Cary
Erin, Wisconsin
Here's the Milwaukee Jornal-Sentinel article:
Posted: Oct. 30, 2004
Golf Beat
Gary D'Amato
Town of Erin - For years, I had known about an extraordinary property a few miles west of Holy Hill that was said to be designed by God and glacier to be the perfect site for a golf course.
The fortunate few who had toured the land talked about it with reverence, as if it were some sort of living shrine.
I saw the site for the first time recently, and now I understand.
Erin Hills Golf Course won't open until the spring or summer of 2006, but it is destined for greatness.
I toured the course with Bob Lang, the owner, and Steve Trattner, the project manager who will become the general manager when Erin Hills opens. Both were purposefully restrained in their comments, asking that I contact others who have walked the property.
"This isn't about me, it's about the land," said Lang, a Delafield developer who bought the property in 1999. "All I will say is that our goal is to build the most natural, challenging and traditional championship golf course we can build."
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You don't have to be a golf course architect to see the potential. The topography is breathtaking, a humble-jumble of hills and eskers left behind by the glaciers. Most of the land had never been farmed because of the terrain.
The course, in the initial stages of construction, winds through majestic old-growth oaks, around wetlands and along the Ashippun River.
Lang hired Hurdzan-Fry Golf Course Design Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, to design Erin Hills. Ron Whitten, a respected golf course architecture writer, has joined Mike Hurdzan and Dana Fry as a consultant on the project, and all three will be listed as the designers.
So how good is Erin Hills?
"Put it this way," Fry said. "I've played the top 100 courses in America and 97 of the top 100 in the world and Erin Hills arguably is the best site I've ever seen. It's a cross between Ballybunion and Sand Hills.
"It's got a larger-than-life, grandiose scale to it. It's so big and dramatic you almost gasp when you see it. It's like when you go to (Irish courses) Ballybunion or Royal County Down or Lahinch for the first time. You're in awe.
"It's a freak of nature, there's no question. It's truly one of the great pieces of land for golf anywhere."
Said Whitten: "It's a very special piece of property. Everyone who has seen it has been blown away. It's probably one of the five best properties I've ever seen in my life."
OK, the architects are paid to build the course; naturally, they are going to say glowing things about the land.
So I asked other people who have seen Erin Hills to comment.
"I think it's stunning," said Jim Reinhart of Mequon, a member of the United States Golf Association executive committee. "It's just beautiful. You could play golf there right now. It's kind of a cross between Shinnecock Hills and Prairie Dunes."
Tim Moraghan, the USGA director of championships agronomy, toured Erin Hills in August with Mike Davis, the USGA director of competitions. Both came away impressed.
"We were blown away by it," said Moraghan, who likened his visit to "how people felt when they first envisioned the National Golf Links and Shinnecock Hills on Long Island."
Lang is a casual golfer and a developer by occupation. But he is adamant that Erin Hills be preserved as a natural setting for golf and said there were no plans for houses or condos anywhere on the 532-acre property.
"I've been building houses since 1975," he said, "but this land should never be developed. It's our responsibility to put this land to its best use and preserve its natural beauty."
Unlike Whistling Straits, a flat piece of ground on which huge dunes were bulldozed into place, Erin Hills will be largely untouched by machinery. Lang said fewer than 30,000 cubic yards of dirt would be moved, a tiny amount by today's standards.
Amazingly, on 14 of the 18 holes, the ground will be virtually undisturbed.
"Not only are 14 of the fairways untouched," Fry said, "but everything around the greens is staying pretty much natural with the exception of adding sand bunkers."
Erin Hills will be an inland links course, with fescue fairways similar to those found at Whistling Straits and on the classic seaside links courses in the British Isles. The course will play firm and fast.
"I'm used to doing irrigation systems with 1,300 (sprinkler) heads," said Fry, who started his career with architect Tom Fazio in 1983. "This is probably going to have half of that. The primary roughs will get virtually no water. That's the look we're going after at Erin Hills."
The course will have a smallish, understated clubhouse. There will be no swimming pool, no tennis courts, no weddings or banquets or socials.
"We're trying to create an atmosphere for solitude," Lang said. "Golf is a journey and we want to offer golfers solitude and variety in their journey."
The course will measure about 7,800 yards from the back tees and no two holes are alike. Even many of the best courses in the world have a weak hole or two, but there will be no weak holes at Erin Hills.
"We don't want an ordinary hole," Whitten said. "We've got some things you haven't seen on a golf course before. That sounds arrogant, but it's true."
Moraghan agreed.
"They're all really, really strong holes," he said. "There are really good shot values on every hole."
Good enough to play host to, say, a U.S. Open someday?
"To say it's premature (to talk about that) is an understatement," Moraghan said. "But it's kind of like 'Field of Dreams.' Build it and they will come."
Said Fry, "There's no question this course could host any event that would ever want to go there."
The best thing about Erin Hills is that it won't be an ultra-exclusive private club with a Trump-like initiation fee. It will be a true public course; the green fee has not yet been determined.
"We want it to be like Bethpage (site of the 2002 U.S. Open)," Whitten said. "It has the potential to be one of the great public courses in America.
"I feel quite lucky. People ask me how many home sites and I say, 'None.' They ask about power lines and I say, 'None.' They say, 'You (expletive).' It's our hope that we don't screw it up."
Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten aren't as well-known as Fazio or Pete Dye and they understand Erin Hills could be their legacy course.
"It's going to be a unique and special place and everybody involved in the project knows it," Fry said. "We all know this is it. In 100 years, I really believe it will be a shrine to the game of golf. It's that good of a place.
"And that's nothing we did. God did that."