DRIVING RANGES

Driving ranges seemed to have come and gone in St. Louis Park, and your help is needed to fill in the information and stories surrounding them; please contact us!
 

JIMMY'S DRIVING TEES
 

Jimmy Lentz was a PGA golfer, and he operated Jimmy's Driving Tees at 6200 Excelsior Blvd., between Brunswick and Dakota, south of the tracks, just east of present-day Methodist Hospital. (In 1931 this was called Interlinks Driving Tees.) The site featured driving tees on high ground near the Boulevard, with the range on lower ground reaching north to the tracks. The driving range was lit at night, creating an exciting atmosphere. Neighborhood boys would collect golf balls and sell them to men in cars heading towards Edina to make some spending money.

The facility was also used for air shows in the 30's. For a week each summer the field was used for an air show by traveling pilots who offered rides to brave locals. One summer a pilot had a near miss; the plane was coming from the south when a wheel hit the chimney of the Seirup house (Excelsior and Brunswick) and knocked off some bricks. From 1960-66, the Excelsior Blvd. site was a gas station, and in 1986, the eight-condo Boulevard Professional Building was built.

In 1939 he operated another driving range at 6400 Minnetonka Blvd., and in 1947 he had a place north of Highway 7, west of Texas.

TOMMY BOLT SCHOOL OF GOLF

A matchbook tells the tale: Tommy Bolt (born 1919) won the U.S. Open in 1958, and sometime afterwards opened his own golf school at 7600 Highway 7 in St. Louis Park. The school offered private lessons, unlimited supervised practice, movie analysis of golf swing, admission to all celebrity appearances, regular progress reports and swing analysis, social activities and movies, real golf balls and regulation clubs, sand trap, putting clock and driving range, and completely air conditioned classrooms.

Tommy Bolt had a reputation for losing his temper on the golf course. One of his famous quotes is: "If you are going to throw a club, it is important to throw it ahead of you, down the fairway, so you don't have to waste energy going back to pick it up." Another is “Never break your putter and your driver in the same round or you're dead." Yet another Bolt anecdote: During one tournament, Tommy lipped out six consecutive putts. "Why don't you come down here," he shouted, shaking his fist at the sky, "and fight like a man!"

We find two books written by “Terrible Tommy”: How to Keep Your Temper on the Golf Course (1969) and The Whole Truth: Inside Big-Time, Big-Money Golf (1971). How he ended up in Minnesota is a mystery, as he’s from Oklahoma.

For more on Tommy Bolt, go to www.golfweb.com/u/ce/multi/0,1977,2019496,00.html and www.parental-control-software.info/p/articles/mi_m0HFI/is_9_50/ai_56029012#continue

PAT SAWYER DRIVING RANGE
 

The Pat Sawyer Range was located at 3889 Wooddale, east of the buildings that housed Minneapolis Iron and Yngve and Yngve. It may have started around May 1955.

MINI-GOLF

Mr. Edey ran a mini-golf operation at Huntington and Lake in 1948.

Hugh McElroy Co. ran a mini-golf course on the north side of Excelsior at Princeton (about where Bally’s is), also in 1948.

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This information comes from a variety of sources: newspapers, books, yearbooks, phone directories, interviews, etc. Given the varied sources, we cannot guarantee that all of this information is correct, and welcome any additions and corrections. Please contact us with your contributions and comments.