The Making of a U.S. Open course: Erin Hills, Series finale
Final in a series leading up to the U.S. Open, June 15-18, at Erin Hills.
Jim Reinhart was on his way to an important United States Golf Association announcement at Pebble Beach on June 16, 2010, when he ran into a friend.
Bob Lang was sitting alone on a stone wall near the course entrance. Thousands of people streamed past him as they made their way onto the grounds to watch Wednesday practice rounds for the 110th U.S. Open.
Reinhart, a former member of the USGA executive committee, stopped dead in his tracks.
“Bob!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
The answer was that Lang couldn’t stay away. Exactly 10 years earlier, he had walked these same fairways on California’s spectacular Monterey Peninsula and dreamed of building a public golf course in Wisconsin that would someday play host to the U.S. Open.
Lang had seen his dream to within inches of the finish line, buying a sprawling, one-time cattle farm in the Kettle Moraine, building Erin Hills Golf Course and successfully courting the USGA. But he paid a steep price financially. Eight months earlier, facing insolvency, he’d sold the course to Reinhart’s close friend Andy Ziegler.
This should have been one of the happiest days of Lang’s life. The USGA was about to announce, before several dozen reporters in the media center, that it was awarding the 2017 U.S. Open to Erin Hills.
Among those in attendance were Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, Ziegler, Reinhart and members of the USGA staff and executive committee, including executive director David B. Fay, president Jim Hyler and Tom O’Toole Jr., chairman of the championship committee.
Lang was not invited to the announcement. He had signed a 10-year nondisclosure when he sold Erin Hills to Ziegler but couldn’t let go of the course emotionally. He’d come to Pebble Beach on his own to thank the USGA privately.
“We’re pleased to announce that the 2017 United States Open Championship will be conducted at Erin Hills in Erin, Wisconsin,” O’Toole told those assembled. “Many of you know Erin Hills is a special place, a public golf course (with) predominantly fine fescue grasses. … The course is very open and natural and has much topographical movement.
“The USGA is confident that Andy is committed to making Erin Hills a world-class golf facility, the type of facility (where) the USGA will be proud to conduct our national open championship.”
Erin Hills, a 4-year-old public course built amid farms and winding country roads three miles west of Holy Hill, actually had been selected to host the U.S. Open by the USGA's championship committee eight months earlier. The decision was made, coincidentally, on the same day Ziegler took ownership of the course and Lang's dream ended.
The formal announcement came as a surprise to many.
The untested course beat out six other Midwest sites, including venerable Cog Hill in suburban Chicago, which had undergone a $5.2 million renovation and was thought by many to be the front-runner.
“We had seven Midwest sites that we were considering,” Hyler said. “Each one would be a great place to have an Open, but at the end of the day we felt like Erin Hills was the right place to go in ’17.”
Gov. Doyle beamed throughout the announcement and touted the economic impact of the U.S. Open.
“In Wisconsin, we have shown that we know how to put on a successful major championship,” he said, referring to the 2004 PGA Championship held at Whistling Straits, which set PGA attendance records (the Straits would host the championship for a second time later that summer).
When it was his turn to speak, Ziegler said, “I’m deeply honored that Erin Hills has been selected to host the 117th U.S. Open, and I thank the USGA for its confidence in our ability to produce an outstanding championship. Bob Lang had a wonderful vision for Erin Hills. We are building on that vision through significant course renovations and are dedicated to providing a world-class test of golf.”
The truth was, at that very moment, Erin Hills wasn’t ready to host a weekend scramble let alone the U.S. Open. The course was undergoing a major renovation and would be closed for much of the summer.
Ziegler’s team, led by superintendent Zach Reineking, was in a race against time to get Erin Hills ready for the 2011 U.S. Amateur, a prelude to the U.S. Open.
So much had to be done – changing the 10th hole from a par-5 to a par-4, fixing problems with drainage and bunkers, improving poor turf conditions – that there were concerns the course wouldn’t measure up to USGA standards.
And a disappointing U.S. Amateur would create doubt that Erin Hills was worthy of hosting the U.S. Open.
Ziegler spent millions on all the fixes, built a state-of-the-art maintenance facility and added a second clubhouse with locker rooms, which would better accommodate the U.S. Amateur contestants.
By the time the prestigious championship was held in August 2011, Erin Hills was ready.
Among those in the field were future PGA Tour winners Harris English, Emiliano Grillo, Russell Henley, Si-Woo Kim, Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas.
After Kelly Kraft upset world No. 1-ranked amateur Patrick Cantlay in the 36-hole finale, the USGA’s Mike Davis, who by then had replaced Fay as executive director, raved about the course.
Davis compared Erin Hills favorably with Shinnecock Hills on Long Island and Oakmont Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh, a pair of time-tested U.S. Open venues and among the most revered golf courses in America.
“When we’re all long gone, they are going to be playing big championships on this course,” he said of Erin Hills. “I just think it’s marvelous. This is just my opinion, but I think it’s going to go down as one of the great championship tests in the United States.”
When the best players in the world arrive at Erin Hills in two weeks, they will find a golf course in pristine condition, with amenities second to none.
The course closed earlier than usual last fall as Reineking and his staff began preparations, and it will stay closed until after the U.S. Open concludes. There won’t be a single round of public play before the USGA pulls up stakes. That’s believed to be a first in the history of the U.S. Open.
At a recent media preview day for the U.S. Open, Davis was effusive in his praise of Ziegler and his staff.
“For everybody here, they’re not only the owners, the custodians, the keepers of this, but they have put their heart and soul into it,” Davis said. “It’s been all about what is best for Erin Hills and also what’s best for the game of golf.”
Reinhart, the general chairman of the 2011 U.S. Amateur, will serve in that same capacity for the U.S. Open. He will oversee all aspects of the championship from Erin Hills’ perspective, including the management of some 5,200 volunteers.
It was Reinhart who introduced Lang to Davis back in 2004. It was Reinhart who encouraged Ziegler to buy the course. And it was Reinhart who had ties to the USGA and was liked and trusted throughout the organization.All along, he has championed Erin Hills.
“I’m not sure the USGA ever gets to a level of interest of bringing (the U.S. Open) here without Jim’s encouragement and advocacy for it,” Ziegler said. “I think it’s very under-appreciated how much he meant to getting the Open. It literally doesn’t come here without him.”
Of course, there would be no U.S. Open without Lang, whose dream was bigger than his bank account. He made poor choices along the way, borrowing and spending at a frenetic pace, and wound up losing millions.
"It has been difficult to watch Bob's dream of one day hosting a U.S. Open crumble before my eyes," Reinhart said. "Conversely, it has been rewarding to be a part of Andy's unwavering efforts to make the golf course and the guest experience as good as it can be and also to watch the dedicated staff at Erin Hills transform a raw golf course into a golf course deserving of not only the majestic property it sits upon but also of our country's national championship, the U.S. Open.
"I hope that Bob can somehow enjoy the moment on June 15 when the greatest players in the world compete on what he always hoped would be a grand coming-out party for Erin Hills, a place that will forever be very special to him. I know that Andy feels the same way."
Though Ziegler and Lang do not speak to each other, Ziegler respects the man who started it all.
“Here’s how I look at it,” Ziegler said. “Bob Lang was the first steward of Erin Hills, I’m the current steward of Erin Hills and there will be other stewards of Erin Hills in the future. I greatly appreciate him handing it off to me. I’ve done my best to improve it, to make it special and to create a business model that will sustain it far into the future.”
As for Lang, the course represents his life’s work and is his pride and joy, yet it has brought him unspeakable pain. He had so much faith and confidence in his vision for Erin Hills that he put ownership of the course in a trust for his three children.
In essence, when he lost Erin Hills, his children lost their inheritance.
In July 2016, Lang's only son, Andrew, made headlines in New York newspapers when he died sitting upright, with his legs crossed, on a park bench next to a bakery in Lower Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. An uneaten slice of pizza was at his side.
The police weren’t called until people started lining up at 5 a.m. at the famed Dominique Ansel Bakery and someone noticed Andrew's body. The family said he died of natural causes. He was 47.
Andrew never wanted his father to build Erin Hills.
Bob Lang, described by friends and acquaintances as a man of integrity and character, with a big heart and a strong moral compass, anguishes over mistakes he made and how they affected his family. There are some things he can never fix.
In his office in Delafield, Lang keeps two reminders of his tie to Erin Hills: the small wooden sign that once marked the entrance, and the cornerstone, chiseled out of the original clubhouse. He becomes emotional just talking about them.
People who are close to Lang worry about him as the U.S. Open draws near. He has been sending out lengthy emails at all times of the day and night, all of them about Erin Hills and the Open. He ends every one with his favorite phrase: “Golf is a journey.”
He surely will be there in two weeks, when the best players in the world tackle the course he built. He’ll be standing high on a ridge, looking down on the fairways he mowed with his John Deere tractor all those years ago, when it was just Bob Lang, a wondrous piece of ground and a dream.
You’ll have to look hard to find him.
He’ll be just another face in the crowd.
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.