Played Erin Hills last October. Like it a great deal. Here's what I wrote in The Daily Southtown (a competitor of the Tribune, incidentally):
The Grill Room - Thursday, October 19
ERIN, Wis. -- There are two words Cog Hill Golf & Country Club owner Frank Jemsek should worry about hearing while hoping the United States Golf Association someday favors his Dubsdread course with a U.S. Open.
They are not Olympia Fields.
Nor are they Whistling Straits.
The two words are Erin Hills.
When the USGA finally brings the U.S. Open back to the Midwest -- it's booked elsewhere through 2013 -- Erin Hills, a spectacular new course in this sleepy rural hamlet 35 miles northwest of Milwaukee, has a remarkably good chance to get it.
How good? Mike Davis, who runs the Open for the USGA, has visited four times. On the grounds the first time after work had barely begun, he didn't return a second, third and fourth time to have a bratwurst.
Erin Hills is more than that good. Opened Aug. 1, it is instantly one of the great courses in the world. It is also a throwback, a course many will find too quirky, thinking too many of the hazards -- the earth rolling and heaving, leftovers of the last remnant of the Ice Age -- were either placed incorrectly or should have been bulldozed.
That is both the charm and challenge of Erin Hills. This isn't another cookie-cutter course with a pleasant routing and a copying machine's originality. This is golf course architecture the way it was done in the '70s. The 1870s. A tee here. A bunker there, where it will do grievous harm to the scorecard. A fairway looking like an unmade bedspread running to the green over there, around the hillock. Aim at the distant steeple to find the flagstick. If there's no steeple, aim at a cloud.
On 14 holes, all that needed to be done was to pick the site for the green and position the bunkers. Architects Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten, the latter the architecture critic for Golf Digest and Golf World, needed only to consult topographic maps and walk around to discover golf holes waiting to be mowed. Together with Lang, they routed the course through a maze of wetlands in a few of days.
On potential alone, the USGA awarded Erin Hills the 2008 U.S. Women's Public Links Championship 13 months before the course opened. That's doubly significant. First, the USGA had never awarded a championship to an unfinished course, and second, the Women's Publinx is played the week after the U.S. Open.
Said David Fay, who runs the USGA and is Davis' boss, to owner Robert Lang: "We want to get a feel for how the course looks and plays that time of year."
Gee, why would that be?
"We just have to see how it goes," Lang said hopefully. "I'm not lobbying. I'm not pressuring. The USGA, they do like links-style golf."
This year alone, the U.S. Women's Open was at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, and the U.S. Senior Open was at Prairie Dunes in Kansas. Both are links courses.
Few who have visited think Erin Hills' test won't be aced. There will be no problem with length, because the course, a friendly 6,544 yards from the green tees, can play as long as 8,266 yards for the big boys.
"The first thing we want to do is create a positive experience for our guests," Lang said. "I want people to come in, and for the six hours they're here, to forget about everything. My goal was to build an island, an oasis, dedicated to golf.
"If we never do more than host the Women's Publinx, we've done something. But I want Erin Hills to be championship caliber if anyone comes in with a tournament."
The holes evoke memories of other great links courses near and far. One green is similar to the sixth at Shinnecock Hills, and the par-3 seventh, a tremendous blind hole the USGA will probably pass on, was inspired by Lahinch in Ireland. (A 19th hole, built to break ties, will be a fine stand-in.) Everywhere, the spirit of the game is in the air, but many shots should be played the old-fashioned way, on the ground.
"This is going to be a course that people love centuries from now," Davis said last year.
Erin Hills is not perfect. The quirky dogleg par-5 first hole will need a bit of work, but mostly, the layout offers the sublime challenge of the old-fashioned links game which all but disappeared when steel shafts arrived.
There are blind tee shots in some cases, blind and half-blind second shots in others, and greens which swing and sway daringly. The fairways are fescue, not bentgrass. The high fescue near to most fairways is a real hazard, but the fairways are generally generous. As with any new course, not everything is 100 percent grown in, but by next spring's growing season, it should be.
"We pushed off the opening as long as we could," Lang said, nevertheless eager to share a course that developed from dream to a potential nine holes for his employees and friends to a full-scale championship 18 -- make that 19.
The sight is spectacular, and the secret is already out. The day we came by, a fellow arrived for his reserved tee time and mentioned that he had flown in earlier in the morning -- by private jet -- and that he picked Erin Hills over Pebble Beach that day. A fellow in front of our group was wearing Bandon Dunes togs. A couple behind us were from the San Francisco area.
Hurry if you plan to play this year, for Erin Hills closes for the winter on Oct. 29. Unlike Brigadoon, which comes along once every century, this course for all time will reopen in the spring.