work to the prairie. In South Dakota, Madison Golf and Country Club opened in 1975 and remains in regular play.

A Legacy Built on Daily Fee Golf

The Minnesota Section PGA named Goldstrand its Golf Professional of the Year in 1979, and the Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame inducted him for both his playing and design careers. None of his courses cracked Golf Digest's national Top 100, and that was never the point. The point was a $40 round on a Tuesday afternoon in Owatonna or Roseau or Glenwood, played in three and a half hours, on a course where the lines off the tee actually made sense and the greens did not punish you for missing the fairway by a yard.

RJ Smiley at Tee Times Magazine ranked Goldstrand's impact on Minnesota golf history alongside the late Don Herfort, the two men effectively splitting the state between them. Anyone who has played public golf in the Upper Midwest has almost certainly walked one of Goldstrand's layouts, often without knowing it. That anonymity was kind of the point.

View all 49 courses by Joel Goldstrand on Stymie