TPC Twin Cities
Designed by Arnold Palmer
History
The turn of the millennium brought a new golf address to the flatlands north of the Twin Cities, when TPC Twin Cities opened its doors in Blaine in 2000. Built under the PGA Tour’s Tournament Players Club banner, the club was conceived from the start with competitive golf in mind — a private facility designed to serve both its membership and the demands of professional tournament play, a dual purpose that shaped its creation from the ground up.
Arnold Palmer took on the design work himself, lending his name and his decades of championship experience to the routing. By 2000, Palmer had long since moved from playing legend to design statesman, and his firm approached the flat Minnesota terrain with the kind of restraint that had marked his later career — building a course meant to identify the best players in the field rather than punish the everyday member. The commission gave Palmer a rare opportunity to shape a northern layout meant for tour-caliber competition, one of relatively few TPC properties built in a cold-weather market.
The club’s identity has been closely tied to the professional game since its founding, having hosted PGA Tour and Champions Tour events over the years as part of the TPC network’s tournament rotation. That competitive pedigree remains central to how the club describes itself, even as it functions day to day as a private membership club serving the Twin Cities golf community.
Playing Notes
Bring your full driver rotation and a plan for wind management — Blaine sits exposed enough that Minnesota's prevailing gusts will factor into club selection on almost every approach shot, especially late in the round when fatigue meets crosswind. The layout moves across open, rolling terrain with enough native grass and wetland framing that missed fairways carry real consequences, not just cosmetic rough. Greens run fast and are contoured with subtle breaks that don't reveal themselves from 30 feet out, so lag putting matters more than it looks like it should on the scorecard. Walking is possible but most groups ride, given the distances between some greens and tees; carts also help you stay ahead of pace-of-play expectations, since this is a course that sees plenty of tournament-style traffic and staff keep groups moving. Pack extra balls for any round with wind in the forecast, and get to the range early — the practice facility is worth using to dial in distances before you're standing over a shot to a green you can't quite read yet.