Published accounts agree that Ross was engaged to create Woodhill during the mid-1910s and that the course opened for play in the late-1910s; the most common open date given is 1917, with some directories listing 1916.
Contemporary and retrospective summaries—most notably Rick Shefchik’s From Fields to Fairways (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), which devotes a chapter titled “Ross Shows His Stuff—Woodhill Country Club (1915)”—trace the project to a 1915 conception and planning window, with construction following shortly thereafter. While the Shefchik volume is a secondary source, it is the only Minnesota-focused monograph to synthesize club histories, period newspapers, and archival photography for this era, and it has become the standard reference for the state’s classic courses.
Multiple modern course catalogs, as well as Woodhill’s own web presence, attribute the course to Ross; Top100GolfCourses specifies 1917 as the opening season and notes that Ross “returned to make further modifications … in the early 1930s.” That claim of a return in the 1930s appears repeatedly in enthusiast and directory literature but is thinly sourced online; precise dates and scopes (e.g., 1933–34) are often asserted without citation.
Woodhill’s later competitive pedigree is well documented: the club hosted the 1959 Trans-Mississippi Amateur, which Jack Nicklaus won over Deane Beman, and it served as the venue for the 2001 USGA Women’s State Team Championship, won by the Minnesota side. These fixtures, separated by four decades, anchor Woodhill’s historical timeline in regional and national competitive golf.
Unique Design Characteristics
Even within its tree-lined modern setting, Woodhill still presents a sequence of holes frequently singled out in print. Daniel Wexler, as quoted by Top100GolfCourses, points to a cluster of par fours and par threes that frame the course’s strategic essence today: the 421-yard 4th, the 424-yard 6th (where encroaching left-side trees influence the approach), the 221-yard 8th, and the 426-yard 11th, which plays across a narrow, canted fairway. He also highlights the 137-yard 2nd as a short-iron pitch to a “small push-up green.” While the current tree lines are denser than early images suggest, these holes demonstrate how Woodhill’s routing leveraged the natural rolls and tilts of the Minnetonka uplands and how small, perched targets—especially at the short 2nd—still determine the preferred angles into the greens.
Photographic sets and amateur mapping corroborate this hole-by-hole character. The par-3 8th remains a notably exacting long-iron or hybrid shot to a guarded target; the 11th reveals a fairway that falls and leans, dictating shot-shape and run-out before a mid-iron approach; the 2nd’s compact putting surface and surrounds accentuate misses.
The clearest surviving examples of Ross’s work at Woodhill today appear to be the short-par-3 2nd, whose push-up character is explicitly documented, and the sequencing through the mid-front nine (4–6–8) and into 11, where the routing’s use of cross-slope and elevation changes remains both visible and functional. A 2019 article about Woodhill’s environmental initiatives, published in Club + Resort Business, further asserted that the “greens are original Ross style and grass [and] remain as designed,” a claim consistent with member-facing communications but one that calls for verification against as-built green drawings if a full restoration proceeds.
Historical Significance
Within Ross’s portfolio, Woodhill has been treated in Minnesota-focused historiography as the architect’s signature original design in the Twin Cities’ inner-lake region—distinct from his consultative roles at neighboring clubs. The University of Minnesota Press materials that accompanied Shefchik’s book, and a related state-history map, explicitly identify Woodhill as Ross’s only original design in Minnesota (as opposed to remodels or joint efforts), conceived in 1915. This positioning—original, early, and intended to stand with the era’s best—explains why the course attracted high-profile exhibitions (Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer) and served as a championship venue from 1959 to 2001. While national rankings have rarely featured Woodhill given its privacy and a dense local roster of classic courses, regional guides consistently place it among the Twin Cities’ historically significant layouts.
The 1959 Trans-Mississippi final, where Nicklaus defeated Beman 3-and-2 at Woodhill, has been noted in multiple local retrospectives as part of an extraordinary Minnesota golf summer, connecting Woodhill to one of the most consequential amateur résumés in the game’s history. In 2001, Woodhill’s hosting of the USGA Women’s State Team—won by the Minnesota team with Claudia Pilot as low individual—extended that legacy to the women’s side and re-affirmed the course’s suitability for elite amateur competition.
Current Condition / Integrity
Assessing Ross integrity at Woodhill requires reconciling two strands of recent documentation. First, the 2019 sustainability feature mentioned above described the greens as “original Ross style and grass” that “remain as designed,” implying limited recontouring over time and a high degree of continuity in the putting surfaces. Second, public regulatory filings in 2025 for a “Woodhill CC – Course Renovation Project” (stormwater summary submitted to the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District and municipalities) state that the project “will include the reconstruction of greens and tee box features to accommodate the revised course layout,” along with irrigation replacement and civil/drainage work. The filings quantify approximately 7.9 acres of disturbance and describe new trunkline storm sewer and pond adjustments; they do not name a design architect or provide architectural drawings. Together these sources indicate that, as of mid-2025, Woodhill is undergoing a significant capital program that could alter certain green pads and teeing sets while keeping broader drainage patterns intact.
Additional, informal evidence of a concurrent Ross-oriented restoration—such as social-media posts referencing the “reintroduction of a massive bunker” and “restoration of Donald Ross’ work at Woodhill”—suggests that aesthetic and strategic elements (bunkering, perhaps selected green expansions) are in scope, though the club has not publicly released a comprehensive restoration plan or named the design lead in a press announcement accessible online.
Sources & Notes
Top100GolfCourses. “Woodhill Country Club | United States.” Notes 1917 opening, Ross return “early 1930s,” and highlights holes 2, 4, 6, 8, 11 with descriptive detail attributed to Daniel Wexler’s The American Private Golf Club Guide.
USGA Course Rating & Slope Database. “Woodhill Country Club—Tee and Rating Information.” (accessed Sept. 23, 2025). Shows a maximum men’s “Gold M” total of 6,881 yards and multiple alternate tee sets. Shefchik, Rick. From Fields to Fairways: Classic Golf Clubs of Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Table of contents and publisher materials identify a chapter on “Woodhill Country Club (1915),” situating conception in 1915 and Ross’s authorship; the book is the principal secondary synthesis for Minnesota’s classic-era courses.
University of Minnesota Press (map PDF). “Golf Courses and Country Clubs of Minnesota” (promo map). Asserts Woodhill as Ross’s only original Minnesota design, “conceived in 1915,” and notes exhibitions (Hogan, Snead, Palmer) and the 1959 Trans-Miss. Secondary promotional material; corroborate with club files and contemporaneous newspapers.
USGA. “Women’s State Team Results (1995–2017)” and “Host States and Clubs: 1895–Present.” Confirms 2001 Women’s State Team at Woodhill, won by Minnesota; lists Woodhill among Minnesota USGA hosts.
Star Tribune. “Golf grabbed the spotlight in the summer of 1959 in Twin Cities.” July 3, 2019. Notes Nicklaus’s 1959 Trans-Miss win at Woodhill over Deane Beman, adding local context. (Newspaper retrospective.)
Minnehaha Creek Watershed District filing. Woodhill CC – Course Renovation Project, Stormwater Narrative/Summary (June 6, 2025). Civil-engineering submittal describing a course-wide renovation including “reconstruction of greens and tee box features to accommodate the revised course layout,” drainage and irrigation replacement, and ~7.94 acres of disturbance. (Regulatory document; architectural authorship not stated.)
Club + Resort Business. “Woodhill CC Raises the Bar on Environmental Stewardship.” July 17, 2019. Includes the line: “Upcoming Capital Projects: Ross restoration project—greens are original Ross style and grass, remain as designed; tees—level and straighten …” (Trade publication; member-communications tone.)
Woodhill Country Club (official site). General pages (Home, Audubon, Contact/Departments) confirm address, private status, and Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary certification with initial year.
Supplementary imagery/notes. GolfCourseGurus (photo set) and GolfClubAtlas forum thread provide visual corroboration of tree-lined corridors and fairway/green forms; use cautiously as non-scholarly sources.