Ahh, St Croix National. I think I've played this place at least 50 times. I've told myself at least 10 of those times that I'm never going back. Something you'll come to learn about me is that I hate so-called "shot-maker's holes". You know, the type of par 5 where you have to hit a 4 iron off the tee to avoid the river running across the fairway at 240 yards. The kind of hole where you then have to lay up into a little bowl as if the course is forcing you to play their beautiful 100-yard approach over water to an island green. Or maybe the 280-yard par 4 where you have to hit a 160 yard drive and then hit over a 400-foot deep ravine to the green.
To hell with that.
Just give me a fair challenge without any bullshit. A little risk/reward is fine, but don't REQUIRE me to tee off with a goddamn mid-iron on a par 4 or ESPECIALLY a par 5. At St. Croix, you're only going to hit about 7 drivers. Off the top of my head, 1, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14 (maybe), 16, and 18 are all potential drivers. The rest of the 4s and 5s are "shot maker's holes" and they piss me off. Not because I can't make the shots - I just hate my only option being an iron off the tee. It's boring golf and it's a manufactured challenge (as opposed to a real one). I'll take 100 White Eagle Golf Course #4s (600 yard par 5, dead straight, usually into the wind) over 1 St Croix National #6. For the uninitiated, #6 is a 550ish-yard par 5. It's straight for about 200 yards and then it shoots 90 degrees left for the remaining 350 yards. 4-iron, 3-iron, wedge. Every. Single. Time. Oh sure, you can try to cut the corner with a driver. The problem is that the fairway around the corner is only 10 yards wide with OB left and trees right, so unless you can hit a massive hook or clip the trees just right, you're in trouble.
This is my problem with golf courses. On the surface, St Croix is a nice track. It's very lightly populated, it's decently priced, it's in great shape, and it's just a gorgeous place. That's what made it my "home course" for a couple years before I just got tired of the gimmicky shit you see on tracks like this. Now, that's not to say there aren't some beautifully designed risk-reward type holes. #1 is an awesome hole. It's a 320-yard par 4 with a 150-foot drop. You can lay up to a huge fairway or you can go at the green. The 400-yard par 4 10th is also a great example. You can punish a drive to a narrow landing area to have a wedge in or you can hit a 3-wood short of the bunkers to challenge your mid/short-iron game. #12 is one of the best risk/reward holes I've ever played. The tee shot is elevated and if you can carry it about 230 yards over a bunker and keep it out of the trees left, you can get yourself to about 170 out. Otherwise, you can go right to a wide landing area and give yourself 230 to the hole. After that, you can go after an interesting green surrounded by mounds and bunkers or you can lay up to a very generous landing area and hit an easy but blind wedge onto the dance floor.
Then there are holes like #11. It's a blind 270-yard par 4. Unless you can hit a massive high draw absolutely perfectly into the green, you're hitting a 3- or 5-wood off the tee and a wedge in. #8 is a par 4 with a fairway that has such a dramatic right-to-left slope that it will absolutely not hold anything. You're either in the rough right or the rough left unless the fairway got 5 inches of rain the night before or unless you hit an 8-iron off the tee. #2 is the same as #11, but instead of having the option to hit a massive high draw into the green off the tee, you've got water protecting the front, so a long iron is literally the only shot you have.
Enough about the layout though as I feel this is getting too negative. Let's talk about why I like this course. One of my favorite aspects of this course is that unless there's a wedding or something going on, the parking lot is never more than half full. That might suck for the golf course, but it's awesome for the golfers. I'm going to go off on a tangent to describe my next point - one thing I've noticed since moving to the southwest metro is how much better care of the course golfers take in the northeast compared to the tracks down here. I don't know if it's because there are so many rich, entitled assholes playing golf down here or what the case may be, but the courses are in shitty shape. The greens are tore up from no one ever repairing pitch marks, the popular spots in the fairways are absolutely decimated because no one replaces their divots, and the teeboxes are a joke. At Troy Burne, you can putt on the teeboxes. At Chaska Town Course, you will not tee off without standing in a divot. Back to St. Croix, the combination of great etiquette and no one playing results in a course that's in fantastic shape. The fairways are well-groomed, the greens are always slick but true, and you almost never have to fix more than your own pitch mark on the green. The staff here is awesome as well. The guy/gal taking your money will almost always BS with you for a minute or two, the drinks and food are respectably-priced, and they don't have rangers harassing you every other hole. In fact, I don't think they have any rangers, period - I've honestly never seen one. I think that's why I can't stop playing here - there isn't any extraneous bullshit to put up with. It's just golf. There's something to be said for that.
After you finish knocking in your par on 18 (lol, yeah right.. that hole is hard) and cart your sorry ass back to your car after a psyche-dismantling excursion up and down the hills of SCN, you get to start your trek back home. Let me tell you what's awesome about driving home. The Loch Ness Lounge. This has to be the shittiest establishment I've ever seen. It's a mobile-home looking strip club where the beers are cheap and the C-section that the dancer had was even cheaper. I literally saw some broad changing outfits in a minivan outside the doors as I was walking in one time. If you can ignore the scars and black eyes, the strippers are actually pretty damn hot, oddly enough. Much to my dismay, I think they shut that place down this year. It was an awesome place to go to knock back a couple and get your spirits back up after the soul-crushing score you just put up. I guess I'll just have to start hitting up the other strip joint on the way to Stillwater, the Cajun Club, instead.
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