Tony:
WS was built to host major tournaments -- US Opens, PGAs, the Ryder Cup. That was Herb Kohler's ultimate goal when he built the course, and there's little doubt he's succeeded in that (one PGA so far, two more lined up, and a Ryder Cup coming up).
WS would not have been built, I believe, without the success that came with his initial duo of courses in Kohler -- the River and MV courses at Blackwolf Run. Those courses, now @ 20 years old, were viewed in Wisconsin golfing circles as a real stretch, as a model of golf economics here in Wisconsin -- they were priced well above any other high-end courses in the state (think SentryWorld), and lots of folks wondered what Kohler was doing. He wanted to build the two courses because lots of guests at his company's upscale resort in Kohler wanted to play golf (Kohler even briefly considered buying a local private golf club), and he had a very good piece of land, winding around a river, in which to build the two Kohler courses.
Kohler, a true golf nut, had taken several trips to Scotland and Ireland, some of them with Pete Dye, and after having played Ballybunion (so the story goes...but I'm told it's reliable), Kohler turned to Dye and said: "Build me this." He bought an old military dump site on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Sheboygan, gave Dye an unlimited budget, and thus was born WS (and the next-door Irish course). The entire WS complex is designed to host big tourneys -- a flat piece of land away from the lake is laid out to host big tents, the Irish Course provides warm-up and relief practice areas, and there is plenty of room for parking. In many ways, it's a course specifically built to host majors.
WS remains THE destination for the upscale golfing experience in Wisconsin, in part because of the cache it holds from hosting a major and its setting, which is pretty cool (half the holes hug the shoreline, and nearly all of the others have a view of the lake). It has a caddie program, stricly enforces a walking-only policy, and has sheep grazing the course. It's designed to imitate the Irish/Scottish golfing experience in the Midwest.
The course creates lots of debate about whether it's a true inland links. I've heard the turf, particularly the turf fronting the greens, is not linksy enough, and tends to grab balls, the opposite of what you'd see on a true links course.
Jamie: The hole is one of three short par 4s designed by Dye on the WS course. All three play somewhat similarly -- choices on the tee, with offset greens that theoretically can be driven (or close to driven). The 6th played at 355 yds for the '04 PGA, with a tee shot over a marsh/pond to a narrow fairway with lots of trouble and bunkers lining the entire right of the fairway. The green is shallow but wide, and offset to the right of the fairway (toward the lake; the 6th is not one of the shoreline holes at WS). It's not a true dogleg -- moreso a straight fairway with an offset green right. Taking a conservative route on the hole -- safely on the left side of the fairway -- leaves the golfer with a short pitch to a green that opens up, because it's offset to the right (similar to how a tee shot at the 13th at Augusta that hugs the left side of the fairway, near the creek, opens up the 13th green at ANGC -- same principle applies here). There are actually three pot bunkers fronting the 6th green; the one that's been expanded I believe is the middle one.
I'm guessing the strategy of the 6th (with the expanded bunker) is to make the hole player more difficult, esp. with pins on the right half of the green past the expanded bunker. The hole played as the second-easiest of the course's par 4s during the '04 PGA (3.9418 stroke average), with 54 birdies compared to 33 bogeys and 2 doubles.