The Making of a U.S. Open course: Erin Hills, Part 3

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

Bob Lang had a vision. He wanted to build a golf course that would be open to the public but would be challenging enough to bring the world’s best golfers to Wisconsin for the U.S. Open.

Lang also had the land. The Delafield businessman had signed an option to buy a sprawling former cattle farm in the Town of Erin and in December 2001 would own hundreds of acres of rugged glacial topography that he thought was the perfect template for a world-class course.

Now, what he needed was someone to design it.

Lang, a golfing neophyte, didn’t have a clue about how to hire a course architect. He was busy with his greeting card and calendar company, so he put Steve Trattner in charge as project manager and started out paying him $2,000 a month.

The arrangement was fine with Trattner, who’d steered Lang to the land in 1999. He’d been searching for a job in golf for years and saw this as his big break.

“I’d have done it for free,” he said.

Intelligent and organized, Trattner started applying for permits and began the process of finding an architect.

First, he called Tom Meeks, senior director of rules and competitions for the United States Golf Association, and asked for advice. Meeks suggested that Trattner start by contacting Ward Johnson, a member of Golf Digest magazine's course rating panel and a man who was well-connected in the golf industry.

Johnson called Golf Digest architectural editor Ron Whitten on Trattner’s behalf and asked for a list of recommended architects, then helped Trattner pare the list to 15 candidates. Each was sent a request for proposal.

“I intentionally excluded Pete Dye because of his work in (nearby) Kohler and at Grand Geneva Resort," Trattner said, "but more so because of his modus operandi of moving tons of dirt around. I also excluded Arnold Palmer because in my opinion he never produced truly exceptional courses.”

Nine architects returned the request for proposal and Trattner and Lang narrowed the list to six finalists: Jack Nicklaus; the team of Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry; Tom Doak; Ron Forse, and Canadians Doug Carrick and Thomas McBroom.

The frontrunner early on was Doak. He’d spent a significant amount of time on the old Millikin farm and had sketched a staggering 1,800 holes before settling on a final routing for Lillian Williamson, who before Lang came along wanted to build a private equity club but couldn’t come up with the money to buy the land.

“Bob and I assumed going in that Tom would be our man,” Trattner said.

Whitten, a former prosecutor who lived in Topeka, Kan., and had dabbled in course architecture in addition to writing about it for Golf Digest, was intrigued by the project and asked Johnson to send the RFP, though he never returned it.

“Mike Hurdzan called me because my name was on the list and we had been friends for many years,” Whitten said. “He said, ‘Are you bidding on this?’ I told him I wasn’t and he said, ‘We’ve always talked about getting together and doing a course. Would you like to bid on it with us?’ I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ ”

Just like that, Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten were partners.

Trattner said Doak was the first to be interviewed.

“I already knew him, having met him several times with Lillian Williamson in 1997,” Trattner said. “Tom kind of presumed he would surely be our choice, given how much time and effort he had already put in and how well he knew the land. I believe he even asked us why we were bothering to interview other architects.”

Doak remembered it differently.

“I believe Bob had already interviewed Mike Hurdzan – because he commented on how well the two of them hit it off – and several other designers, and I was near the end of the list,” he said. “That didn’t fill me with confidence.

“Also, one of the questions he asked me in the interview was whether I thought I could build an 8,000-yard course that could host the U.S. Open. I believe I answered, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ There are lots of developers who think they’re going to host a U.S. Open, and the Open hardly ever goes to a new course. I thought it was pretty delusional.

“Steve Trattner tried to be reassuring, but I never felt that I was the frontrunner in Bob’s eyes.”

Next up, according to Trattner, were Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten. Their RFP was the most comprehensive and impressive of those returned. It included a multi-page report that rated every aspect of the land on a 10-point scale – size, location, soil, topography – though they had not yet set foot on the property.

“Based on the RFPs we got back, Hurdzan-Fry’s was clearly superior,” Trattner said. “It screamed, ‘We want this job.’ ”

Hurdzan and Jason Straka, another talented young architect in the firm, flew in from Columbus, Ohio, and Whitten met them in Delafield. Fry was busy with another project and did not make the initial trip.

Before they saw the land, Lang showed them his office and his Lincoln and Civil War collections. Hurdzan was keenly interested.

“Mike and Bob did most of the talking while Ron, Jason and I were off to the side,” Trattner said. “It was evident within 10 or 15 minutes that Bob and Mike were like long-lost brothers or kindred spirits – they were both history buffs, into collecting, into quality and they were of a similar age.

“I was certain within 10 minutes that we would hire these guys. And golf hadn’t even been discussed.”

Finally, they drove out to the Millikin property, which the architects had studied on topographic maps. Hurdzan was familiar with the Kettle Moraine, having raced karts with his son at Road America in Elkhart Lake. When they weren’t at the track, they went for drives through the countryside and played some of the golf courses in the area.

“We loved the terrain,” Hurdzan said. “Even when we weren’t playing golf we’d go out and drive around just because the land is so beautiful.”

But seeing the Millikin property on a U.S. Geologic Survey map and seeing it in person proved to be two different things.

“We were like, ‘This is nirvana,’ ” Hurdzan said. “I already knew what my expectations were but when you saw it, it was just even better.”

He explained that the glacial features – the kettles, mounds and eskers – were perfectly spaced for golf. The glaciers had moved dirt in all the right places, leaving behind natural fairway corridors and green sites. A golf course architect and a team of bulldozers couldn’t have done any better.

“There’s a rhythm to the land,” he said. “You can have topography like this, but if it’s all scrunched up then it goes too fast. If you stretch it out then it moves too slowly. This land has a perfect rhythm to it so that you can go to the high points and you can play down and then you can go back up to the high points.

“There’s a uniqueness to this particular piece of Kettle Moraine land that was very, very good for golf.”

Whitten was equally smitten.

“It was the best piece of golfing property I’d ever seen," he said. "First of all, the location was ideal because it was close to a metropolitan area. It wasn’t so remote, like Sand Hills or Bandon Dunes (in rural Nebraska and Oregon, respectively). But Mike hit the nail on the head. The scale of this place was magnificent, but it was still golf-able.”

Lang and Trattner were amazed at how well the architects knew their way around the land, despite having never seen it.

“It was as though they’d been there more than Bob and me,” Trattner recalled. “I especially remember Mike worked his way through the dense brush and trees on what’s now the 17th hole – then the fourth – and took a Sharpie and wrote ‘#4 landing area’ on a white wooden stake and pounded it into the ground. Bob and I looked at each other like, ‘Yeah, right, how can he know that?’

“A year or two later, when all the brush was cleared, there it was – the stake was dead center of the fairway, about 300 yards from the back tees and 220 from the whites. Perfect.”

When the group got to the site of what is now the par-4 third hole, which Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten had designed to play from east to west, Trattner started to explain that Doak had routed a similar hole on the same ground, though he had it playing from west to east.

Hurdzan interrupted him.

“Please don’t tell us anything more about Doak’s routing,” he said. “We really don’t want to know or in any way be influenced by it. However, since you brought it up, I will say that the hole makes much more sense going the direction we have it.”

Hurdzan explained that the way Doak routed the hole, the fairway tilted from left to right toward a wetland. Since most golfers were slicers, their tee shots would tumble down the fairway and often wind up in the hazard. Hurdzan’s routing had the wetland on the left, with the fairway sloping up to the right, so a slicer’s tee shot would either miss the fairway right – preferable to a lost ball in the hazard – or bounce back into the fairway off the hill.

Even before the group returned to Delafield, it was clear to Lang that he would be hiring Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten. The architects were enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but Lang made his decision based on something unrelated to golf: his personal connection with Hurdzan, a retired U.S. Army colonel.

For Lang, patriotism was a strong pull.

“Mike Hurdzan had been a Green Beret,” he said. “I respected him. He’s a man of integrity. That’s the reason he got the job. I knew nothing about golf.”

Lang had scheduled interviews with the other finalists, but they now became perfunctory.

Forse, who was doing some restoration work on the Links Course at the Golf Courses of Lawsonia in Green Lake, not much more than an hour away, was the next architect to be interviewed. Lang and Trattner took him out to the property and chatted, but Lang soon excused himself and returned to his office.

Next up was Carrick, who flew in from Toronto. This time, Trattner conducted the interview alone.

There was no need to continue the process. Lang had made his decision. He called Jack Nicklaus’ son Jackie, who was scheduled to stop in Delafield on his way from Florida to a job in Minneapolis, and politely asked him to cancel the trip.

Eventually, there was just one call left to make.

Doak had his heart set on the job. Still a relative unknown, he thought the Millikin property would be his big break, his first crack at designing a top-100 course. He’d even featured “Charolais Hills” in his annual Christmas newsletter a couple years earlier, when he was working with Williamson.

Lang, a non-confrontational sort, didn’t want to give Doak the bad news so he delegated the task to Trattner. It was an uncomfortable phone call. Doak couldn’t believe what he was hearing and was upset.

“This is a business full of disappointments," he said. "I’ve done routings for a half-dozen projects I thought would be top-100 courses that never got built at all. My perspective now is that it’s a miracle that we ever get to build any of them and I’m just grateful for the opportunities I’ve had.”

Doak has since built an impressive portfolio with acclaimed designs all over the world and is very much in demand.

As for Hurdzan, he was excited about the opportunity to build a challenging public course on a sprawling property that was perfect for golf.

“Especially when we are, in a lot of people’s minds, second-tier architects,” he said. “And I say that with all candor and truthfulness. People don’t put us in the same class as Tom Fazio or Pete Dye or (Robert Trent) Jones or Nicklaus or even Palmer or (Gary) Player. That’s silly, but it’s just perception. And so this all of a sudden validates what we know: We do good work.”

Lang closed on the land in December 2001. The architects were anxious to get started on Erin Hills.

But it would be three long years before the first shovel of dirt was turned.

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 story

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.