White Bear Yacht Club

White Bear Yacht Club dates its golf to 1912, when Scottish-trained architect William Watson routed the first nine on gloriously rumpled land above White Bear Lake northeast of St. Paul. Watson soon added a second nine and reworked the whole course, aided by club professional Tom Vardon and, by contemporary accounts, informal advice from Donald Ross, whose name has long been rumored but never documented as designer. What makes the place a cult favorite is the land itself: wildly tilted fairways, plunging ravines and heaving greens that modern builders would likely have flattened. Instead the quirk survives, offering scarcely a level lie and demanding imagination on nearly every shot. Little changed for decades, White Bear endures as one of the country's most charming, idiosyncratic Golden Age courses, beloved by architecture devotees who prize character over polish.