The Making of a U.S. Open course: Erin Hills, Part 4

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

Mike Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten were growing impatient. Three years had passed since Bob Lang hired them in 2000 to design a golf course on hundreds of acres he would soon own in the Kettle Moraine.

Whitten, the architecture editor for Golf Digest magazine and a partner in the project, had made dozens of site visits from his home in Topeka, Kan. Hurdzan and Fry, whose office was in Columbus, Ohio, had visited often, too.

They’d routed and re-routed holes over tumbling glacial topography, changing their minds so many times that project manager Steve Trattner said Erin Hills Golf Course was in a constant state of flux.

But that was only on paper.

The first shovel of dirt had yet to be turned and the architects were anxious for construction to begin on what they envisioned to be an affordable public course. They loved the idea of a stern test that could be built for less than $3 million – a “blue-collar Whistling Straits,” as Hurdzan called it.

“We were pitching a $50 green fee, which Bob really liked,” Whitten said.

Unknown to the architects and Trattner, Lang was thinking bigger. He had attended the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and thought his land was better. Why couldn’t he build a course worthy of hosting the U.S. Open? He knew it sounded absurd to those who knew golf, so he shared his dream with only a few.

"Bob and I have been friends for 40 years," said Tom Manthy of Pewaukee. "He calls me one day and says, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ He had an option on that land and he drives his Jeep up a hill and I assume he's going to tell me he's building a subdivision. He says, 'There’s a golf course here. I’m going to buy this land and I’m going to get the U.S. Open.'

"I said, ‘You’re crazy. Donald Trump can’t do that, what makes you think you can?’ His exact words were, ‘Because I can, and I will.’ I’ll never forget him saying that."

But now it was 2003 and Lang still hadn't pulled the trigger on construction. Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten were concerned Lang had lost some of his zeal for Erin Hills. Trattner started to wonder if the course would ever be built. He knew Lang’s wife and children were unanimously against the idea; they wanted him to focus on his greeting card and calendar business.

Then, during one of his site visits, Whitten got some distressing news.

“Bob said, ‘My wife wants me to sell this (land) because I’ve got a company to run,’ ” Whitten recalled. “He said, ‘We aren’t going to build this course.’

“I remember calling Mike and saying, ‘We’ve got to do something to light a fire under Bob. Would you mind if I dangled the idea that we could build a course that could host a major championship like the U.S. Open?’

“And Mike goes, ‘Ron, the (United States Golf Association) is never going to take the U.S. Open to a public course in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.’ I said, ‘I know that. You know that. But Bob doesn’t know that.’ ”

Whitten sent a letter to the USGA in July 2003, extolling the virtues of a golf course that had yet to be built. It got the desired reaction from Lang. His U.S. Open dream, which the architects still didn't know about, was rekindled. He sold his Lang Companies in November, paid off the bank and owned the land debt-free.

Still, it wasn’t until Lang attended the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills that he went all-in on Erin Hills. Jim Reinhart of Mequon, then a member of the USGA's executive committee, had befriended Lang and arranged for him to meet veteran USGA official Mike Davis during the championship on Long Island.

“Bob shows these pictures (of the land) to Mike, and Mike is going, ‘Wow, Bob, these are beautiful. This looks great,’ ” Reinhart said. “And Bob is just lighting up. There were all these dignitaries in the room. Prince Andrew was there. He was captain of the R&A at the time. Bob was in hog heaven. At that moment, in that USGA hospitality tent, I think that’s when Bob decided to get the project rolling.”

Lang invited Davis to visit his land and two months later, on Aug. 10, Davis stopped in the Town of Erin on his way to the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, which had been awarded the 2007 U.S. Senior Open.

Lang had been mowing the natural fairway corridors with a tractor and though not a shovel of dirt had been turned Erin Hills looked like a golf course.

“It was just raw land that I had been mowing for four years,” he said. “I had old flags stuck in the ground. We hit some golf balls. And Mike said, ‘This is one of the best pieces of land I’ve ever seen for a golf course.’ ”

It was all Lang needed to hear.

“Thirty days later,” he said, “I took out a loan and started construction.”

The contract to build the course went to Landscapes Unlimited. Lang had met the company’s founder, Wisconsin native Bill Kubly, a couple years earlier at the annual Hurdzan-Fry golf outing outside Toronto. Hurdzan shrewdly paired Lang and Trattner with Kubly.

“Mike was hoping a day on the golf course with Bill would do the trick and he was right,” Trattner said. “Bob and Bill hit it off. After the round, they shook hands and Landscapes Unlimited was hired, with no financials even discussed and no other construction firms contacted or asked to bid. Bob simply said, ‘Bill, just be fair,’ and Bill said, ‘I will, I promise.’ And that was that.”

Kubly chose Canadian Rod Whitman to shape the greens and tees. The job requires as much imagination as it does precision with a bulldozer and Whitman was widely considered to be among the best in the business.

“I thought it was going to be a really good golf course,” he said. “I liked the property and the space and the scale of it all.”

The architects’ goal was to take full advantage of the glacial dunes, ridges and kettles and build a course that fit the land. In Erin Hills’ first incarnation, dirt was moved on only two holes.

“There were just so many corridors that all we had to do was mow out the fairways,” Whitten said. “The fairways fit right where they fit. You didn’t have to do anything. And that’s the secret of minimalism. That was our mantra here. We wanted to find as natural a golf course as we possibly could.”

Because the terrain and soil were ideal for an inland links – a course that would play much like the classic seaside links in the British Isles – it was necessary to remove acres of scrub brush and hundreds of trees to achieve the proper feel and playing characteristics.

Lang, however, liked the look of trees framing the fairways and fought to preserve as many as possible, especially a majestic, century-old oak guarding the corner of the dogleg on the par-5 first hole.

Whitten called it the “best tree on the whole property” but agreed with Fry that it was in the wrong place – squarely in the way of golfers who would go for the green with their second shots. Lang knew little about golf strategy. He just loved the way the oak looked. And he was starting to assert himself.

“There were some really gorgeous shag-bark hickories, but they were running right up number 10,” Whitten said. “It took us nine months to convince him to take those trees down. On 17, there was a plantation of pines. Bob wanted us to design a hole around them. I kept telling him, ‘There are no (other) pine trees out here. This is an anomaly, because they’re not natural.’ ”

On another hole, No. 11, a thicket of trees and brush lined the right side of the fairway. After the scrub was cleared, several mature trees remained. Lang wanted them to stay but Fry pointed out that cutting them down would open a stunning vista to the west. Lang grudgingly relented.

Even the types of grasses to be used was the subject of debate. Hurdzan argued for fine fescue fairways, which would be true to an “Irish links” and provide the firm and fast playing conditions coveted by the USGA.

Fescue was a gamble, considering it was relatively new to the Midwest, where heavy soils and the summer climate are more conducive to bent grass strains. Just 90 minutes away, Whistling Straits had opened in 1998 with fescue fairways but bent encroached and eventually became the dominant grass.

Hurdzan, regarded as a turf expert, was certain fine fescue would work in the Kettle Moraine, though it would require stringent maintenance.

“The USGA people, the turf grass people there, did not think that fescue would work well here,” Fry said. “Of all the things Mike fought for, I think that was the most important. The reason Erin Hills is fescue is because of him.”

There was never a debate about the greens. They would be A-4 bent, which provides an exceptional putting surface and has a track record of success with the USGA.

Seeding the fairways presented a challenge. The topsoil was ideal, but the layer beneath it consisted of gravel and rock left behind by the glaciers. The architects feared that disking up the soil would bring rocks to the surface.

Hurdzan came up with an unusual solution. The fairways were staked and a farmer was hired to make a couple passes with Round-Up. The fescue was then slit-seeded directly into the dead plant matter.

“I’ve been involved with 1,400 golf course projects and built probably 300 courses and that’s the first time I heard of doing that,” Kubly said. “That’s why all the little bumps and rumps are all there. It truly is natural.”

With the architects tweaking the routing, Trattner offering his opinion, Landscapes Unlimited superintendent Steve Posler overseeing construction, Kubly periodically checking in and Lang becoming more and more involved in every decision, there was a lot of creative tension.

“There was a big discussion about everything,” Whitten said. “But looking back, that was the fun of it.”

Hurdzan usually took the high road but even he could be pushed to the limit.

“I wanted some cross bunkers in the second landing area on No. 10 (then a par-5),” he said. “I’m out here on one trip and Ron’s not here and Dana’s not here, so I flag in the cross bunkers and I come back the next time and there’s no bunkers.

“I said to Steve, ‘What the hell happened? Why didn’t you build those bunkers?’ He said, ‘Ron took your flags out.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, Ron took my flags out?’ Steve said, ‘Ron said you weren’t here to defend yourself.’

“So I said to Steve, ‘Did Ron put any flags out here?’ He said, ‘Yeah, he did.’ I said, ‘Where?’ After I pulled his flags I told Steve, ‘You tell Ron that he wasn’t here to defend himself.’ ”

Whitman, meanwhile, kept his head down and did his job.

“I’m not sure I was always on board with what we were doing, but I tried to please the group,” he said. “Bob was out there all the time. There were a lot of cooks and they didn’t always agree. So it was a little bit confusing.”

Having sold his company, Lang was at Erin Hills every day. His enthusiasm and energy were off the charts. Though he was nearing 60, he often jumped into bunkers with a shovel and worked alongside the laborers, all of whom he knew by name.

Eventually, Lang started tinkering with the design of the holes, making changes without telling the architects.

“We meet a lot of unique people in our business, putting it mildly, and Bob was one of them,” Fry said. “He’s a good guy. Everybody knows that. He’s got a big heart. But he’s a very tough guy to work with and for because he’s so demanding and he’s so all over the place.

“Just going on a drive around the golf course with the guy was a mind-blowing experience because he’d be going here and talking about this, then he’d go here and go there. It was just craziness, is what I remember.”

The more golf courses Lang visited, the more he fell in love with bunkers. He thought Erin Hills needed more bunkers and started adding them on his own.

“I come up here one time and we come over that 10th hill and Bob had put in four square bunkers,” Whitten said. “They were the ugliest-looking things. It took me weeks to convince him to take them out. It was one of those things where if somebody wasn’t here, he was going to do something.”

To be fair, many of Lang’s changes strengthened the course.

For example, the green on the fourth hole originally was built in a natural punchbowl and rewarded too many mediocre approach shots. On his own, Lang had it moved back some 20 yards onto a ridge and fortified it with bunkers. Some would argue that the fourth hole is now one of the best, and most difficult, at Erin Hills.

Lang also convinced the architects to flip the front and back nines so that the ninth hole – a spectacular par-5 played toward Holy Hill, with its twin spires bathed in sunlight at dusk – would become the 18th. Davis has since called it one of the best finishing holes in championship golf.

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The routing was a five-year work in progress and the architects estimated it changed as many as a dozen times. There were a couple reasons for this: Lang not only was calling some of the shots, he was still acquiring land east of the course.

He’d started with two 40-acre parcels before he closed on Bernice Millikin’s 437 acres. Erin Hills was routed over that land, but Lang wasn’t finished. He added six more parcels totaling 135 acres. The 652-acre footprint greatly exceeded the USGA’s requirement for U.S. Open infrastructure, but Lang didn't want to take any chances.

He wound up spending $8 million for all the land. In most cases, he paid many times the average price per acre for farmland in the area.

“Every time he got a new piece of ground we tried to use it," Hurdzan said. "I do give him a lot of credit for that.

“The second thing is, I’ve got this map that I sent Bob of the routing. There was writing all the way around it, 360 degrees, where he critiqued every single hole. So he was now starting to get involved in the routing, and we work for the boss. It’s his land, his money, and we tried to accommodate him if it was reasonable.”

The architects' final routing included Whitten’s favorite hole, a par-3 with the green hidden in a natural valley – controversial because many golfers don’t like “blind” tee shots – and a 19th hole for deciding tie matches and settling bets.

In August 2005, then-USGA Executive Director David Fay toured the course for the first time and was sold on its potential. The next week, the USGA announced that Erin Hills would play host to the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, despite the fact that it was still under construction.

It was a remarkable leap of faith. As far as anyone knew, the USGA had never before offered one of its championships to a course before it opened.

Later, on his own, Lang decided to make substantial changes to the course, including the elimination of Whitten's favorite hole. He didn't want to deal with what he knew would be Whitten's strong disapproval. The former prosecutor was not afraid to voice his opinion and could be obstinate.

"I was intimidated by Ron," Lang admitted. "He was very vocal to me. He and Dana would get in arguments and would be shouting at each other."

Lang's solution was to fire Whitten in a roundabout way.

“I was uninvited to the team,” Whitten said. “Mike called and said, ‘I don’t know how to put this, but Bob has asked to do some changes and he asked me to ask you to stay away.’ They were afraid I was going to chain myself and refuse to make any changes.”

Still, Whitten was grateful to have had the opportunity to work at Erin Hills. He spent hundreds of hours on the property and many of his ideas were implemented. Rightfully, he shares one-third of the credit for the design with Hurdzan and Fry.

“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” Whitten said. “I learned a lot from everybody involved. I learned a lot from Bob Lang. I learned that the hardest thing about this job is dealing with owners.”

Erin Hills was starting to create a national buzz. The golf world eagerly awaited its opening in the summer of 2006.

But Trattner, the man who had found the land for Lang and was as responsible as anyone for the course, would never see opening day.

In January 2006, he was arrested and charged with killing his wife, 36-year-old Sin Lam, in their home in the quiet, leafy Ville du Parc neighborhood of Mequon. According to the criminal complaint, he became enraged when she asked for a divorce and threw her to the ground, pummeled her face, strangled her and covered her with a blanket. He then left her on the floor overnight and got his kids ready for school the next morning, telling them not to disturb her.

People who knew the diminutive and genial Trattner were stunned and his arrest cast a pall over Erin Hills.

D'AMATO: Inmate No. 500995 was key to Erin Hills

On the advice of his then-attorney, Michael Fitzgerald, Trattner pleaded no contest to first-degree reckless homicide. Judge Thomas Wolfgram sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He is incarcerated at Waupun Correctional Institution, about 40 miles northwest of Erin Hills.

One of his regular visitors is Lillian Williamson, who had worked with him years earlier, when she was trying to buy the Millikin property.

Another is Bob Lang.

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.