Jul. 19—Less than 100 yards off the shoreline of Lake Bemidji stands a golf course and a resort rich with history.
The Bemidji Town and Country Club and Ruttger’s Birchmont Lodge are summertime cornerstones in Bemidji. Together, they have solidified the foundation of the Birchmont Golf Tournament, an annual event now entering its 100th year.
The Birchmont is one leg of what has been dubbed as the resort tour and the vacation circuit. Along with the Resorters in Alexandria and the Pine to Palm in Detroit Lakes, the Birchmont represents summer living in northern Minnesota.
Over the course of nearly a century, the Birchmont has welcomed revered golfers from around the country — and beyond — to the BTCC grounds. It’s a tournament that embraces the competitive and communal aspects of golf, forging lifelong memories that have withstood the tournament’s ability to evolve since 1925.
From Harry Legg to Nick Schaefer and Mrs. R. Hall to Morgan Hetletved, and all of the champions crowned in between, the Birchmont has become one of Minnesota’s top amateur golf tournaments, established on the backs of the people involved.
It’s a tournament that’s turned a sport into family reunions for last names like Israelson, Gumlia, McPhail, Passolt, Skarperud, Gammon and dozens more.
But most of all, the Birchmont has upheld the traditions that keep people coming back. It’s a time-honored event that will move into its second century in 2025 with the hopes of illustrating more historic moments, bolstering future professional golfers and welcoming more families to Bemidji.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the history of the Birchmont through the figures that made it what it is today.
Before it was deemed Ruttger’s Birchmont Lodge, the lakeside destination was called the Birchmont Beach Summer Hotel. It boomed in the 1920s, attracting tourists nationwide and from Canada.
The Bemidji Country Club, now named the BTCC, included a nine-hole course down the road from the hotel. In 1924, the country club added nine more holes, opening the door for the annual tournament’s inception.
The first edition of the tournament was dubbed the Birchmont International, featuring a competition between Canadian and American hotel guests in 1925. The BTCC website lists A.G. Denman as the inaugural winner, with Canadian golfers winning the Nassau system golf tournament, according to the Bemidji Daily Pioneer.
However, the first widely recognized winner of the Birchmont, Harry Legg, was crowned in 1926. Legg was a 1910 Yale graduate who got his start in golf from a young age when he paid 15 cents for his first club while caddying at Bryn Mawr Club in Minneapolis.
According to the Minnesota Golf Association, Legg’s first swing wasn’t pretty. The clubhead flew off of the shaft and went further than the ball. He scraped together 89 cents to buy two more clubs and then became one of the most decorated amateur golfers in Minnesota’s history.
Legg is the only recognized Birchmont champion to win the tournament under stroke-play rules before the club shifted to a match-play format in 1927. Roscoe Fawcett was the Birchmont’s first winner under the current championship format, winning both the Birchmont and the Resorters titles in the same year.
By 1928, the Birchmont started picking up statewide steam. Willmar’s Dave “D.N.” Tallman won his first of two titles. Tallman’s resort tour successes came after late beginnings. The Tallman’s Forum credits him with 142 trophy wins after picking up golf when he was 50 years old. The Daily Pioneer called Tallman “the grand old man of the golfing fraternity.”
The Birchmont witnessed its first expansion in 1928 with the addition of the Women’s Division. Mrs. R. Hall won the inaugural title before Bemidji’s Donna Lycan claimed the first local win in 1929.
The 1930s were jam-packed with the Birchmont’s first two-time winners. Fargo’s Bill Fowler won the 1931 tournament after winning his first championship in 1929. Tallman won his second in 1932, as did Lycan on the women’s side. Lycan became the first three-time champ and back-to-back winner in 1933.
Bill Kostelecky won the men’s titles in 1936 and 1937 before being named the president of the Fargo Country Club in 1950. Bismarck, N.D., native Nadine O’Leary also picked up two consecutive titles in 1934 and 1935 after finishing as the runner-up to Mrs. Kenneth Dickinson in 1931. She was later inducted into the North Dakota Golf Hall of Fame, becoming the first woman to receive the honor.
While the two-time winners impressed, the solo victors of the 1930s had equally profound resumes to boast. Maurice Cain became the first to win all three legs of the vacation circuit, which included his 1938 Birchmont triumph. Crookston’s Ernotte Hiller won it in 1935 and now has a Labor Day tournament named in his honor at Minakwa Golf Course.
But if the 1930s had to showcase one player, it would be Jeanne McPhail. She captured her first championship in 1937, marking the first of three decades she claimed women’s titles in Bemidji. She totaled six Birchmont titles and two Resorters crowns. However, she had to wait 11 years after her first at the Bemidji Country Club to add a second.
In 1943, Bob Gammon defeated Duluth’s Bob Fretlund 1-up to win his first title. Six years later, his daughter claimed her first Birchmont championship in the Women’s Division.
Former MGA executive director Warren Rebholz called Bev (Gammon) Vanstrum the “Tiger Woods of statewide women’s golf.” She’s credited with building the MGA into one of the most respected golf associations…
