The Legend at Giants Ridge — Local services in White Township

This review may be superfluous to the reviews posted by others because it is difficult to identify anything bad about The Legend. My playing partner and I had a 7:40 am tee time two days before Memorial Day. Staff was alert, engaged, and courteous on our arrival. All staff appeared happy to be there.

Carts were great; they were equipped with GPS and Bluetooth capability. Fairways, greens, and tee boxes were all in wonderful condition. Most holes featured elevated tee boxes, which leaves a player feeling more powerful off the tee than he/she actually is (particularly with the wind at your back on several holes). My partner and I were surprised at the completion of the 18th hole to see a staff member at our cart cleaning up our clubs. Due to the early tee time we felt like we had the course to ourselves, particularly on the back 9.

The 17th hole appeared to be the signature hole, which was a par 3 with a long carry across the water (over 200 yards from the blue tees to the green!!). We had to take time out to help a baby turtle be moved from the red tee box back to the water. When we finished the hole a bald eagle swooped down from the top of a tall pine to over the water and flew away. It was majestic.

The Legend has earned its rightful spot in Gold Digest as a top public course in Minnesota. I doubt this will be changing...

This is the second year in a row now that we have had this same experience. The course is always nice, but for the last two years we’ve played in sub 90’s heat with little to no water jugs on the course. Last year we complained to the manager and got a lame apology. This year we tee’d off at 11 and we all brought water jugs, but those drank within a couple holes. For some reason the cart girls are stationed at designated holes and on Saturday she was on hole 11 so we didn’t see her after that. All the water jugs on the back nine were empty. By hole 14 we were struggling with dehydration, shortly after teeing off, we saw a employee that was driving on the golf course and managed to flag him down. We told him we were very dehydrated and that we need water, he chuckled and said "ok" then drove off never to be seen again. Struggling with being dehydrated, NOT ONE of us was interested in golf anymore, just wanted water.

If they are going to charge $125 a round, I don’t feel I need to worry about having a heat stroke out on the course. We usually finish out our guys golf trip of 12 people at Giants Ridge, we will be strongly reconsidered even playing here anymore and maybe just doing two rounds at the Wilderness where there’s water jugs every other hole and the course takes appropriate measures to make sure their customers are...

My friends and I were able to experience this wonderful course last summer and have talked about going back every month since. Truly scenic, challenging if you want it to be and a course you need to play.

We were the first to tee off in the morning and were met with the most wonderful welcome by the ranger and were given souvenirs for our first time there.

Each hole is its own spectacle. There was never a sense of the developers 'running out of room' in the slightest. Massive, tree-lined fairways and pure fairways/rough were just icing on the cake to the visually striking course.

I see some one-star, two-star reviews and while I respect others' opinions, I'm just not sure why a few spots on the course that were impacted by weather conditions over the winter bothered people enough to respond so negatively. That being said, temp greens, etc, would be a bit frustrating for the cost, so I do understand some of the points. Being from northern Minnesota, I guess I've learned to expect imperfections from the brutal winters.

We'll see Giant's Ridge in early June, and I can't wait to relive the experience with our cameras and GoPros to share with others....