The Making of a U.S. Open course: Erin Hills, Part 1

First in a series leading up to the U.S. Open June 15-18 at Erin Hills.

While Tiger Woods was putting on one of the greatest performances in golf history at the 2000 U.S. Open, a solitary figure was walking the emerald fairways at Pebble Beach, gazing out over the Pacific Ocean and hatching a crazy dream.

Bob Lang, a Delafield businessman, had signed an option the previous fall to buy a cattle farm in the Kettle Moraine. He fell in love with the land, carved by glaciers during the Ice Age, the moment he laid eyes on it.

Now, as he stood on one of the most famous golf courses in the world, it occurred to Lang that his land was better, more dramatic. Outside of a few holes bordering the ocean, Pebble Beach had nothing on the hundreds of acres he would soon own in the shadow of Holy Hill.

Why couldn’t he build a U.S. Open golf course on it – one that would be affordable and open to the public?

To golf insiders, the notion of building a course for the United States Golf Association’s signature championship on speculation was laughable. No one had ever done such a thing. The USGA took the U.S. Open to private clubs reeking of history or, on occasion, to world-class resorts such as Pebble Beach.

No matter how spectacular the land, the idea of staging the U.S. Open on a newly built public course in rural Wisconsin was almost beyond comprehension.

Damned if Lang didn’t pull it off.

The self-described “little guy,” who’d caddied as a youth at Danville Country Club in central Illinois but otherwise had no connection to the game, succeeded where billionaires Donald Trump and Herbert V. Kohler Jr. had not.

He got the U.S. Open.

In 2010, the USGA announced – at Pebble Beach, of all places – that it would bring the 2017 U.S. Open to Erin Hills, built by Lang amid quiet farms and winding country roads some 35 miles northwest of downtown Milwaukee.

The selection stunned the golf world. Erin Hills was only 4 years old, was being renovated and was closed for the summer. And it was getting a U.S. Open?

For Lang, the announcement was bittersweet. He no longer owned the course. His pursuit of the U.S. Open had consumed him, and his compulsive borrowing and spending to build the course had driven him to the brink of insolvency and fractured his family.

Were it not for an 11th-hour intercession by wealthy money manager Andy Ziegler, who bought Erin Hills to prevent the unthinkable – the USGA pulling up stakes – the world’s best golfers would be playing elsewhere next month.

How this intoxicating patch of land came to leave so many in its wake, how Lang got the U.S. Open but lost his way, how Ziegler saved the championship in the nick of time, is a story filled with drama and conflict, triumph and tragedy.

Let’s start at the beginning.

* * *

Earl Millikin didn’t play golf, but he knew a lot about land. He’d been a successful developer in and around Milwaukee, building some 5,000 homes and the Brown Port and Point Loomis shopping centers.

In the early 1960s, he bought hundreds of acres in the Town of Erin and he and his wife, Bernice, became cattle ranchers. At one point, the Millikins owned 450 head of Charolais, white in color and known for the fine quality of their beef. Earl showed his prized bull, Adonis, at State Fairs and livestock shows throughout the Midwest.

“He had one of the top 10 herds in the nation,” said Jeff Millikin, the oldest of the couple’s three children. “He took them all over.”

Though Earl would sooner pick up a manure shovel than a 9-iron, he often mused that his land, which tumbled and heaved over glacial mounds and ridges, would make a perfect site for a golf course.

“He said that from the first day he owned the property,” Jeff said.

By the 1990s, Earl and Bernice were experiencing health problems and were selling off their cattle. They had been self-employed their entire lives and did not have pensions or 401(k) plans. They’d held onto their land, hoping its sale would provide financial security in retirement.

The Millikins took out a “land for sale” newspaper advertisement, which caught the eye of Lillian Williamson of River Hills. She was interested in acquiring a small parcel for a potential home development, so she called Earl and asked if he would consider dividing his more than 600 acres.

“He said, ‘Come on out,’ so I went out and met Earl, and he showed me around,” she said. “I fell in love with the land. It was beautiful, beautiful virgin land. He said he would consider (selling) 160 acres, but he wanted to keep the rest because he thought someone might want to build a golf course on it.”

Millikin also told her that several developers were interested in his land, carved in prehistoric time by the grinding of massive glaciers. When the earth warmed and the glaciers retreated, they left behind a jumble of sharp ridges and gentle hollows, deep kettles and conical mounds – the unique landforms that characterize the Kettle Moraine.

Williamson, a former dental hygienist and flight attendant, knew little about real estate, but she didn’t want to see the pristine land “chopped up.” She’d hit it off with Earl, who liked her idea of building a tasteful subdivision and was generous with advice. She found investors and bought the 160 acres for just less than $1 million.

Williamson and her partners divided the land into 25 lots and developed the handsome Watercress Springs subdivision, which includes a wetlands conservancy and is just south of Erin Hills.

“I developed it with an Irish theme because the town is Irish and they wanted to keep that flavor,” she said. “The town demanded a lot of me, I think because I was an outsider. But we hired all the right people to develop the land, and it really turned out beautiful.”

Williamson then turned her attention to the rest of the Millikin property. She didn’t play golf, though her husband, Matt, was a club champion at Ozaukee Country Club. She agreed with Earl, and others she brought out to see the property, that it would make a spectacular setting for golf.

But she had competition.

Among those also trying to buy the land were partners Paul Hundley, a professional photographer; David Rasmussen, a Milwaukee-area golf instructor; and Tom Doak, a bright young golf course architect from Traverse City, Mich.

Hundley had done some photography work at Country Club of Wisconsin near his home in Grafton and knew the course designers, Kerry Mattingly and Gregg Kuehn. They took Hundley out to see the Millikin property, which they had discovered by studying plat maps.

“We thought it was stunning,” Mattingly said. “It was just an absolutely beautiful inland links course waiting to happen.”

Hundley immediately recognized its potential, too. Through high school and college at Notre Dame, where he walked onto the football team coached by Ara Parseghian, he had dreamed of becoming a course architect. Though his talent would take him in a different direction – he worked for Minolta for 15 years before launching his own photography business in 1993 – Hundley never completely gave up on his goal of designing golf courses.

“So, obviously, I had great dreams that this was going to be my first design,” he said.

Mattingly and Kuehn, who were primarily landscape architects, had their own ambitions.

“What we were hoping to do was work with a (nationally known course designer) because we saw the potential and the magnitude of this project," Mattingly said. "Although Gregg and I had designed a few courses, we didn’t have a huge portfolio under our belts.”

Hundley said the architects asked him to sign a non-compete as they tried to put together a deal. They were unsuccessful, however, and when the non-compete expired Hundley was ready to give it a shot. He showed the land to his swing teacher, Rasmussen, who thought it was the best site for a golf course he'd ever seen. The two became partners.

In the meantime, Hundley had attended a talk by Doak in Milwaukee and was impressed with the young architect, who apprenticed under the legendary Pete Dye. Hundley introduced himself and the two had a long conversation, exchanging ideas about design philosophy.

Now, Hundley called Doak to tell him about the Millikins’ land.

“There was this longstanding joke,” Hundley said. “Tom told me that he got calls all the time from people who said they had the most perfect site for a golf course. Inevitably, Tom would get there and it would be just OK.

“So I called him and said, ‘Tom, I’ve seen the most perfect site you can imagine for a golf course.’ He laughed and I said, ‘No, I’m serious. This is not a joke. Think Shinnecock Hills and Prairie Dunes. A combination of those two.’

“He just kind of laughed and said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ ”

Hundley persisted until Doak, who was doing some consulting work for Chicago Golf Club, relented and made the two-hour drive north to the Town of Erin. He immediately recognized the land as extraordinary, and Hundley remembered him emphatically saying, “I want this job.”

“I thought the topography of the property was really dramatic, the soils were perfect and the trees added character,” Doak recalled. “It was a home run.”

He did a preliminary routing through the glacial dunes and Hundley and Rasmussen redoubled their efforts to find investors for the course they already were calling “Hidden Prairie.” They paraded a steady stream of Rasmussen’s high-profile clients out to the site. To their surprise and disappointment, no one shared their enthusiasm for a world-class course in the Kettle Moraine.

“We just couldn’t get anybody interested,” Hundley said. “Everybody’s answer was: ‘It’s too far out. It will never be a successful golf course.’ I was like, ‘Nooo. You just don’t get it.’ ”

Hundley, Rasmussen and Doak came up with a last-ditch plan. Each would contribute $10,000 and pitch a 60-day option. They would use those 60 days to try to talk the Millikins into trading their land for an equity position in Hidden Prairie.

“Bernice and Earl and Dave and I had many meetings,” Hundley said. “They kept saying to us, ‘Come up with something. Please come up with something. This land is our children’s inheritance.’ We were going to try to sell them on the fact that their kids would be part owners of a world-class golf course.

“The chance of that working out was perhaps pretty slim.”

It became a moot point.

On Aug. 8, 1996, Williamson beat them to it and signed an option to purchase 435 acres north of Cork Lane – the land that would become Erin Hills. The sale price was $2 million and the closing date was set for Dec. 31, 1997.

“We never did get a chance to officially present our plan,” Hundley said. “I still have Tom’s check for $10,000 made out to the Millikins.”

Williamson threw herself into the dual tasks of trying to round up investors and getting permits approved for a golf course development.

“I had a little over year to do all the work – the wetlands, the soil testing,” she said. “I had to get a zoning ordinance for parks and recreation. The town had to put that in place first, which they did. That allowed me to then go ahead and apply for the zoning permit. And the town was all for it. They put me through the wringer with Watercress Springs, but they saw a really good end product.”

Williamson wanted to hire a golf course architect who would take a minimalist approach and move as little dirt as possible. She considered several, including two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North of Madison.

But she kept coming back to one name: Tom Doak.

She’d heard Earl Millikin speak glowingly about Doak, whose vision for the land seemed to match hers. Hundley, who quickly got past his disappointment and offered to help Williamson, also made a pitch for Doak.

“Among other things,” Hundley said, “Tom had already done a routing plan.”

Williamson and her husband flew to Traverse City with Hundley and Rasmussen to meet Doak.

“I knew right away, this man is a genius,” Lillian said. “I didn’t know him from Adam, but I just felt this is the guy. It was a gut feeling, just like Watercress Springs was a gut feeling. Tom’s fee for doing the course was incredibly low because he wanted to do the project. His fee was $225,000.”

Williamson’s plan was to build a private equity club with a modest residential component and possibly a small hotel, and call it Tullamore Golf Club. Tullamore is Gaelic for “great mound” and also is the name of a town in the midlands of Ireland.

She changed her mind, however, and decided to name the course Elm Charolais Golf Club – “Elm” representing Earl L. Millikin’s initials. But Doak didn’t like that name and suggested an alternative: Erin Golf Club.

“Tom said, ‘That would be more classy and it fits the area,’ ” Williamson said. “So we acquiesced.”

Erin Golf Club, however, would never be built. Four months after Williamson signed the option to purchase, Earl Millikin died on Dec. 18, 1996. After his passing, Williamson said, her relationship with Bernice became strained.

“She was going to find any way that she could legally to not let it go forward,” Williamson said.

“Lillian and my mom, I don’t know what was going on there,” Jeff Millikin said. “It just didn’t happen. If I remember right, I think there were two closings that my mom went to and something wasn’t right. I don’t know if (Williamson) couldn’t come up with the money. It was my mom’s business. It was none of my business.”

He was right about one thing: Williamson couldn’t come up with the $2 million to buy the land.

“Actually, I had three investors and I’m sure they’re kicking themselves today,” she said. “One in particular had tons of money. But Bernice made it very difficult, I have to say. She wanted to know who the investors were. Well, I wasn’t going to tell her who the investors were. She said she wasn’t sure that we had the money and wanted proof. I said, ‘When we go to closing, the proof is there.’

“A day or two before the closing, one of the investors got a little nervous. Then a little bit too late he said, ‘OK, I’m fine. I’ll do it.’ I said, ‘It’s too late.’ She wasn’t going to give me any more time.”

The scheduled Dec. 31, 1997 closing came and went and Bernice Millikin still owned the land.

“I was devastated after it fell apart,” Williamson said. “I remember just kind of wandering around, mostly because I felt like the vision was cracked. For me, it wasn’t an ego thing. It was being able to see the right thing done with the right people. I spent a lot of money. It was a very expensive education.”

The Millikins’ land was still sitting there, waiting for the right person to come along.

The Making of Erin Hills: The complete story

Part 1: 'The most perfect site.'  How this intoxicating patch of land came to be Erin Hills, site of golf's prestigious U.S. Open next month, is a story filled with drama and conflict, triumph and tragedy. But it started with a small ad in the newspaper.

Part 2: 'You should really give him a call.' Delafield businessman Bob Lang is looking for a piece of land to build a small golf course for his employees and friends. Steve Trattner is looking for a job in golf. Together, they embark on a journey that will transform hundreds of acres in the Kettle Moraine.

Part 3: 'Best piece of golfing property I'd ever seen.'  Bob Lang passes on Jack Nicklaus and other big-name course architects to design Erin Hills. Instead, based solely on a gut feel, he hires the relatively unknown trio of Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten.

Part 4: 'It was just craziness, is what I remember.'  Years pass without a shovel of dirt being turned and the architects have their doubts that Erin Hills will ever be built. Then Bob Lang attends the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and everything changes.

Part 5: 'He just kept making everything bigger.'  Erin Hills finally opens in 2006, but Bob Lang isn’t finished with the course. His passion turns into obsession as he borrows millions to make “enhancements.” Eventually, he runs out of money … and time.

Part 6: 'I don’t know who will own it.'  Bob Lang and wealthy money manager Andy Ziegler can’t come to an agreement on terms of the sale of Erin Hills and Ziegler walks away. Then he attends an extraordinary meeting with United States Golf Association officials.

SERIES FINALE: 'Golf is a journey.' In a race against time, superintendent Zach Reineking prepares Erin Hills for the 2011 U.S. Amateur. The championship is a huge success – but the course has a long way to go before it can play host to the U.S. Open.

How we reported this series

Gary D’Amato interviewed dozens of people over several years to tell the story of how Erin Hills was built. Original course owner Bob Lang declined to be interviewed for this series; his quotes come from interviews D’Amato conducted before Lang sold Erin Hills to Andy Ziegler in 2009. D’Amato has covered golf for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel since 1992. He wrote a coffee table book, “Erin Hills,” which was published by Classics of Golf and was released in April.