At the end of August, Tepetonka Club debuted all 18 holes of its OCM Golf course for member play near New London, Minnesota, about 90 miles west of the Twin Cities, as the state's first fractional-ownership golf destination. The par-70, 6,765-yard course, by the firm of Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking, and Ashley Mead, runs across roughly 228 acres of glacial moraine split by Shakopee Creek, and the private club behind it is capped at 100 members. Duininck Golf broke ground in April 2024, making it the second new OCM course to start construction in the United States.
The site rises and falls as much as 100 feet across cedar-covered dunes of glacial origin, some 30 to 40 feet high, and OCM used the dunes both as features to play across and as corridors to route holes between. Shakopee Creek, a tributary of the Chippewa River, comes into play on six holes. Sixteen of the 18 required minimal to no earthmoving. "OCM moved less than 1,000 yards of dirt on the first fourteen holes," said Mark Haugejorde, the club's CEO, a former general manager of Jack Nicklaus International Golf Club who identified the former recreation site about three years before construction began.
The routing moves through three distinct landscapes: bluffs and the creek first, then prairie and open moraines, then four closing holes with a Minnesota feel. Only the seventh was an obvious hole before OCM arrived. The par-three third was found quickly, and the rest came out of walking the land. "The only direction we were given was to find the best eighteen holes on the property," Mead said. Bunkering and greens are drawn to play harder for low handicappers and easier for high ones, and the designers were sold early. "The first time we were on the property we knew Tepetonka was going to be special," Ogilvy said, and Jim Nantz has gone further, calling it "The Minnesota Masterpiece."
Nantz's fingerprints are all over the short course, first called The Prox and now renamed The Gjallarhorn, still under construction and expected in spring 2027. It was shaped with input from the CBS commentator and carries the green and bunker ideas the big course could not accommodate, with shaping inspired by the 16th at Augusta, where Nantz called his first Masters in 1986. Its Rock of Fame tee program starts with a first tee at Nantz's own Pebble Beach home. Each late afternoon, players will take a shot at an ace on the ninth green, and the Gjallarhorn will sound across the property.
Each of the 100 owners buys a share of a fixed pool of 10,000 member rounds, with a one percent interest equal to 100 rounds that can be shared among up to four people. The club is open to members and their guests only and expects about 90 players a day. KemperSports of Chicago operates it, with Jason McCarty, formerly of Cabot Saint Lucia's Point Hardy Golf Club, as director of golf. The club plans a staff of 40 to 50, many of them seasonal.
Marcus Construction, like Duininck, a local firm, has been building the lodges since August 2025. Two lodges, Wakanwi and Skol, will hold 36 rooms and are expected next year, a Phase II set above Shakopee Creek will add 16 suites in May 2027, and until then a concierge places overflow guests in local hotels while Tepetonka Ranch serves as the temporary clubhouse. A Supper Club anchors the dining, in a register the club describes as "High End, Minnesota Casual," and a Beach Club is planned on Green Lake. Tepetonka Ranch, a proposed 140-acre lease, would add a spa with saunas, a heated pool, and a gym alongside sporting clays and managed pheasant hunts, with its main house and upper cabin opening for booking October 16. "It has exceeded my highest expectations and they were very high," Haugejorde said of the course. Guests will fly into Willmar Municipal Airport, with club shuttles waiting, or drive about two hours from MSP, and a docuseries is being filmed along the way.
Tepetonka arrives as destination golf spreads across the Upper Midwest and north. Whitehall Sands, Jay Blasi's public course on a 300-acre former frac-sand mine in Whitehall, Wisconsin, is under construction for 2028, and Cabot Wilds, by Jeff Mingay in Nova Scotia, is expected in late 2027.