NISSWA AREA GOLF COURSES EXPAND

The Brainerd Lakes Area offers some of the top golf courses in the country. And some of the courses had expansions and redesigns over the past year.

Here is an update on some of the course changes.

The Pines course has a new look

The 27-hole golf course that opened in the early 1990s recently went through a renovation project that started in the fall of 2022.

“It’s been about 30 years since The Pines opened,” said Adam Haugen, director of golf at Grand View Lodge. “Courses get tired and greens get expanded as they are mowed and organic material gets on there. The idea was to touch it up and give the course a little bit of a face lift. We want to give the course better material to introduce to the golf course. The main focus was also the playability and maintainability of the golf course to help the growth of the golf course and freshen things up.”

The Pines has three 9-hole courses: The Lakes, The Woods and The Marsh. In 2023, The Lakes and The Woods courses were finished with bunker transformations. Some bunkers were removed while others were improved and newly added. Ohio white sand will be brought in and used on the bunkers with playability, drainage and overall surfaces on the courses improved.

The Pines also emphasized tree removal to make the course a little more open.

“We know we are a resort facility and get a lot of players who are higher handicaps,” Haugen said. “We are trying to make the course a little more playable for them. We got rid of a lot of trees on the outskirts to make it a little more playable. We didn’t want to make it too easy because we have a lot of good players in the area as well. We wanted to get it challenging, so we moved some bunkers a little strategically to make people think about their shot a little more. We wanted to bring some shot value and strategic thinking well, keeping it easy for resort play.”

The Marsh added new bunkers, like the other two courses, and the tee boxes, greens and cart paths touched up. That project was expected to be completed in the spring of 2024.

Cragun’s opens Lehman 18-hole course

Completion of 36 new and redesigned holes at Cragun’s Legacy Courses were finished in 2023, including the opening of the new Tom Lehman 18-hole course.

Lehman and Chris Brands partnered to build and redesign all 36 holes on Cragun’s property. Construction isn’t done yet, however, as nine more holes will be finished in the summer of 2024 giving Cragun’s 45 championship quality holes.

“It’s a 36-hole renovation and then adding nine more new ones,” Lehman said. “It really became something a little more different because we eliminated some holes and had to create new holes and reversed some holes. We probably renovated 31 holes and built 14 new holes. It was a big project lasting three years. You are obviously limited here in Minnesota with the weather, but beautiful typography and a beautiful sand base that was easy to work with.”

The Lehman 18 course stretches all the way to the Gull River and back to the clubhouse.

“The Lehman 18 is a combination of some of the existing holes that were renovated or changed combined with some brand new holes,” Lehman said. “The brand new holes were built on sand dunes and I’ve always loved courses in Australia that are sand built and we all know what that look is with the big reveal. It’s a little bit of a different kind of sand here, but the look is kind of what we wanted to achieve.”

Lehman first saw Cragun’s Legacy Courses when he was watching his son play in the Minnesota PGA Junior Match Play event in the summer of 2020.

He met with Dutch Cragun on the patio of the clubhouse and was interested in helping the new project of expanding the Legacy Courses. Three summers later and it’s nearly complete.

Lehman started designing golf courses in 1997 a year after he won The 1996 Open Championship at the Royal Lytham and St Annes Golf Club. His first project was The Gallery Golf Club in Marana, Arizona. Shortly after he designed Troy Burne Golf Club in Hudson, Wisconsin. Overall, Lehman estimated he had been a part of 30 golf course designs.