Aug. 18—NEW LONDON
—
Kandiyohi County
and its recreational opportunities are but a couple of years from being placed on the national map.
That prediction comes from someone already well-known to a national audience,
Jim Nantz
, CBS Television sportscaster who teams with Tony Romo as the network’s lead announcers for NFL football.
Nantz predicts that the
Tepetonka
golf course will build a “grand reputation on a national level,” putting it in league with some of the nation’s best-known destination golf courses.
He was among a gathering of partners and developers behind the Tepetonka golf course project who gathered Friday at the site five miles from New London to tour it and make plans for its development. Nantz is a design consultant for the project.
It is being developed by
OCM Golf Course Design
of Melbourne, Australia. Its founder, US Open Champion
Geoff Ogilvy
, told the gathering that he shares in Nantz’s optimism for this course.
“Fantastic,” he said of his impressions of the landscape for the course.
“It is amazing how suited the land is to develop as a golf course,” added his partner in OCM, Ashley Mead.
Mead, Ogilvy and their partner
Mike Cocking
spent five cold and snow-pelted days in April as they first toured the site. On the fourth day, Ogilvy said “it all came together.”
Their design for an 18-hole course with a nine-hole short course weaves alongside Shakopee Creek on a 228-acre landscape where prairie and cedar-filled, gently rolling glacial moraine hills meet. They liken the site to a sandy, coastal setting, but more intimate for its players.
The Tepetonka project is currently in the permitting process in Kandiyohi County. Its partners are hopeful of getting the OK to begin some work this fall, with expectations of opening the course for play in 2025.
Two local companies,
Duininck Golf
and
Marcus Construction
, will be responsible for the development of the course as well as plans for a lodge, hospitality center and cabins on the site.
As a private destination course, it will be open to members only. There will be 100 memberships available. The initial 20 memberships are already sold out at $100,000 each.
Members will be limited to a set number of days they can play each season. It’s expected many will come from locations far and wide for two or three days of play at a time, while also enjoying recreational opportunities elsewhere in Kandiyohi County.
The partners are also planning a beach club on nearby Green Lake and a clay shooting range at a separate location.
Tepetonka will be Minnesota’s first destination golf course. Mark Haugejorde, a 1973 New London-Spicer graduate, and Mike Schultz, a Professional Golf Association Hall of Famer, were playing golf on Nebraska’s Sand Hills course when they lamented that Minnesota lacks a destination course.
The two became partners, and looked around Minnesota for a potential site. They eyed up a number of sites without success, until a Sunday morning drive in which Haugejorde was bringing his mother to the Little Crow golf course. Haugejorde told the audience Friday how a new look at a landscape where he once hunted pheasants led him to realize: “That’s it.”
Joe Beditz, president of the National Golf Association, said a movement toward destination courses “is where much of the industry is moving right now. … The demand is there,” he said, especially in the vacuum that exists in Minnesota, where no destination courses have been built.
Nantz was a freshman at the University of Houston, Texas, eager to play golf on the school’s storied golf team but with the actual goal of becoming a sportscaster exactly 46 years ago. He became a roommate to golf team member and senior Mark Haugejorde, along with fellow team members Fred Couples and Nick Faldo.
They became strong friends, and Nantz spoke of how Haugejorde always professed his love for his home state of Minnesota.
The college buddies were always goal setters and believers in each other, and Nantz said he was quick to understand Haugejorde’s enthusiasm for this new project later in life.
Haugejorde’s father, a former superintendent of Schools for New London-Spicer, was instrumental in the development of the Little Crow golf course, now known as the Little Crow Resort.
Haugejorde’s father had a big role in bringing golf to this area. Now his son “is going to bring this part of the world and golf to the whole nation to see something this state truly has not had before,” said Nantz.
The broadcaster’s visit to the Tepetonka site was sandwiched between a stop at the NLS football team’s practice in the morning, and a planned visit later in the day with Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins.
Nantz and broadcast partner Tony Romo had videotaped the state championship NLS football team a year ago, and he returned on Friday to speak to this year’s team about the power of teamwork.
“This is a team,” Nantz said of those gathered to launch the Tepetonka project. He said he is confident that the founders of this project will make good on their goals. “You have you own movie,” he said. “You can write your own screen play.”
