Buffalo Lake sits in the heart of Renville County, deep in Minnesota's agricultural interior — a landscape of wide skies, flat-to-gently-rolling terrain, and the kind of quiet that comes with being genuinely far from the metro. Golf out here isn't a destination industry; it's a community institution, the kind of place where the same families have held memberships for generations and the parking lot fills up on Sunday mornings without anyone needing to advertise.
Oakdale Golf Club is the local course in that tradition — a full 18-hole layout at par 72, built to give residents of a small farming community a legitimate round of golf without driving an hour to find it. Courses like this tend to reward regulars who know which greens break toward the road and which fairways play longer into the prevailing southwest wind than the yardage suggests.
Renville County's summers are warm and breezy, with the kind of firm, fast conditions that can make a modest layout play surprisingly challenging. If you're passing through on Highway 212, it's worth stopping.
