Edinburgh USA - Minnesota - USA

This municipal offering near Minneapolis didn’t really need to add “USA”; the extremely heroic nature of the double-forced-carry par four at No. 17 makes the parkland nature of the course immediately evident. That said, Robert Trent Jones II and the founders at Edinburgh USA Golf Course took steps to bring linksland-qualities to Minnesota. The most obvious is the dramatic green shared by the final holes on the front and back nines.

The first is a reachable par five, featuring numerous centreline bunkers to dissuade you from trying; the green is wide to offer a number of pin locations and changes of strategy from day-to-day. The No. 18 hole is a par four, but the length of your approach will shift dramatically based on whether the pin is set at the front or the back of this green, which is even longer than the other half is wide.

Trent Jones returned during 2014 to renovate and restore the club’s sizable collection of bunkers (both “a big collection of bunkers” and “big bunkers”), many of which sit in front of the green, preventing a run-up. That’s certainly different than what you would find at the links near Edinburgh in Scotland but, again, this is Edinburgh USA.