Over the years he had kept busy with his golf job and gigs as an actor, model and musician (he’s also in a band with his two sons), but now he needed a new project. He retired in 2013 at age 47, but, inevitably, he became bored. McKush stayed on as the project manager for the new course and was its director of golf for 12 years. It reopened in 2005 as The Meadows at Mystic Lake, an 18-hole course at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel that today remains one of the top public courses in the state. The family finally sold it in 2002, and the course was promptly torn up and rebuilt. McKush worked as the pro, and in 1988 the nearby Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community inquired about buying the land. His parents bought a nine-hole golf course in Prior Lake, Minn., in 1979, added another nine and renamed it Lone Pine Country Club. McKush, 57, was born in Canada but his family moved to the Minneapolis suburbs when he was 15. So what’s the deal with Montgomery National? It all starts with its owner. “Sorry about that,” McKush says, returning to the phone. A couple of weeks ago 16 gents traveled 75 miles to play the course together, clad in Beatles shirts. If they happen to enjoy The Beatles, even better.

They’ll ask about it all - the posters, the guitar, the submarine and the haunting (remember, we’ll get to that) - and he’ll tell them. The key, McKush says, is just letting everyone in on his secret. And, to be fair, who wouldn’t ask questions? It’s a Beatles-themed golf course, for cryin’ out loud. Golf is booming right now basically everywhere, but this course is also busy because it’s fun and affordable and interesting, and when something is interesting people ask questions. It’s on the website and on the scorecard the holes are named after Beatles songs and, yes, there are strawberries growing near the one dubbed Strawberry Fields.Īnd you know what? It’s working, and not just because of the schtick. Now there’s a 17-foot guitar greeting golfers in the parking lot, a hole with the world’s largest - only? - guitar bunker and a one-ton yellow submarine floating in a pond on the signature 18th. But it wasn’t a Beatles- and music-themed course until McKush took over in 2018. McKush is the owner of Montgomery National Golf Club, a Beatles-themed golf course in rural Minnesota that, oh, by the way, is believed to be haunted (more on that later).

Golf courses near mystic lake casino