Erin Hills and the Amateur

[Mike McGuire]

Erin Hills looked good today. Fescue not quite there on the hills but by next year it should be perfect.
Playing firm and fast.

Asked some guy sitting on an umbrella chair on the third tee what group just teed off. Then I saw his name tag - Mike Davis. Nice guy - talked to me for a few minutes. He knew about this website but said too busy to watch it.

EH will be a hoot for match play. 

[RJ_Daley]

If JVB or Mark S., are looking in, or if anyone knows: will either or both those fellows be there for officiating duties?

[Phil McDade]

Just have to say....

As someone who's been pretty critical of the USGA and Davis for their set-ups at recent US Opens, they seemed to have done an interesting and good job with the two courses used for the Amateur this year. Blue Mound was a pleasant surprise; many figured the USGA would opt for the nearby (Erin Hills, that is) Art Hills-designed Washington County for the alternate stroke-play course, but instead they went the opposite direction with the classic BM.

So far, the two quite contrasting courses are yielding similar scores -- -5 leads so far, with two of those at BM, but the courses seem to be yielding roughly equal numbers of -4, -3 and -2 rounds. And neither course has a monopoly on the higher-scoring rounds. Well done so far.

[Mike McGuire]

Phil

A guy told me today Lang insisted Wash Co not be the other course due to some beef.

[Jason Topp]

Commentary on the two courses from Randy Haag along with a few pictures and some shots at Chambers Bay:

http://randyhaag.com/2011/08/22/2011-us-amateur-begins-monday-at-erin-hills-and-blue-mound-cc/

[PCCraig]

How about this sad paragraph? (From: http://www.jsonline.com/sports/golf/128134403.html)

Twelve years after Lang and Trattner toured Millikin's land, Ziegler does own a golf course. He owns Erin Hills. He purchased it in October 2009, from an overextended Lang, who had indeed bought the land, built the course and opened it three years earlier.

Lang, whose dream morphed from building a nine-hole course to pursuing a U.S. Open - an obsession that cost him millions and consumed nearly his every waking moment - hasn't stepped foot on Erin Hills since the day he sold it.

Millikin passed away in March at age 80. Her son, Jeff, owns a gas station on the corner of Highway 83 and County 0, one mile from Erin Hills, once home to his family's prized herd of Charolais beef cattle.

"I chased a lot of cattle up and down those hills in my younger days," Jeff Millikin said.

Trattner, Erin Hills' first general manager, is serving a 35-year prison term at Waupun Correctional Institution for killing his wife, Sin Lam, in their Mequon home in 2006.

And Erin Hills?

The public course, seemingly unaffected by the drama that has unfolded around it, plays host to the 111th U.S. Amateur Championship this week. Stroke-play qualifying begins Monday and the championship concludes next Sunday.

Geez... talk about a happy ending 

[PCCraig]

Here's another interesting quote from the same article above:

Whitten, anxious to get started on the project, had written a letter to Davis in 2003 in which he described the land as a potential site for a U.S. Open. He hoped the letter would inspire Lang to start construction.

"I talked to Mike Hurdzan and said, 'Mike, would you mind if I dangled the U.S. Open in front of Bob?' " Whitten said. "Mike said, 'Ron, the U.S. Open is never going to go to Milwaukee.'

"I said, 'You know that and I know that, but Bob doesn't know that.' "

[Howard Riefs]

Also intriguing is this tidbit from Ginella's Golf Digest piece:

Lang didn't see a better use for his property than a low-key course for locals, his original vision just nine holes. Tom Doak, in the mid-1990s before he was the renowned Tom Doak (and before Lang owned the land), was asked to make some preliminary plans for a course. But in 2000 Lang met architect Mike Hurdzan, and they hit it off.

One can only imagine what the course would look like today if Doak designed it -- be it with or without the inevitable subsequent tweaks from Lang.

[Jim Colton]

Also intriguing is this tidbit from Ginella's Golf Digest piece:

Lang didn't see a better use for his property than a low-key course for locals, his original vision just nine holes. Tom Doak, in the mid-1990s before he was the renowned Tom Doak (and before Lang owned the land), was asked to make some preliminary plans for a course. But in 2000 Lang met architect Mike Hurdzan, and they hit it off.

One can only imagine what the course would look like today if Doak designed it -- be it with or without the inevitable subsequent tweaks from Lang.

Howard,

  This will give your imagination a little clarity:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,39001.0.html

  Jim

[Howard Riefs]

Howard,

  This will give your imagination a little clarity:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,39001.0.html

  Jim

Amazing. Thanks for sharing, Jim.  My imagination wouldn't have put me on the 1st tee.

[George Pazin]

TV coverage starts today at 3 on Golf Channel, for those interested.

[Phil McDade]

GCA has a man on the ground today at EH (not me...); let's hope he files a report tonight.

[Howard Riefs]

I'm planning to head up to EH on Saturday for the semifinals. Play starts at 8 a.m. according to the tournament website (http://www.2011usamateur.com/schedule-of-events.php).

If anybody wants to meet up, please let me know.

anyone heading up?  I'm thinking of heading up for the Saturday round with my son....

Jud, are you going up?

[Jud_T]

not sure now.  maybe sunday if at all.  i'll let you know if i'll be up...

[Phil McDade]

John Van der Borght on TV intepreting a rules question!

[RJ_Daley]

Phil, don't know if you meant me as the man on the ground today, but a stomach bug had me up all night.  So, didn't go, but my friends did. 

I have been watching the playoff and just saw why I simply didn't like 12 from the git-go, when I'd played there before the remodel.  The time I played there with Hendren, I played it just like Jaeger, pulled left tee shot, went into fescue blind off tee on right, then blind again to green, went right rough, and nearly blind again 3rd shot to green.  Ribbon fairway is too narrow, and it is too blind from too many areas that even good players are likely to go off tee.  Not to mention when they have 10s of 1000s spectators, where or how far back they will have to be monitored in the blind area 100yards wide in the LZ, and even that is very much a potential LZ hazard for specators, IMO.

I may re-schedule to go down SAt or Sunday.

Great to see JVB getting a prominent upfront USGA role.  No one has been more passionate and worked harder and deserves the promo more.   

[Howard Riefs]

not sure now.  maybe sunday if at all.  i'll let you know if i'll be up...

Sounds good.  It's a good drive to make an 8 a.m. start.

[Phil McDade]

RJ:

I did mean you! Hope you're feeling better.

Well, despite the wayward nature of many of the shots, #12 yielded four pars and two bogeys in that final playoff group -- and one of those was a gack of a putt from about three feet by the clearly nervous Miller. My counterpoint would be (maybe not for you and Bogey, but for these guys and the pros) -- yep, narrow fairway and really rambunctious terrain; probably the most severe over any one hole out there. But stuff does sort of funnel down to that green, and the green itself struck me as one of the flatter ones out there. I can maybe see widening the fairway a bit, but I like the blind nature of the recovery shots -- hit off-line, and you face a tough recovery.

[Howard Riefs]

The new definition of "smitten" is Mike Davis on Erin Hills:

.“I think it is going to go down as one of the great championship tests in the United States,” Davis said. “I start to go hole by hole, and I compare this to some of the great U.S. Open sites, like Shinnecock, like Pebble Beach, like Oakmont. This stands up with all of them. I really believe that.”

Shinnecock? Pebble? Oakmont?

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golftalkcentral/davis-compares-erin-hills-to-shinnecock-pebble-beach/

[David Cronheim]

The new definition of "smitten" is Mike Davis on Erin Hills:

.“I think it is going to go down as one of the great championship tests in the United States,” Davis said. “I start to go hole by hole, and I compare this to some of the great U.S. Open sites, like Shinnecock, like Pebble Beach, like Oakmont. This stands up with all of them. I really believe that.”

Shinnecock? Pebble? Oakmont?

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golftalkcentral/davis-compares-erin-hills-to-shinnecock-pebble-beach/

I have to say I agree with him. After I played it last year, it jumped into my top 5 all time. In fact, I remarked to my friends after playing it that "I couldn't think of a course I played that was better - some that were equal but none better." Watching the Am on tv last night reminded me of how much I liked it. I'm STUNNED it doesn't crack the top 100 on either GD or GM's lists. I think that has to be due to a lack of exposure/play by the raters more than anything else. Every hole is unique. I can honestly say there's no hole there that I've played elsewhere. #12 is real gem. 10, 11 and 12 really beat up the playoff contenders yesterday too...

[Jud_T]

David,

There's a difference between a great test for the best players and being one of the best courses in the world.  Yes it's a great piece of property and a course of note, but what specifically leads you to believe it's one of the best courses on the planet?

[Phil McDade]

I'm STUNNED it doesn't crack the top 100 on either GD or GM's lists. I think that has to be due to a lack of exposure/play by the raters more than anything else.

David: EHills had a very rough beginning, and has changed substantially since it first opened five years ago. I'm not even sure the course that Lang opened in 2006 could be called the same course as the one the amateurs are playing this week. And that might partially account for how it's been perceived by the raters. In addition, the changes made to the course to get it ready for the US Amateur and the US Open shut down the course for long stretches -- it didn't open last year until August, which means it missed roughly two-thirds of the golfing season here.

[PCCraig]

I like Erin Hills, and enjoyed my round there quite a bit last summer (I never saw one of the previous versions, just the current course) and think it fits its purpose well now. However...on the same level as Oakmont? Really Mike?

[David Cronheim]

David,

There's a difference between a great test for the best players and being one of the best courses in the world.  Yes it's a great piece of property and a course of note, but what specifically leads you to believe it's one of the best courses on the planet?

I think the variety of the holes there is excellent and the challenges it poses to good players are fantastic. I've never seen a course of that length that wasn't just bomb it, find it, whack it at the green. I think Bethpage is a perfect example of a course like that. I think it's grossly overrated. It's long for the sake of being long, it has incredibly boring, flat greens and is a paradigm of what is wrong with stretching golf courses to that length. Whereas Erin Hills is long (but plays shorter because of how firm the ground usually is), but rewards shotmaking.

When I played the course, I was fortunate both to: (i) be swinging as well as I would the entirety of that summer and (ii) have a great caddy. There's so much strategy involved in picking lines off the tee to set up an angle for a second shot based on where the pin is and then how to play the approach shot to get it close.

I'll give you an example:

#10: When I played the pin was back right and my caddy told me the best way to get it close was to try and hit the slope 10 yds right of the green and let it feed down, but that the shot there worked best if you were on the right side of the fairway so you could draw it onto the slope helping it kick down.

I'm going to agree with Mike Davis on this one. I think it's a fantastic course and I've played a number of courses on the current US Open "rota." I think EH is much more interesting than, for example, Congressional or Baltusrol.

[Jud_T]

Thanks.  I'd agree that it's more fun than a lot of the traditional brutish championship courses.  The knock on it has been that perhaps A) they were a bit too fanatical about the "only moved a spoonful of dirt" on 14 (?) holes concept and B) that although laid out like a links both the severity of some of the greenside slopes and the maintenance meld available on southern Wisconsin clay prohibits a lot of ground game options typical of real links golf.