By Mason Savage, A Good Walk Spoiled Contributor
For those of you who missed it, 8 weeks ago, we at A Good Walk Spoiled released "The Completely Unbiased 100% Scientific Golf Course Ranking System." The point of the system is to create a ranking system that was geared to the Everyday Golf. If you missed that post, please check it out in the link below so that you can understand how these rankings work and what each category represents in the system.
Before we dig into the Review/Ranking, these are the Top 10 Public Courses in Minnesota so a couple of notes. 1. As the title states, these are Public Courses, there are no Private Courses on this list so please do not ask why courses like Interlachen are not on this list. 2. These are courses that we at A Good Walk Spoiled have played. If there is a good public course that is not on this list, that means we do not think it is in the top 10 or we have not played it. 3. Most important note, this is the Top 10 so all of these courses are GREAT and we would recommend any of them to out of town travelers. That said, we are critical when it comes to analyzing Golf Courses so any negative comments or points of critique in these Blog Posts come from a place of Love and wanting the courses to better themselves.
#3 - Braemar Golf Course - Edina, MN
Edina Minnesota, Home of the Hornets, the Cake Eaters and Braemar Golf Course. Braemar Golf Course opened back in the 1960s but recently underwent a new construction in 2017 that has left us with a beautiful, walkable and community friendly golf course.
Now I can hear the complaints already, "Mason how can you and A Good Walk Spoiled have this course rated higher than The Quarry at Giants Ridge? Giants Ridge is a much better course!" You are right, the course, strictly the golf course, is better at The Quarry than it is at Braemar (although I could make the argument it is closer than you think it is). However, it is all of the other factors that go into this ranking that sets Braemar ahead of The Quarry and I hope that you take the time to read this article (including the conclusion) to see the compelling argument laid out in our criteria. If you do get to the end and you still do not think that The Quarry should be ranked lower than Braemar, then save your anger and tune in next week for the #2 course on this list because you will be really upset.
But enough of that, let's put the spotlight back on Braemar Golf Course for this post and dive into what makes this little public track in the Southwest Metro so special.
Culture - 10
The culture at Braemar Golf Course is among the best in the state! This is made evident by many different factors. One of the factors is how busy the practice facility and driving range are all of the time. They are constantly full! This is because Braemar is one of the lone public courses in the Southwest Metro area. In an area that is littered with golf courses, Braemar remains the one shining star in the public sphere while all of the other courses are closed off and private. The popularity of this course is only further proven by the amount of Membership cards they sell each summer and the difficulty to get a tee time.
Add to the popularity a fantastic Bar and Grille, a fantastic Dome for the winter and Bocce Ball courts and you have an amazing, fun and welcoming environment at Braemar Golf Course.
Place - 6
Unfortunately, the sense of Place at Braemar is not very good. If you have been reading along with these reviews, it has the similar feel as Chaska Town Course. While Braemar and Chaska Town Course are both great courses, there is not much that distinguishes them from other suburban settings. Braemar could just as easily be located in Woodbury, Maple Grove or Eagan as it is in Edina and I wouldn't know the difference. That said there are some redeemable features that distinguish it and give it a sense of place that saves the score a bit. One of them would be the 13th tee, a large hill (almost mountain top) that the rest of the course sort of just circles around. It is the pinnacle and defining natural landmark on the property.
Quality - 8
The quality of Braemar golf course is fantastic. While it is not perfect, the fact that this course is able to achieve such a great quality given all of the rounds that it sees is honestly quite remarkable. As we have stated in this segment before, the only thing really needed for a good quality score is Good, playable and consistent greens. Everything else is only additive to achieving a higher score.
Price - 7
No real notes. The price is fair given the lack of public golf in its surrounding area and the quality of the golf course.
Architecture - 8
My favorite part of writing these reviews, the architecture section. Braemar has some excellent highs and some unfortunate lows when it comes to the design. To start off on a positive note, the front 9 at Braemar is truly special. The routing is brilliant, it boasts a fun variety of holes and it also moves naturally over the terrain to make it an enjoyable walk. The current layout of the course was designed by Richard Mandell so hats off to him and the brilliant work that he did laying out this redesigned golf course.
Right off of the bat there are two fantastic holes. Hole one is a great handshake opener. After a warm welcome from the starter, your round at Braemar is kicked off with a fairly short Par 4. A small tree on the right side means that you need to favor the left side with your tee shot but other than that, you can still basically hit it anywhere. Add to that a fun double tier green and you have a fairly simple hole to get you started. It is tough enough to punish completely ignorant shots but not so tough that it is going to ruin your round.
The second hole offers a risk reward off of the tee, the closer to the crossing creek, the less club you have into the green. The left offers a completely safe bailout but the result is a more difficult and longer shot into a green complex that mostly slopes front to back, which rejects shots that come in too low or too fast. The rest of the front nine has lots of memorable holes such as the Par 5 4th hole that features a dramatic slope to make you thoughtfully consider your lay up or approach shot and all of them interact well making the pacing of the round feel great.
The back nine, while not as strong as the front nine, still has some very good holes. Similarly to the front 9, there are a lot of holes that require different shots. Maybe the most memorable hole is the Par 3 13th Hole. This long (204 yards) Par 3s offers the most scenic view of the course. Perched high above the entire property, you can see the entire west side of the golf course laid out in front of you. Down below, there is a relatively small target with water and trouble completely surrounding the green. This is a difficult Par 3 where you would be happy to get a Par and move on to the next hole.
However, like every course on this list, there are some items to be critical of when it comes to the architecture of the property. There are minor complaints such as the similarity between 18 and 12, the tight landing zone on 13 or an uninspiring 17th hole but those are not that big of a deal. A large part of the reason for the less than perfect Architecture Score is the 16th Hole. The 16th hole on paper and in practice seems like a great design. A reachable Par 5 that requires you to take on risk to obtain the reward. This is mainly done by the pond on the hole. It is down the entire left side on the tee shot and it guards the green. Whether it is your second shot or your third shot, you are going to need to take on water at some point. The question that is being asked is how far do you want to have to carry the ball? In practice and on paper, this is a fine design except the later option does not really exist due to awkward angles and misplaced bunkers. With the angle of the fairway, the further you want to hit your lay up, the narrower the landing zone. With Bunkers in the landing zone across the fairway, you are left to either lay up short of them or take the larger risk of clearing the bunkers. Clearing the bunkers however is not an option. The landing zone past the bunkers in the fairway is not much bigger than the actual green and add to that OB and an ill advised cart path, the landing zone is more penal and tougher to hit than the actual green. The result is a very linear Par 5 and one that does not even help that much in reducing the distance on your third shot.
We will end the architecture on a positive note and this one is probably the biggest positive overall for Braemar. The green complexes at Braemar are all fantastic. They all have some sort of interesting feature that makes for fun shots and fun putts. One hole that I want to highlight is the Par 3 7th hole, a hole that is often overlooked or thought of as boring at Braemar. While this may just look like a Par 3 that demands a stock 170 yard shot, it is actually a Par 3 where you need to look at the pin and make sure you are positioning yourself correctly on the green or missing in the right area to ensure you are able to still make Par. The front right portion of the 7th hole is a lower tier with the green running away off to the right. Pins that are located there make two putts from the upper tier difficult and it makes for fun chip shots if you miss right because of the backstop the slope provides. This simple interior slope affects the entirety of the hole and the 7th is not the only hole at Braemar where this happens. Countless holes feature one defining feature on the green that has numerous strategy implications. However, despite all greens having one feature, it is not over done meaning that the greens are not similar to Mini Golf holes. Large portions of these greens are relatively flat which is a perfect sweet spot in Green complex design. This staple of the design at Braemar is super fun!
Value - 8
The value of Braemar Golf Course is fantastic. You get an awesome golfing experience, on a well maintained course and you do not need to travel far to get it. You can stay in the immediate metro area. Large cities (like the Twin Cities Metro area) usually lack great, interesting and close golfing opportunities so it is awesome that Braemar is able to serve the SW Metro so well.
Overall - 47
Braemar Golf Course is a great golf course that is right in the “backyard” of Minneapolis. The details and intricacies of the course and what it means to the community is why we have it ranked so high on our list. The regular readers of this ranking series may have some issues with this course being placed this high, especially with the ranking of The Quarry at Giants Ridge behind Braemar but we hope by laying out the details and scoring criteria, you can see why in totality, Braemar has a higher ranking than The Quarry. If we are looking at strictly just the GOLF COURSE than yes, it is hard to deny that The Quarry is a better GOLF COURSE but these rankings look at just more than the course, rather it looks at the entire body of work the course puts out (as is evident by our ranking criteria) and how all of those factors play into not just your round, but experience at the course. A large portion of Braemar being higher is the Culture and Community that this place fosters. As was stated before, the range is always full, the Par 3 course is littered with juniors and tee times are difficult to come by because of the active nature of the course (and the quantity of season passes that they sell). If you were to remove both golf courses from existence, sure everyone will miss The Quarry (as they should) but it will not make a community mourn its absence like removing Braemar would. An already starving, yet avid golf community, will be without its home and because of that, it gets a higher mark on these rankings than The Quarry.
Now all of that said, that does not mean that this course out at Braemar is bad and the community aspect is what puts this course this high. To think that would be a misunderstanding of the article. There are a lot of fun and interesting golf holes out at Braemar with great conditioning. Add to that some of the most thoughtful yet simple green complexes in the State and you have a recipe for a fantastic golf course. Our final verdict is that if you are able, you have to try and play Braemar Golf Course this summer! You will not regret it.
Thank you for reading the 8th post in our Top 10 Public Golf Courses in Minnesota. To stay up to date as we continue posting the list, be sure to Subscribe here so you are notified when our next course goes live. If you enjoyed the blog post consider checking out our other articles on the website or our other mediums. Over on instagram, we post great photos of golf courses, post engaging instagram stories and post Short Form video content. On our YouTube page, we have many videos that highlight certain golf courses. Personally I am a fan of our video we made about Keller Golf Course and you can check that out here.
Thank you again for reading and we are excited to release the final 2 courses over the next two weeks.
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