theodore wirth golf course

I experienced the Minnesota golf equivalent of The Sopranos finale. 

Playing 17 holes and then being told you can’t finish the round. That is a very unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise great run. 

In my best Jeremy Culhane/Tucker Carlson voice, “What are we doing? What’s going on?”

All that hard work for 4+ hours and your reward is utter bewilderment as you drive down the 18th fairway, looking at it wistfully while not being allowed to play it. Felt like the Wet Bandits driven away while Kevin McCalister smiles and waves out the window. 

That’s what happened to us at Theo Wirth Golf Course in Minneapolis for our latest round. The 18th at Theo will always be known to me as the Kevin McCallister hole.

We played a late afternoon weekday round because our guest – Topher Scott – was in town from Chicago and gave a presentation earlier in the day at the Minnesota Wild’s Leadership Summit. 

We had picked Theo Wirth because we originally booked Mike Snee of the Wild to be our guest, and Mike is a Minneapolis resident. We thought it made sense. But when Mike mentioned that Topher was in town to speak at the Minnesota Wild Leadership Summit and he’d be with him, we thought why not ask Topher to be our guest and bump Snee? 

You’re not a big time show until you’ve bumped a guest, so I feel like Golf Loons has officially made it. 

But, Snee got to play with us and I assured him that he would be a guest for a different round, to which he responded, “you mean I have to play golf twice?!?!”” 

Snee doesn’t love golf. 

Topher, who was a Cornell hockey legend and started The Hockey Think Tank - had never golfed in Minnesota and he didn’t have any kind of preference for a course, so Theo Wirth it was. I had only played it in a scramble once, and I remembered little of it. Scrambles are terrible for evaluating a golf course, just FYI. 

We were treated to a glorious afternoon weather-wise, and as the round went along, I was thoroughly enjoying the course. Theo Wirth gets some grief for being a city muni supposedly not in great condition, but I really felt like those complaints were unfounded. Yes, there was one hole (#9) that stood out as being really beat up. But I thought conditions overall were strong to very strong and there were some really cool holes with a lot of hills and valleys.  

But the best part of Theo Wirth is the history you can find there. For example: I learned that the clubhouse was actually the building used in The Mighty Ducks (the only good Mighty Ducks movie without question) for Hans’ Sport Shop. That’s where Ol’ Hans made Gordon Bombay realize he was being a jackass for telling his team to take dives and pretend they were hurt earlier in the day against the Jets. 

So that makes Theo Wirth cool already. 

From then on, I really was having a difficult time finding things I didn’t like about this course. I loved seeing a train roll by us on the tee of number 2. It was cool to see the Minneapolis skyline off in the distance from the third tee. There were some fantastic vistas on the 11th and 15th tees. A couple other holes go uphill, including 10 which Twig contends is the steepest uphill hole in the state. Eh…an interesting debate at least.

Just some really cool holes throughout the round. We were having a great time.

But the sun was nestling underneath the horizon, but this was late June, one of the longest days of the year. The time on the clock said 8:50. As we were teeing off on the Par 3 17th, the ranger – who we hadn’t seen all day – drove up to us and said we needed to finish up and get the carts back to the clubhouse. 

We certainly stepped on it and played the 17th in less than 5 minutes. So we headed to the 18th hole to rush our finish. As we loaded up our tee ball…He was back, and he was ornery. 

“You guys are done! Don’t hit that ball! You guys are done! Already told you that. Now you’re trying to sneak on.” 

Okay, here’s the deal gang. This guy was talking to four very laid back individuals. One of whom doesn’t even really like golf. But this guy was acting like he caught us lighting fireworks on the 17th green.

It was still light out. We just wanted to quickly finish what was really a fun day. Topher, who admitted to not golfing much, was having a career round.  This guy wasn’t having it. 

So we stewed on that for a bit. I ate away my frustration with a Chipotle run. And then realized that the guy was doing his job…just rudely. Still, I was sad.

Other than that, we did have an awesome time at Theo Wirth. It’s got a famous clubhouse of Disney movie fame. And a solid statue of Mr. Wirth with some kids out front. 

Theo Wirth is legit. Get out there and play it. But start early, lest you meet a most unfortunate and disappointing ending.