Hi, Mark, from another Minnesotan. I hope you enjoy the site.
Dan's eagle-eye already spotted the stunner (for Minnesotans) on your list. We don't debate Willingers on this site because hardly any of the GCA participants have played it. Your hole-by-hole was accurate (from the perspective of a bomber -- sheesh, how long are you, anyway? There isn't a drivable par 4 for me at Willingers) but it did not reflect my primary take on the course: I believe there are more awkward shots at Willingers than any other course in Minnesota. It's not the role of a golf course architect to make the golfer comfortable, but on almost every hole at Willingers, there's a demand that makes me uncomfortable. It's the farthest thing from a "it's all there in front of you" kind of golf course. And it begins with the first shot -- the awkward angle over the water hazard that rewards a long bomb over the farthest point of the water, but anything more prudent -- or farther left -- leaves you a very long approach to the green, or has you chipping back to the fairway from the trees in the left rough.
I could go around the course and describe the various predicaments Garrett Gill's design -- and my bad play -- have put me in at Willingers, but I'll simply end this by saying that if you ever want to swap an invitation to White Bear, Interlachen or Minikahda for a paid-up greens fee to Willingers, give me a call.
I have not played at Willinger's in years and years (and won't, for a reason that has nothing to do with the course's design). But Rick and I played there numerous times 10 to 15 years ago -- and I think I can honestly say that we mostly agree on this analysis.
As I said, I'm going from old memories here, but there are a TON of discomforting shots, I think, where "strategy" will be of almost no help (e.g., from memory: the absurdly constricted 12th fairway; the goofy 13th fairway; the target-target-target par-5 with water left all the way, and maybe elsewhere, too, on the front nine -- I see it's No. 6). It seems to me that Willinger's par-4s and par-5s are almost all about precise execution of difficult shots without much room for error.
Not so No. 11 -- which is the one of the holes I like.
If I'm not mistaken, I thought the par-3s were pretty uniformly good -- difficult, but possible.
Nothing wrong with a sadistic course, but I have less appetite for masochism than I used to.
Give me a course like Rick's Stillwater CC, or Jason Topp's Oak Ridge, or Jeff Shelman's ... well, which course is he playing at nowadays, anyway? (Little joke. Jeff's been a little peripatetic in recent years. He's at Southview now -- I think!)
Give me, for that matter, Keller. Any day. And it's much cheaper than Willilnger's.
I think if I asked Rick which TC course is the second-most-discomforting, he'd say Inver Wood.
I'd say -- of the courses I've played, and many remain unplayed: Inver Wood, or The Meadows at Mystic Lake.
All three by Garrett Gill.
That's his specialty, I guess.