I'm really sorry to hear that Mr. Lang's admirable intentions have not worked out, ideally or practically. But, I honestly feel from what I've read that he got thrown off the noble path very early on. All the early publicity and his efforts to just go mow out some potential fairway's to get the look of how it would lay upon the land were intentions of a minimalist, and a gentleman that really wanted to create a bit of Ireland for the avid and loyal golf fans here in Wisconsin. But, I think the concept slowly started to get dinged here and there, where every new more grand ideal became grandiose, and the course concept became more and more grandiose, with all the talk before it was even fully designed and constructed of a potential big time USGA or major, etc.
Then, with that pride of building a course that would be in the pantheon of hosting a major, getting caught up in the fact that any new course coming on line in this era would have to be a very long and tough test with special turfing considerations harkening back to the old days with fescue (i.e. like Chambers Bay) rather than a great course that evolved over 50-75 years like most major venues, EH became a never ending series of upgrades, design challenges, and too much creativity to design and build/grow something in the highly revered and seldom followed (minimalist, use of natural topography, fescue F&F ideals, and all the other nostalgia things that we talk about here on GCA). The project started to get away from the early noble ideal of a simple natural course laid upon the land for the majority of avid and loyal customers, to a CCFAD, potential major, over built, over conceived and costly venue.
It is too hard to walk comfortable, or repeatedly, too costly to be a repeat customer on a regular basis, and just over designed in creative sense of severity of greensites and blind shots and too much rough beyond the blind areas. They started having to tweak things that should have been better thought out from the start.
Yet, the site of this course is among the real beautiful settings in this State. The heart and soul of Mr Lang and all the contributors was deeply into it. But, expectations were ridiculously built up, almost in a sense of hubris and something like the "irrational exhuberance" that the investment world exhibited, IMHO. And IMHO, this new owner Zeigler has a rather ironic backround if "irrational exhuberance" is a legitimate emotion in play.
Perhaps you can fold these comments back into Mike Young's thread, "revelation - golf was never meant to make $$$$$". I doubt EH ever will...
