Grand opening of nine new holes to take place at Crosswoods GC

The nine new holes have been welcomed by the club’s membership
18 acres of land were purchased to help accommodate the new nine holes
Club owner Michael Stone took a ‘hands on’ approach during construction
The new holes will be mixed with the existing front nine, creating three nine hole tracks

By Sean Dudley

Fri 29 Apr, 2016

The grand opening of nine new holes at Crosswoods Golf Course will take place this weekend.

Ground was broken at the course in Crosslake, Minnesota, back in March 2014, with a soft opening taking place in October 2015.

The project was led by Michael Stone, one of the owners of the club and a man with experience in the area of golf course architecture, having worked alongside Mark Mitchell to develop the original 18 at Crosswoods.

Speaking to GCA, Stone said: “Due to increased golfer demand and being limited to such a short golfing season, we thought increasing our operation to 27 holes made a great deal of sense. Making the expansion a reality was pretty straightforward since we already owned a gorgeous piece of property adjacent to our existing 18 hole course. A neighbouring property owner agreed to sell an additional 18 acres, which put the cherry on the top as far as a site, leaving nearly 65 acres to route nine holes.”

Stone said he had been ‘very hands on’ during the construction of the original 18 holes, and took the decision to keep the work for the new nine in house to help save costs. This included the irrigation, and the construction of the bunkers using the Better Billy Bunker method.

“Our county has an incredible interactive GIS mapping website,” Stone explained. “I was able to design the entire course using this free service, which provided highly detailed aerial photos, topographic overlays, drawing and measurement tools. I purchased most of the irrigation heads, swing joints, controllers from either golf courses that were closing or online. We also used rock picked on site to build retaining walls.”

Stone added that the amount of earthmoving was kept to a minimum, but the rocky nature of the site did prove challenging. A rock picker was purchased, and using this and two power rakes, the team at Crosswoods was able to create a ‘wonderful seed bed’.

The course will now be split into three nines. The existing back nine will become the Sunset nine, while the existing front nine will be interspersed with the nine new holes to create two new nine-hole tracks – Sunrise and High Noon.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with how it all turned out,” Stone added. “More importantly the golfers are giving us rave reviews of the new layout.”