Hard works pays dividends for new owners of Sandtrap Golf Course

Jill and Wayne Larson wouldn’t call themselves golfers. So naturally, they bought a golf course.

The Sandtrap is one of Cass Lake’s escapes tucked into the woods on 85 acres of land. The nine-hole course has been in business since 1944. Though, last March, two new owners gave it a needed jolt.

“We’re business operators,” Jill said of herself and her husband. “We both have a go-getter attitude. We used to buy houses and flip them, and we lived in them. Then we’d buy another house and flip it. We’re pretty good at working together.”

Their latest venture is a little more than a house. Jill, the owner of Headwaters Realty, saw the Sandtrap was up for sale.

“My office decided we should all tour the golf course as a team, see what we can do to help market and sell the property,” Jill said. “It was closed down already for the season. I was standing in the clubhouse, and I thought there was so much potential here that’s not being utilized. My brain just started spinning, thinking of all the things we could do.”

Wayne, an ironworker for 25 years, was looking to put his hands to work on something else. After a year of convincing from his wife, Wayne and Jill decided to put in an offer.

“I would just say upwards of $800,000,” Jill recalled of their initial investment. “Most commercial lenders will require you to put 20% down. We worked with First National Bank. Jodi Schroeder is the commercial lender there. We were working with another local lender, but we felt like they were dragging their feet. They weren’t able to put it together. So I gave the file to Jodi, and she had it closed for us in two weeks.”

In March of 2022, the Larsons were officially golf course owners. But the hard part was yet to come.

Despite becoming owners, Jill and Wayne have yet to play all nine holes consecutively on their own course. Some would call them crazy for not having played all nine holes, but those judgments would be misguided. Instead, the Larsons have spent the bulk of their time making sure the grounds are ready for their customers.

“We stay busy,” Jill said. “I think it will be easier for us to play or relax a little bit down the road. We’ve been able to golf a few holes here and there, but taking two hours to play nine or four to play 18 just isn’t an option. We played on the simulator a little bit in the winter, and we did some mini-golf. But that’s not the real thing.”

The aforementioned simulator is one of the Sandtrap’s newest installments. Renovations started shortly after the sale was completed. Jill and Wayne began revamping the living quarters above the clubhouse, which hosts two rental spaces for up to a month at a time.

A month later, the Larsons pushed to remodel the clubhouse, kitchen and dining areas before the snow melted. Wayne earned a license in food safety management. The Sandtrap also jumped through the hoops of obtaining liquor licensing that allowed golfers to consume alcohol in and out of the bar area.

One of the bigger inside projects started the following winter. The Cass Lake-Bena High School golfers trudged through a typical delayed start to the spring season in 2022 while their practice grounds were covered in snow. That was the push Jill and Wayne needed to expand the clubhouse, adding space for a simulator.
“The Cass Lake-(Bena) golf team have practiced here for a lot of years, and they kept asking, ‘Can we go to the driving range?’” Jill said. “It was literally the last thing to melt. They were really getting antsy to get on the course and get practicing because they were practicing with wiffle balls in the gym.

“We noticed that they practice all year long. We decided to add onto the building and put a golf simulator in this last January. When the spring came around, the kids started practicing there, it was really cool watching them do that. They were dialed into how they were connecting with the ball and what they could do differently to be a better golf team.”

For the first time in over four decades, the Sandtrap was in business in the winter. And once the cold subsided, the Larsons got to work on getting the playing grounds back into shape.

“The inside has gone through a lot of transition, but the outside has as well,” Jill said. “We haven’t restructured the course, but we’ve really dove into the chemicals and the treatments that we should be putting on the course. It’s super beautiful over there right now. That’s because we’ve partnered together with T&K Outdoors.”

Jill added that the Sandtrap also works with an agronomist in the Twin Cities area and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. They routinely send samples and pictures of their grass and soil, working to improve the health of the landscape.

A full round of golf at their course isn’t in the Larsons’ future just yet. Wayne spends much of his time managing the course, ensuring that it stays in a condition to keep people coming back.

The Larsons also own about 15 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to the Sandtrap. They’ve kicked around some big ideas for how to use the space but haven’t nailed down their next project yet.

“We’ve talked about putting in an RV park and giving those people golf memberships,” Jill noted. “We’ve talked about adding sand volleyball courts, and we’ve talked about maybe doing an event center. There’s more to come. We’re not done. I just don’t know which one we’re going to do yet.”

Regardless of what’s next, Jill said their first 17 months of owning a golf course have gone well, and the feedback has been even better.

“We’ve got a ton of new members this year that weren’t members here last year, and even some that had gone to other courses that came back,” Jill continued. “That’s really cool to see. When they say they haven’t been here for years but love coming here now, and then they become members, it just warms your heart. It makes you feel good. They see that we’re making good changes.”

The addition of a pool table and dart boards kick-started weekly leagues of bar games. On the course, the Sandtrap also hosts a variety of golfing leagues and tournaments ranging in levels of competitiveness.

The extensive financial investments the Larsons have forked over are just half of it. They maintain an emotional investment in providing an inclusive and community-oriented space for the public that remains affordable relative to other courses.

“We’ve got a good rhythm on stuff, but we’re still always trying to see what we can do better,” Jill said. “We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to keep the community involved to give everybody a place to go? … People bring their families, bring their kids. Kids can run around inside. It’s a family place. We want people to have a good time. We appreciate them coming. And really, we’ll just do whatever we can to make them happy and to keep coming back.”