As we get closer to the toon-a-mint, more questions are being answered. For instance, they are backing off the opening hole yardage, reducing from 492 to 408. The narrowed areas have reportedly been widened slightly this week. My concerns about crowds in the dunes and folks falling on steep embankments is being addressed and circulation of crowds is being planned in great detail. With the huge amphitheater around the 9th and 18th, I wonder if that will become a huge negative, or create the biggest thrill ever...
By Rob Schultz
August 8, 2004
HAVEN -- Poor William Henry Harrison. He was elected President of the United States, but got sick during his inauguration, died a month later and was buried before he got a chance to prove himself.
Listen to enough critics of Whistling Straits and you'll start believing that the audacious links course on the shores of Lake Michigan is destined to become the William Henry Harrison of major golf championship sites.
The course isn't ill, but many of the golfers who've played it are already sick of it and its tight fairways, thick rough and rugged trap-and dune-filled landscape.
They've joined many other critics who have tried to bury the place even before it gets a chance to prove itself during the much-anticipated PGA Championship that begins there next week.
There certainly are lots of questions about Whistling Straits as it gets ready for its inaugural major championship.
The difficulty of the layout for the golfers remains the biggest one. But there are also questions about whether the course - and the country roads leading to the remote site - is spectator-worthy.
In fact, the answers to those questions are expected to help the United State Golf Association decide whether it will give the Straits the 2012 U.S. Open Championship.
Steve Friedlander, Whistling Straits' director of golf, is confident that the Straits will produce only positive answers and live on to produce more major events.
"We're going to make this one the best major that's ever been," he said boldly. "It'll be the best championship experience for our spectators, the best championship experience for the players...and the state of Wisconsin, and we'll go from there."
Much of the media's focus heading into the tournament has been on all the time that has been spent preparing the Straits for the golfers. Friedlander, a veteran director of close to a dozen professional golf events, said it might surprise some to learn that an equal amount of time has been spent preparing the course for spectators.
He expects it to be nothing short of spectacular for fans.
Friedlander said wide, flat walkways traverse both sides of the fairways on 10 holes - and on one side of the eight other holes, which are bordered by water on the opposite side.
So, despite the Straits' somewhat lumpy terrain in certain areas - tall sand dunes dot the course - Friedlander doesn't expect an abnormal number of ankle sprains or foot injuries.
Friedlander said the walkways are actually roads that were grassed in three years ago and look like part of the landscape. All of them are parallel to the fairways and aren't far from the ropes.
"You can either walk on these roads or you walk off the road and up on to a dune and you're overlooking a fairway 10 feet away from the ropes. Either way, you've got a perfect view," said Friedlander.
He added that none of the mounds on the course that are outside the ropes are off-limits to spectators. "If somebody wants to be a mountain goat, they can climb up there," he said.
Besides its terrain, the Straits' figure-8 layout also created a challenge to make it spectator-worthy because of the potential bottlenecks where several greens or tees meet.
But Friedlander believes any congestion problems have been eliminated, which will make the Straits unique among major golf venues.
"The problem occurs when people don't have options, where the only place people can go is from point A to point B," Friedlander said. "In our case, from point A to point B, you might be able to take route 1, 2 or 3. In other majors, you only have one route. We've been fortunate to have multiple options in many locations."
Multiple options were created by reconfiguring parts of holes in at least 10 different places on the course, according to Friedlander. For instance, many of the dunes alongside the fairways on the No. 2 and No. 6 were moved to create dual road systems.
"But it didn't affect the play on the course," Friedlander added.
Golf designer Pete Dye deserves most of the credit. "He's a great visionary," said Friedlander. "The beauty of Pete is that he'll say, 'OK, I know I want to see this bunker in the background, so if we're going to move it to accommodate spectators, do we move it forward and shrink it so it doesn't look different, or do we move it back and make it bigger so it looks the same?'
"That's the kind of thing Pete does," he added. "We'd build a walkway either in front of the bunker or behind it and it wouldn't change the look of the hole."
The Straits will have grandstands at sites throughout the course. The biggest concentration of seats - in the grandstands and on the grass areas next to them - will be located around the ninth and 18th greens to create an amphitheater unique to American golf courses.
Friedlander expects around 15,000 spectators to surround the ninth and 18th greens, which could make finishing both of those difficult holes even more daunting. There will be approximately 9,000 in the grandstands, which includes no reserved seats. All are first-come, first-served.
"That's humongous," Friedlander said of the Straits' 15,000-seat amphitheater. "The British Open golf courses sometimes have that many people on both sides of the 18th fairway, but a typical 18th-hole grandstand area might hold 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 tops."
By comparison, the grandstands surrounding the 18th green at Brown Deer Golf Course in Milwaukee may hold 1,500 people. Friedlander said a better comparison might be Milwaukee's Bradley Center.
"It's going to be like being in a stadium. Basically you are in a stadium that is on a golf course. What does the Bradley Center hold? About 19,000? We'll have 15,000 people and the players will be down below. It will be outdoors but it will be loud," said Friedlander.
"As a player walking down that fairway or approaching that green, it's going to be awfully loud."
It's going to be thrilling for spectators making noise, too.
"The golf course was designed knowing we were going to attempt (to land) major championships," Friedlander said. "Obviously, this is the first one but we're fairly confident people are going to leave the place saying, 'This is the greatest day I've ever had watching golf.' "