Harvester

Rhodes, Iowa

Rankings

Address1102 330th St, Rhodes, IA 50234, USA

The Harvester Golf Club opened in 2000 and it’s perhaps architect Keith Foster’s finest original creation. Located 25 miles northeast of Des Moines in Iowa, Foster has achieved the objective and delivered squarely to his design philosophy of “producing timeless and enduring work”.

“Compared to some of the most famous courses in the world, we recognize that The Harvester is young,” says Dickson Jensen, owner. “But the course design, the surroundings, the commitment to tradition and the game of golf... it all lends to a maturity and a degree of excellence beyond our years.”

We couldn’t agree more, the Harvester is one the best and toughest – 7,340 yards from the tips – new layouts to grace the Midwest. And, it’s a daily-fee golf course where golfers are welcomed. What sheer delight.

Laid out within a residential development, surrounded by three sets of homestead properties, you might expect the Harvester to be somewhat restricted but, in actual fact, the fairways are set in a rolling prairie landscape with little sign of any adjacent settlements.

Designed by Keith Foster – better known in recent times for his restoration and renovation work at the likes of Southern Hills in Oklahoma, Colonial in Texas and Baltimore in Maryland – the Harvester course was built on time and within budget thanks to a close working relationship between the architect and owner Dickson Jenson.

Lake Harvester has been brought into the routing very cleverly and it plays a prominent part at the end of each nine. The par four 9th is called “Wish and a Prayer” with good reason as water flanks the left side of the fairway before cutting across the hole 150 yards before the green. The penultimate and final holes embrace the lake. The par three 17th (“The Thresher”) is a knee trembler from the tee as it plays to a peninsula green out in the water whilst the putting surface on the par five 18th (“Promised Land”) is reached via an island fairway that receives the second shot and launches the approach to the green.

A decade after opening, Keith Foster returned to the Harvester to renovate bunkers, alter tees and add stone walls to the edge of the lake. Unable to keep away, Keith Foster came back to Harvester in 2018 to perform another renovation. The course reopened in 2019 when the club became private and no longer a daily fee facility.