Glen Hasselberg, the grandfather of the Birchmont, holds a legacy of service and gratitude

Each morning during Birchmont Golf Tournament week at the Bemidji Town and Country Club, a red golf cart bounces back and forth between various holes on the front and back nines.

The weathered vehicle has traveled thousands of miles on the links in various Minnesota towns, returning to the First City on the Mississippi each July for the famed match play tournament.

The basket on the back of the cart carries water, towels and whatever golf accessories are needed. They’re dispersed to a family of players competing across multiple divisions and flights. The red cart has become infamous with the BTCC and the Birchmont.

That’s because it’s Glen Hasselberg’s.

“I wish I had an odometer on it,” he said with a laugh. “I checked my gas gauge, and I’m still OK. I’ll have to sneak another gallon in there before the weekend’s over.”

Steering the most well-traveled cart has become a tradition for Hasselberg at the Birchmont. As he waits for his afternoon Master’s Division matches to commence, he spends his mornings witnessing his kids, grandkids and other friends and family members play in the tournament that helped fortify his love for golf.

The Birchmont has become a family thing for the Hasselbergs.

Glen, 76, played in his first tournament in 1972. Since then, his son, Derek, has become a regular competitor. Each of his four daughters — Heather, Dana, Cydney and Mary — has competed over the years. Now, a collection of Hasselberg grandkids compete in the Junior Divisions.

There are plenty of holes for Glen to travel to.

“He’s out there shuttling waters around, checking on us in his cart,” Derek said. “It’s what he loves to do. It’s who he is. He’s very unselfish, and he loves to caddy for us, regardless of his match later in the day.”

Glen has played in over 50 iterations of the Birchmont. On Sunday, he was part of the inaugural class in the Birchmont Hall of Fame.

He’s had a legendary high school coaching career and served on multiple golf governing bodies. He’s a four-time Birchmont champion and a feared competitor across the respective divisions he played in.

Resoundingly, Glen Hasselberg is a pillar in the foundation of the Birchmont.

Glen didn’t pick up golf until later than most. Born and raised in Staples, a friend of his brought him out to the local links — the Vintage Golf Course — when he was in eighth grade.

He was hooked.

“I fell in love with it,” Glen reminisced. “I’ve been chasing the game ever since.”

Glen attended Bemidji State and played golf for four years before graduating in 1974. He returned to Staples, taking a job as an industrial arts teacher in the local school district.

He also took a position as the high school girls golf head coach, a role he held for 51 years before retiring after the 2025 season.

“We’ve had great community support for our programs and wonderful participation from the kids and parents,” Glen said.

“People have been asking me for a long time, ‘When are you going to be done?’ My standard answer was, ‘The second I feel unsafe in the school van, I’m pulling the van over, calling the transportation department and I’m done.’ That’s not how I went out. I made it past that, but it was time.”

Glen also coached the Staples-Motley boys golf team for 26 years, taking over the program in 1999.

“I’ve been blessed with the assistant coaches we’ve had in our programs,” Glen said. “When other organizations and teams ask, ‘How are you doing that? How do you pull it off?’ We’re blessed with the personnel, and nobody’s greedy. We spread the wealth. And when you put more into it, you can make it work.”

Glen’s golf reach is extensive. Aside from the bevy of individual and team state champions that came out of Staples-Motley, he worked tirelessly to grow the game at a local level, making golf accessible to small-town kids.

Steve Kohls / Brainerd Dispatch

“It’s the access to golf,” Derek said. “We were really blessed with the access we had in Staples at that golf course. There was a moment when it wasn’t so great during an ownership change. For a year or two, they went over and played in Wadena. But (Glen) made it work and maintained the excitement for golf.

“He’s had a hand in a lot of really good golfers who came out of Staples — a lot of them still play today and play competitively as adults.”

His willingness to take on larger roles led him to administrative roles in Minnesota amateur golf.

“His knowledge of the game and being so involved in golf is impressive,” Derek continued. “He was involved at the high school level as a coach, but he was also involved on a league level. He was involved with the MGA, serving on regional committees. He’s very organized, and he has a mind for it.

“He’d get rides for kids who didn’t have them. He gave away golf balls and golf clubs. He just had everything covered. He was so on top of all the behind-the-scenes stuff, as a coach and as an athletic director.”

Beyond his achievements in coaching and administrative work, Glen carved out an impressive playing career, too.

While in college at BSU, Glen spent his summers back home in Staples. However, he’d frequent the BTCC in late July starting in 1972 for the Birchmont.

Each morning, Glen would commute nearly 100 miles to Bemidji for each qualifying round and match. When he completed his round, he hopped back into the car and drove home. It was a way to save money on hotels throughout the week.

That was until 1975, his second summer out of college. He brokered some stakes with his wife, Rebecca, ahead of his quarterfinal match.

“We made a deal that if I won,” Glen said, “we’d spend the night in a hotel so I could make that 8 a.m. tee time on Saturday a little easier.”

He admitted to celebrating his victory a little too hard.

“I may have consumed too much after winning in the quarterfinals just to get to the semis,” Glen quipped. “But I was here, and I was ready to go. It’s nearing 8 a.m. and my opponent wasn’t here. He had some difficulty with his car, and he was running late. Would he have held the tee if I was coming from Staples and I was late? Who knows, but I didn’t want to win like that. I teed off, and he was walking up the hill.”

Pioneer file photo

Glen won his semifinal match, then defeated defending champion Jim Archer in the title match to claim his first of four Birchmont championships.

Just four years removed from his tournament debut, Glen’s early-career win didn’t come without some semblance of the moment.

“Never did I ever think winning this thing was easy,” Glen said. “It was unbelievable. As time went by, I got one in (the Executive Division). When I went up to Seniors, oh, no no no — no championships in Seniors. There are so many good golfers in all of the divisions.”

Thirteen years after his Men’s title, Hasselberg won again amongst the Execs. It took him 28 more years to net his third, winning the first of his back-to-back Master’s Division championships in 2015 and 2016.

Growing up in the Birchmont, playing in playing in four separate divisions over five decades, including 2025’s tournament in the Master’s Division again, Glen hasn’t lost his competitiveness.

“He still wants to win, and that’ll never change,” Derek said. “Anybody who made it to the top level and wants to win, that desire never goes away. He’s going to go out and play every match like he wants to win, because he does. But it’ll be friendly. There’s never animosity. Yes, he’s very competitive and wants to win, but it never gets to a point where it’s not friendly. That’s his legacy.”

Not even a surgical procedure could prevent Glen from making his annual summer trip to Bemidji.

“Some might call it an obsession,” Derek quipped. “He has neuropathy, and just two weeks ago, he had a surgery that took part of his toe. But missing the Birchmont would’ve killed him. He wants to be involved in the action. You’ll have to drag him off the golf course to keep him from playing.”

Glen looks back on his championships fondly. He singles out the 2014 Birchmont, the year Derek won the Men’s Executive Division crown. However, those memories don’t stack up to the 100th Birchmont in 2024.

The Hasselbergs turned the occasion into a family reunion.

“They had the first (Past) Champions Dinner,” Glen said. “My son is a past champion, my second daughter is a past champion. All four of my daughters played in the Women’s Executive Division last year, and my grandkids played in it, too.

“We had a dozen of us playing in the same tournament. I mean, I had five grandkids playing in the tournament this week. Here we are, with three of our families staying at Ruttger’s and another with a cabin on Beltrami. It’s all good.”

It was a pinnacle Birchmont outing that hit home for the Hasselbergs.

“All four of my sisters, my three kids, my sister’s two boys — we all played,” Derek said. “I had a brother-in-law out here, too. That’s a fun memory for us. Even something as simple as qualifying, all of my sisters played together (in the Women’s Executive Division). It was the first time they played together in 16 years.”

A year later, Glen and Derek attended the second annual Past Champions Dinner last weekend. This time, they were met with a surprise.

Throughout his career in golf, Glen became a member of the Minnesota Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Staples-Motley Athletic Hall of Fame. He’s also a member of the Minnesota Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Hall of Fame.

Last Sunday, he was honored as part of the inaugural Birchmont Hall of Fame class.

“It was precious,” Glen said. “There are so many people qualified and, in my judgment, candidates to be in the Hall of Fame. The only thing I could think of when they announced my name was that it had to be because of my age.”

TJ Rhodes / Bemidji Pioneer

While Glen is content with dismissing the weight of his induction, his peers felt it was obvious.

“Not to have too much narcissism, it felt very deserving,” Derek said. “He became an institution at this golf course, not just with the Birchmont, but the Vanderslus as well and being a BSU grad. His ties run deep here, and that honor was pretty great.”

As Glen enters the twilight era of his life in golf, he spends some time reflecting on the game that gave him so much.

He remembers introducing his kids to the sport, watching them grow up through the Staples-Motley programs he helped build from the ground up. He watched them play collegiately, then enter the Birchmont tournament themselves before implementing the same cycle for their children.

Glen has proven to be nothing but consistent, whether it be through his guidance at his Staples-Motley programs or his persistence in witnessing every Hasselberg shot from the driver’s seat of his seasoned red golf cart.

Ultimately, the grandfather figure to so many turned the Birchmont into his sanctuary.

“I play a lot at Grand View, I play a lot at The Pines and The Preserve,” Glen said. “People ask me, ‘What’s the best course?’ There are so many courses in that area down in Brainerd and Staples where you could die and go to heaven and play a course like that every day. But the one course I tell them is the Bemidji Town and Country Club.

“They tell me I’m kidding, and I tell them they must not have played here yet. If you played here, you’d understand it. Year after year, it’s the best. I’ve developed such a string of friends up here at this course. This is it for me. It’s home.”