Minakwa Golf Course in Crookston wrapped up the outdoor golfing season on Thursday, October 26. This is the first year that the course was under the ownership of Brandon Carlson and Zach Strommen. The restaurant will remain open for the winter, and they also have other plans for the winter season.
Minakwa began construction of an indoor simulator that will be in the southeast corner of the clubhouse. Golfers will be able to schedule a tee time for the simulator in one-hour increments at a rate of $45 per hour. The simulator features a hitting screen, a sloped floor, and an auto-tee feature.
“The hitting screen is about 16 feet wide. You hit it into the screen, there’s a couple of sensors up in the ceiling and down on the floor that monitor your swing. Then it represents it on the projected screen as the ball would land on a regular golf course,” said Carlson, “It’s got a sloped floor where you hit the ball, it hits the screen, it runs back to you, and you don’t even have to bend over to tee your ball up it auto tees it for you. And there are different surfaces you’ll hit off of. If you end up in a bunker, you have to place your ball on a bunker surface. If you end up in the rough, you have to put your ball on the rough surface. It’s as realistic as you can play golf indoors.”
In order to fit the simulator in the clubhouse, Carlson had to tear down the wall between the southeast corner and the sunroom, and they also had to build a slanted floor and an elevated floor so the auto-tee feature could function.
“We had to remove the wall from the sunroom. We tucked it back in that southeast corner. Our clubhouse is kind of small the way it is already, so we’re kind of stealing room we don’t have,” said Carlson. “We had to remove 16 feet of that wall between the sunroom and the southeast corner of the clubhouse. We removed that wall, and we had been building the slanted floor, and you have to have an elevated floor, and it’s kind of like a weird jigsaw puzzle on that floor because the ball has to run underneath it and back to the auto-tee system.”
There is still sheet rock and plywood work to do, but Carlson estimated they are two-thirds of the way done with the project.
The restaurant will remain open for the winter. It will stay open every day from 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM for a couple of months, but that is subject to change if there are days that aren’t as busy. Carlson doesn’t anticipate any sweeping changes to the menu, but he does want to introduce Friday signature meals and a Sunday breakfast buffet.
“We’re going to do a Sunday breakfast buffet or just straight Sunday breakfast, but we plan to start doing Sunday breakfast,” Carlson said. “And I would like to get Fridays to where they’re our smoked brisket or prime rib, or we’ll call it our signature meals on Friday nights, is what we’re going to try and shift towards.”
The course also has plans to have cross-country skiing on the course in the winter. He is bringing in a groomer to groom a trail and a hill for kids to sled down.
Carlson also reflected on the first season of ownership. He said there was a pretty big learning curve when they took over in the spring, but he was thankful that it was a great summer weather-wise for golf. He also said his biggest concern was the tournaments, especially the Ernotte Hiller.
“My biggest concern for this year was the (Ernotte) Hiller tournament. There’s a lot of people in and out, there’s a lot of organization. It was a busy weekend, it was also a lot of fun. We had a full Hiller tournament this year. I think it was 96 players that played in the Hiller this year,” Carlson explained. “I think if we were to mention one tournament that I think went really well, it was the Hiller, and we had a lot of help from Nancy Horner and Jess Ross, the previous owner, helping me stay organized for that tournament.”
Carlson said there are no big plans for next year at the moment, but he said they have a couple of ideas for different tournaments and doing one additional Couple’s Fun Night.
“We’re going to make sure we get two Couple’s Fun Nights next summer. We might try and do some quirky, different tournaments like that next year. I talked about at the beginning of this year that the last tournament would be to play the course in a different direction than normal. I would like to execute on that next year.”
