Feb. 20, 2025

A family-owned private club in southern South Dakota is adding a golf course that aims to be among the nation’s best.

Lazy J Sporting Club sits 7 miles from Ideal in northern Tripp County and is owned by the Jorgensen family, which also owns their family farm and ranch, Jorgensen Land & Cattle.

“We’re the largest bull producer in the United States, and for years we did pheasant hunting on our operation,” CEO Nick Jorgensen said. “In 2012, we built the Lazy J Grand Lodge, which is what the business is today … and we decided we wanted to get more usage out of the facility, Pheasant hunting is great, but it only lasts 90 days out of the year.”

The family connected with Landscapes Unlimited, which built and manages both Sutton Bay in central South Dakota and Mapleton Golf Club, which is under construction in northeast Sioux Falls.

The golf developers told the family: “You’ve got a really good spot to do golf,” Jorgensen said. “Our goal is to have a top 100 course in the country.”

Landscapes Unlimited is helping the family develop a course that will sit on 440 acres.

“We’re putting it where the golf is. We’re not manufacturing golf,” Jorgensen said. “Our architect did a really good job of finding it there naturally.”

It will start with an 18-hole course and driving range, with a plan for a future short course that also could open with the full course depending on budget.

The 22-bedroom lodge will be expanded and remodeled but can sleep 40 and already includes various lounge areas, an outdoor patio, full-service kitchen and dining area.

There also will be fourplex cabins built, offering 16 to 24 additional bedrooms on the property with some options for cabin ownership.

“We’re raising equity ownership on the course, and we’ll also have some cabins available for ownership that will be used by the club,” Jorgensen said. “We’re raising $6 million for the project and are a little over a third of the way there, so we’ve had good interest. Our family has never done anything like a capital raise, so we’re learning.”

The hope is to create an experience with regional or even national demand, he said.

“We think Sioux Falls will be a good market for us, but we’re targeting several large metros across the United States,” he said, adding that the closest airport is in Winner and its airstrip “can land just about any size private jet.”

The overall club will “feel very similar to Sutton Bay north of Pierre,” Jorgensen said. “The offering is going to be almost identical, the difference being we’re not on top the Missouri River, so we won’t have fishing out the back but really good pheasant hunting and really good golf. And we’re developing five ponds on the property to manage trophy panfish.”

There also will be a 10-station sporting clay course and what Jorgensen calls an “extreme” long shooting range.

“When the course is all built, it will be a mile and three quarters, so extreme long range that’s inaccessible to most people.”

Membership will be capped somewhere between 350 and 400 with corporate memberships, full individual memberships that encompass all the sporting options and golf-only memberships. An individual membership will include access for a spouse and children.

Jorgensen anticipates it could be a convenient option for Sioux Falls members.

“We’re 20 miles off I-90 right in the center of the state,” he said. “It’s 2.5 hours door to door.”

The national reach of the club’s hunting base should help too, he said.

“We’ve got 1,200 hunting clients we’re putting this in front of,” Jorgensen said. “We can start hunting Sept. 1, and depending on the year, we could be golfing until mid-October, and those six weeks will become the highest demand time. That’s the hardest time to fill from a hunting perspective because people don’t think about hunting pheasants in September. But they think about golf, and there aren’t a lot of places to do both.”

The family also incorporates an aspect of agri-tourism for its visitors.

“Every hunter gets a tour of our farming and livestock operation,” Jorgensen said. “We want to serve our own beef at this facility too, so we’re working on the logistics to get that done.”

The hope is to start construction on the course in October, depending on the capital raise. If all stays on track, golf could start midsummer of 2027.

So far on the membership side, “it’s going well,” Jorgensen said. “When Landscapes talks about the natural progress (of starting a private club), they feel like we’re right where we need to be.”