Highland National Golf Course

Visiting family in St. Paul so we decided to give this one a go. The course is in great shape. It's a little tough sometimes with so many parallel holes, but there's hardly any OB and not that much trouble as long as you don't mind playing from the wrong fairway from time to time. Pace of play was pretty good even though the course was packed. We played as a foursome and finished in just over 4 hours without any long waits. You can't get a very good view of the Snoopy bunker, but is was fun to play at the course Charles Schulz called home. For a course tucked in a neighborhood of St. Paul, this one is a keeper.

Great city course in a beautiful part of St. Paul. Fun layout that is challenging but playable. The snoopy bunker is a classic touch. Also a very walkable course, which I appreciate. The practice area is one of the best around. Love it!

Highland National Golf Course is a parkland style municipal course, and like many other similar courses has many fairways running parallel to each other. Unfortunately, over the last few years the course has lost a significant number of trees, so that it is not unusual to see balls from other holes landing in the fairway you’re playing. The property has a significant slope from west to east, so on about half of the holes you’re either hitting to a green elevated above the fairway, or hitting from an elevated tee down to the fairway. Fairways are in good condition, and will give you lots of roll. The rough is not very high, but is quite thick, so in many cases your best option off the fairway is to hit a wedge back to the short grass. The most difficult part of playing the course for our foursome was the greens. They are smooth, gently contoured, moderately fast, and very difficult to read. Our foursome kept hitting putts that looked good until they got to about six inches from the cup, at which point they turned to miss going in. Very frustrating! One commented that he had never seen so many putts from two to four feet missed by one foursome. It had been a year or two since I had last played this course, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the greens had greatly improved in that time. Previously, they had been marred by many unrepaired ball marks, leaving many bare spots on the green. It appears that regulars have learned to fix their ball marks, making a great difference. The course provides a guidebook which is a great help to players in visualizing the holes and provides tips on playing each hole. Our foursome enjoyed playing the course, even though our putting led to scoring higher than we liked. About the only shortcoming to the course was the system of signaling pin placement on the green. Instead of the usual red, white and blue flags, the course uses flags that are red and white, blue and white and black and white. The problem is that it is difficult from a distance to distinguish between the blue and black flags, leading to mistakes in club selection on several holes. Management may want to consider using different color flags. Nevertheless, our experience this round makes us want to play the course again.

Player friendly layout, generous fairways and not too much trouble if you spray the ball a bit. Fairways and greens in good condition, rough uneven in spots. Unless you're a single digit hdcp, play the Gold tees.