Earl and Bernice Millikin owned the large farm in the Town of Erin that would become Erin Hills.
(Photo: Courtesy of Millikin family)
 

Though Earl would sooner pick up a manure shovel than a 9-iron, he often mused that his land, which tumbled and heaved over glacial mounds and ridges, would make a perfect site for a golf course.

“He said that from the first day he owned the property,” Jeff said.

By the 1990s, Earl and Bernice were experiencing health problems and were selling off their cattle. They had been self-employed their entire lives and did not have pensions or 401(k) plans. They’d held onto their land, hoping its sale would provide financial security in retirement.

The Millikins took out a “land for sale” newspaper advertisement, which caught the eye of Lillian Williamson of River Hills. She was interested in acquiring a small parcel for a potential home development, so she called Earl and asked if he would consider dividing his more than 600 acres.

This is the ad that caught the attention of Lillian Williamson.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

“He said, ‘Come on out,’ so I went out and met Earl, and he showed me around,” she said. “I fell in love with the land. It was beautiful, beautiful virgin land. He said he would consider (selling) 160 acres, but he wanted to keep the rest because he thought someone might want to build a golf course on it.”

Millikin also told her that several developers were interested in his land, carved in prehistoric time by the grinding of massive glaciers. When the earth warmed and the glaciers retreated, they left behind a jumble of sharp ridges and gentle hollows, deep kettles and conical mounds – the unique landforms that characterize the Kettle Moraine.

Williamson, a former dental hygienist and flight attendant, knew little about real estate, but she didn’t want to see the pristine land “chopped up.” She’d hit it off with Earl, who liked her idea of building a tasteful subdivision and was generous with advice. She found investors and bought the 160 acres for just less than $1 million.

Lillian Williamson looks at a scrapbook she kept of photos of the land that would become Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Williamson and her partners divided the land into 25 lots and developed the handsome Watercress Springs subdivision, which includes a wetlands conservancy and is just south of Erin Hills.

“I developed it with an Irish theme because the town is Irish and they wanted to keep that flavor,” she said. “The town demanded a lot of me, I think because I was an outsider. But we hired all the right people to develop the land, and it really turned out beautiful.”

Williamson then turned her attention to the rest of the Millikin property. She didn’t play golf, though her husband, Matt, was a club champion at Ozaukee Country Club. She agreed with Earl, and others she brought out to see the property, that it would make a spectacular setting for golf.

But she had competition.

Among those also trying to buy the land were partners Paul Hundley, a professional photographer; David Rasmussen, a Milwaukee-area golf instructor; and Tom Doak, a bright young golf course architect from Traverse City, Mich.

David Rasmussen (left), a Milwaukee-area golf instructor, and Paul Hundley (right), a professional
photographer, pose for a photo at Erin Hills. The pair made an early bid to buy the land to build a golf course.
(Photo: Provided by Paul Hundley)
 

Hundley had done some photography work at Country Club of Wisconsin near his home in Grafton and knew the course designers, Kerry Mattingly and Gregg Kuehn. They took Hundley out to see the Millikin property, which they had discovered by studying plat maps.

“We thought it was stunning,” Mattingly said. “It was just an absolutely beautiful inland links course waiting to happen.”

Hundley immediately recognized its potential, too. Through high school and college at Notre Dame, where he walked onto the football team coached by Ara Parseghian, he had dreamed of becoming a course architect. Though his talent would take him in a different direction – he worked for Minolta for 15 years before launching his own photography business in 1993 – Hundley never completely gave up on his goal of designing golf courses.

“So, obviously, I had great dreams that this was going to be my first design,” he said.

Mattingly and Kuehn, who were primarily landscape architects, had their own ambitions.

“What we were hoping to do was work with a (nationally known course designer) because we saw the potential and the magnitude of this project,” Mattingly said. “Although Gregg and I had designed a few courses, we didn’t have a huge portfolio under our belts.”

Hundley said the architects asked him to sign a non-compete as they tried to put together a deal. They were unsuccessful, however, and when the non-compete expired Hundley was ready to give it a shot. He showed the land to his swing teacher, Rasmussen, who thought it was the best site for a golf course he'd ever seen. The two became partners.

In the meantime, Hundley had attended a talk by Doak in Milwaukee and was impressed with the young architect, who apprenticed under the legendary Pete Dye. Hundley introduced himself and the two had a long conversation, exchanging ideas about design philosophy.

Now, Hundley called Doak to tell him about the Millikins’ land.

Tom Doak was a young golf course architect at the time who had apprenticed under the legendary Pete Dye.
(Photo: Getty Images)
 

“There was this longstanding joke,” Hundley said. “Tom told me that he got calls all the time from people who said they had the most perfect site for a golf course. Inevitably, Tom would get there and it would be just OK.

“So I called him and said, ‘Tom, I’ve seen the most perfect site you can imagine for a golf course.’ He laughed and I said, ‘No, I’m serious. This is not a joke. Think Shinnecock Hills and Prairie Dunes. A combination of those two.’

“He just kind of laughed and said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ ”

Hundley persisted until Doak, who was doing some consulting work for Chicago Golf Club, relented and made the two-hour drive north to the Town of Erin. He immediately recognized the land as extraordinary, and Hundley remembered him emphatically saying, “I want this job.”

“I thought the topography of the property was really dramatic, the soils were perfect and the trees added character,” Doak recalled. “It was a home run.”

He did a preliminary routing through the glacial dunes and Hundley and Rasmussen redoubled their efforts to find investors for the course they already were calling “Hidden Prairie.” They paraded a steady stream of Rasmussen’s high-profile clients out to the site. To their surprise and disappointment, no one shared their enthusiasm for a world-class course in the Kettle Moraine.

“We just couldn’t get anybody interested,” Hundley said. “Everybody’s answer was: ‘It’s too far out. It will never be a successful golf course.’ I was like, ‘Nooo. You just don’t get it.’ ”

Hundley, Rasmussen and Doak came up with a last-ditch plan. Each would contribute $10,000 and pitch a 60-day option. They would use those 60 days to try to talk the Millikins into trading their land for an equity position in Hidden Prairie.

“Bernice and Earl and Dave and I had many meetings,” Hundley said. “They kept saying to us, ‘Come up with something. Please come up with something. This land is our children’s inheritance.’ We were going to try to sell them on the fact that their kids would be part owners of a world-class golf course.

“The chance of that working out was perhaps pretty slim.”

It became a moot point.

On Aug. 8, 1996, Williamson beat them to it and signed an option to purchase 435 acres north of Cork Lane – the land that would become Erin Hills. The sale price was $2 million and the closing date was set for Dec. 31, 1997.

“We never did get a chance to officially present our plan,” Hundley said. “I still have Tom’s check for $10,000 made out to the Millikins.

Lillian Williamson was one of the first suitors for the land that would become
Erin Hills, site of the 2017 U.S. Open. She talks about her pursuit in this video.
Rick Wood
 

Williamson threw herself into the dual tasks of trying to round up investors and getting permits approved for a golf course development.

“I had a little over year to do all the work – the wetlands, the soil testing,” she said. “I had to get a zoning ordinance for parks and recreation. The town had to put that in place first, which they did. That allowed me to then go ahead and apply for the zoning permit. And the town was all for it. They put me through the wringer with Watercress Springs, but they saw a really good end product.”

Williamson wanted to hire a golf course architect who would take a minimalist approach and move as little dirt as possible. She considered several, including two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North of Madison.

But she kept coming back to one name: Tom Doak.

She’d heard Earl Millikin speak glowingly about Doak, whose vision for the land seemed to match hers. Hundley, who quickly got past his disappointment and offered to help Williamson, also made a pitch for Doak.

“Among other things,” Hundley said, “Tom had already done a routing plan.”

Williamson and her husband flew to Traverse City with Hundley and Rasmussen to meet Doak.

“I knew right away, this man is a genius,” Lillian said. “I didn’t know him from Adam, but I just felt this is the guy. It was a gut feeling, just like Watercress Springs was a gut feeling. Tom’s fee for doing the course was incredibly low because he wanted to do the project. His fee was $225,000.”

Williamson’s plan was to build a private equity club with a modest residential component and possibly a small hotel, and call it Tullamore Golf Club. Tullamore is Gaelic for “great mound” and also is the name of a town in the midlands of Ireland.

She changed her mind, however, and decided to name the course Elm Charolais Golf Club – “Elm” representing Earl L. Millikin’s initials. But Doak didn’t like that name and suggested an alternative: Erin Golf Club.

“Tom said, ‘That would be more classy and it fits the area,’ ” Williamson said. “So we acquiesced.”

Lillian Williamson and architect Tom Doak had settled on the name Erin Golf Club for their golf course.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Erin Golf Club, however, would never be built. Four months after Williamson signed the option to purchase, Earl Millikin died on Dec. 18, 1996. After his passing, Williamson said, her relationship with Bernice became strained.

“She was going to find any way that she could legally to not let it go forward,” Williamson said.

“Lillian and my mom, I don’t know what was going on there,” Jeff Millikin said. “It just didn’t happen. If I remember right, I think there were two closings that my mom went to and something wasn’t right. I don’t know if (Williamson) couldn’t come up with the money. It was my mom’s business. It was none of my business.”

He was right about one thing: Williamson couldn’t come up with the $2 million to buy the land.

“Actually, I had three investors and I’m sure they’re kicking themselves today,” she said. “One in particular had tons of money. But Bernice made it very difficult, I have to say. She wanted to know who the investors were. Well, I wasn’t going to tell her who the investors were. She said she wasn’t sure that we had the money and wanted proof. I said, ‘When we go to closing, the proof is there.’

“A day or two before the closing, one of the investors got a little nervous. Then a little bit too late he said, ‘OK, I’m fine. I’ll do it.’ I said, ‘It’s too late.’ She wasn’t going to give me any more time.”

The scheduled Dec. 31, 1997 closing came and went and Bernice Millikin still owned the land.

“I was devastated after it fell apart,” Williamson said. “I remember just kind of wandering around, mostly because I felt like the vision was cracked. For me, it wasn’t an ego thing. It was being able to see the right thing done with the right people. I spent a lot of money. It was a very expensive education.”

The Millikins’ land was still sitting there, waiting for the right person to come along.

 

Bob Chich still remembers that warm spring day in 1999.

He and his wife Susie were doing yard work in front of their Mequon home. Steve Trattner, a neighbor, was out for a walk with his wife, Sin Lam, and their two young children.

The couples struck up a conversation and a crestfallen Trattner told Bob about his futile attempt to find investors to buy a sprawling cattle farm in the Kettle Moraine and build a golf course on it.

The landowner, Bernice Millikin, had given Trattner a deadline of Labor Day.

“Steve looked sad,” Chich said. “He said he didn’t have much time left before his chance to buy the land would expire. I said I knew a guy named Bob Lang, who impressed me as a highly entrepreneurial guy. He struck me as the perfect candidate to build a golf course.

“I said, ‘You really should give him a call.’ ”

Trattner called Lang, a Delafield businessman known for his eponymous greeting card company. The call set in motion a journey that ultimately would lead to Erin Hills Golf Course playing host to the 2017 U.S. Open, a first for Wisconsin.

It also would transform Trattner and Lang into tragic figures, their lives changed forever.

* * *

Trattner played his first round of golf on a nine-hole par-3 course on the northwest side of Milwaukee in 1974. He made two pars and was hooked.

His parents rescued an old set of Johnny Farrell clubs from a relative’s attic and gave them to Steve. He couldn’t get enough of the game, biking to courses near his home nearly every day in the summer.

A few years later, he landed a job as a caddie at Milwaukee Country Club. The ultra-private club in River Hills boasted a splendid and meticulously maintained course and was a second home to many of the city’s power brokers. It was a great place to serve an apprenticeship, and Trattner did so with enthusiasm.

Steve Trattner was hooked on golf but not good enough to make a living at it playing.
(Photo: Courtesy of Trattner family)
 

He moved quickly up the ladder, taking a job in the golf shop in 1979, becoming bag room manager in 1981 and then caddie master in 1982. He also caddied in the PGA Tour’s Greater Milwaukee Open for the likes of David Ogrin, Greg Powers and Kermit Zarley.

“They were the best summers of my life,” Trattner said.

Though he loved to play golf, his game never advanced to the point where he could be considered competitive. His tryout for his college team as a freshman at Williams College in Massachusetts lasted exactly one hole.

Trattner’s three playing partners out-drove him by a substantial margin and made an eagle, a birdie and a par, respectively, on the opening par-5 at Taconic Golf Club. Trattner made a double-bogey.

“Sorry, guys, I’m out of my league,” he told them, and walked in.

Upon graduation in 1984, he took a job as a computer programmer with M&I Data Services in Milwaukee. But he couldn't shake his desire for a job in golf. Every year he sent a cover letter and resume to the Wisconsin State Golf Association. His persistence paid off in 1990, when the WSGA hired him to upgrade computer software and to help run tournaments and handicap services.

His WSGA employment did not last long. After a falling-out with then- executive director Gene Haas, Trattner resigned and went back to his old job at M&I. He began dating a 21-year-old intern named Sin Lam and they married in 1993.

Trattner confided in his wife that his dream was to build and run his own course. It was a long shot, considering his relative inexperience and his financial limitations, but Sin, he said, encouraged him to quit his job in 1995 and pursue his goal.

He set about trying to recruit partners who shared his enthusiasm for building a golf course and would bankroll the project. He tapped into his connections in business and golf, calling on old friends and mentors at Milwaukee Country Club. He also canvassed the counties north and west of Milwaukee, studying plat maps and checking out farms and land for sale.

It was full-time work, and he wasn’t making a penny.

There were a couple of close calls, both with investors and land acquisitions, but after two years of trying, Trattner was no further along than when he’d started.

In the summer of 1997, he heard from a real estate agent that Lillian Williamson was trying to buy property in the Kettle Moraine with the intention of building a course.

Trattner cold-called her, introduced himself and offered to help in exchange for a position at the club once it was built.

“He wanted to be the general manager, but I just didn’t see him being that dynamic,” Williamson said. “But he knows a ton and just was very sharp, and he also led me to some people. He had a lot of contacts.”

When Williamson failed to come up with the $2 million by the end of the year to buy Bernice Millikin’s former cattle farm, Trattner was right back where he started. His wife, he said, now was demanding that he return to the working world. He started a golf event planning business with a partner, but it never got off the ground.

In an act of desperation, he wrote a letter to Millikin early in 1999, asking if she would allow him to look for investors to buy her land. He followed up with a phone call and steeled himself for another rejection.

“To my astonishment, she said, ‘Yes, Steve, you are the final and only person I will deal with,’ ” Trattner said. “She said, ‘My attorney is already working on the documents to cede the land to my grandkids. We will finalize everything this fall, so I’ll give you until Labor Day. And by the way, the price of the 430 acres is now $2.5 million. That’s firm and non-negotiable. Don’t offer me $2.3 million or $2.4 million or $2.49 million. It’s $2.5 million, and not a penny less.’ ”

Trattner made another round of phone calls and sent out another round of letters to anyone he thought might have the slightest interest. Among those he contacted was Roger Headrick, a Williams College alumnus and then a part owner of the Minnesota Vikings. Headrick wished Trattner well but declined to participate.

Having failed at every turn, Trattner was preparing his resume when he and his family went for a walk on that spring day and ran into the Chiches, puttering in their front yard.

“I kind of think the hand of God interceded,” Bob Chich said. “If I hadn’t told Steve about Bob Lang, that land would have ended up as just another subdivision. There would be no Erin Hills. There would be no U.S. Open. None of it would have happened.”

In this 1999 photo, Robert Lang poses at one of his Delafield developments overlooking the community.
(Photo: Journal Sentinel files)
 

Robert Allen Lang, a self-made man who liked to say he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Danville, Ill., had built a successful calendar and greeting card publishing company and was a prominent developer. He was respected for the quality of his projects, including a series of attractive, colonial-style buildings that sparked a revitalization of downtown Delafield.

A history buff, Lang had amassed an impressive collection of Civil War and early presidential artifacts and reputedly had the largest collection of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia in private hands, including a life-sized portrait of the 16th president painted in the early 1860s.

Lang was not a golfer, but he had caddied as a youth and appreciated the game’s long history and time-held traditions. Chich, as it turned out, had done some marketing work for the Lang Companies and heard that Lang was interested in building a small golf course for his employees and friends.

“The irony was, Bob was looking to build a golf course but couldn’t find the right piece of land,” Chich said.

Trattner was optimistic for the first time in months. He wrote Lang and followed up with a phone call. He was told that Lang was interested but was preoccupied with his businesses, and that Trattner should sit tight.

A month went by before he received a card in the mail, hand-written by Lang in distinct cursive. Lang thanked Trattner for contacting him and indicated that he was still thinking of building a course for his employees but was swamped at the moment with other business ventures. He concluded by wishing Trattner luck.

“I immediately picked up the phone and called Bob, but he was unavailable,” Trattner said. “I talked to Rob Cera, one of his top executives. I told him that if Bob didn’t at least come look at Bernice Millikin’s property, he might regret it. I told him the property was extraordinary and that I could not exaggerate how amazing it was. Rob promised he’d pass this along to Bob.”

Several more weeks passed. The Labor Day deadline was fast approaching and Trattner had all but given up hope.

Then, one Friday evening, his phone rang. It was Lang. He apologized for not calling sooner and asked Trattner if he could see the land the next morning. Trattner hung up, hastily changed his plans for Saturday morning and called Millikin to tell her he’d found a potential buyer: Bob Lang.

Millikin was delighted. She had never met Lang but knew him by reputation, as did many in Washington County. He was known to be a man of integrity and character. In fact, she had invested in one of his projects, a bank, in Delafield.

The next morning, Trattner drove out to Lang’s office. They chatted for 90 minutes and Lang proudly showed off his Civil War artifacts and Lincoln collection.

“He was continually impressing upon me his passion for quality,” Trattner said. “He said, ‘I promise you, if we do this it will be done right and it will be the best it can possibly be.’ I was almost hyperventilating.”

The two then drove to Bernice’s home at the end of Cork Lane, some 25 minutes north of Delafield. After some small talk, they piled into her truck for a tour. Trattner remembered to grab a copy of the preliminary 18-hole routing done by course architect Tom Doak for Williamson.

“As we drove north from Cork Lane, past the old green barns and buildings, Bob got his first glimpse of the land to the west,” Trattner said. “He had the same reaction everyone has the first time they see it – awe and wonderment. The adjectives started pouring out. He kept saying things like, ‘Steve, I thought you had to be exaggerating how great this land is, but in fact you undersold it.’

Bernice Millikin points to an area of her land that would one day become Erin Hills.
(Photo: Journal Sentinel files)
 

“The plan was to be back at Bob’s office by noon. No chance. We drove Doak’s 18 holes slowly, stopping at almost every (proposed) green and tee. Bob was overwhelmed and didn’t want to leave.”

Millikin eventually excused herself but Lang asked to borrow her truck and returned to the property. Trattner showed him the tumbling land north and west of the Millikin farm, stretching to Highway O and along the Ashippun River. Finally, they returned to Lang’s office and Trattner drove home with butterflies in his stomach.

Later in the evening, Lang called again and asked Trattner to meet him at the property early Monday morning. This time, he brought along three friends, who were equally impressed with what they saw.

The next day, Lang and Millikin and their attorneys began drawing up the paperwork for a two-year, nonrefundable $200,000 option. When the option was about to expire and Lang hadn’t been able to obtain financing, he signed a second nonrefundable option, purely on faith, this time for 90 days and $100,000.

In the meantime, in a move that seemed impulsive – but turned out to be a stroke of genius – he bought two 40-acre parcels north and west of the Millikin property for a total of $488,000.

Finally, with weeks left before the 90-day option expired, Ixonia Bank agreed to lend him the money for the old cattle farm. The sale closed on Dec. 7, 2001, and Millikin got her asking price: $2.5 million.

Lang would build a golf course, after all, and would call it Erin Hills.

“We closed on a gray December day,” he recalled. “I drove out in my Jeep to the knoll above the (future site of the) ninth green, got down on my hands and knees and dedicated my life to Erin Hills.”

 

Bob Lang had a vision. He wanted to build a golf course that would be open to the public but would be challenging enough to bring the world’s best golfers to Wisconsin for the U.S. Open.

Lang also had the land. The Delafield businessman had signed an option to buy a sprawling former cattle farm in the Town of Erin and in December 2001 would own hundreds of acres of rugged glacial topography that he thought was the perfect template for a world-class course.

Now, what he needed was someone to design it.

Lang, a golfing neophyte, didn’t have a clue about how to hire a course architect. He was busy with his greeting card and calendar company, so he put Steve Trattner in charge as project manager and started out paying him $2,000 a month.

The arrangement was fine with Trattner, who’d steered Lang to the land in 1999. He’d been searching for a job in golf for years and saw this as his big break.

“I’d have done it for free,” he said.

Intelligent and organized, Trattner started applying for permits and began the process of finding an architect.

First, he called Tom Meeks, senior director of rules and competitions for the United States Golf Association, and asked for advice. Meeks suggested that Trattner start by contacting Ward Johnson, a member of Golf Digest magazine's course rating panel and a man who was well-connected in the golf industry.

Johnson called Golf Digest architectural editor Ron Whitten on Trattner’s behalf and asked for a list of recommended architects, then helped Trattner pare the list to 15 candidates. Each was sent a request for proposal.

“I intentionally excluded Pete Dye because of his work in (nearby) Kohler and at Grand Geneva Resort,” Trattner said, “but more so because of his modus operandi of moving tons of dirt around. I also excluded Arnold Palmer because in my opinion he never produced truly exceptional courses.”

Nine architects returned the request for proposal and Trattner and Lang narrowed the list to six finalists: Jack Nicklaus; the team of Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry; Tom Doak; Ron Forse, and Canadians Doug Carrick and Thomas McBroom.

Tom Doak had already done a golf course routing for the Milliken land and was considered the early frontrunner for the job.
(Photo: Golfweek / Tracy Wilcox)
 

The frontrunner early on was Doak. He’d spent a significant amount of time on the old Millikin farm and had sketched a staggering 1,800 holes before settling on a final routing for Lillian Williamson, who before Lang came along wanted to build a private equity club but couldn’t come up with the money to buy the land.

“Bob and I assumed going in that Tom would be our man,” Trattner said.

Whitten, a former prosecutor who lived in Topeka, Kan., and had dabbled in course architecture in addition to writing about it for Golf Digest, was intrigued by the project and asked Johnson to send the RFP, though he never returned it.

“Mike Hurdzan called me because my name was on the list and we had been friends for many years,” Whitten said. “He said, ‘Are you bidding on this?’ I told him I wasn’t and he said, ‘We’ve always talked about getting together and doing a course. Would you like to bid on it with us?’ I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ ”

Just like that, Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten were partners.

Trattner said Doak was the first to be interviewed.

“I already knew him, having met him several times with Lillian Williamson in 1997,” Trattner said. “Tom kind of presumed he would surely be our choice, given how much time and effort he had already put in and how well he knew the land. I believe he even asked us why we were bothering to interview other architects.”

Doak remembered it differently.

“I believe Bob had already interviewed Mike Hurdzan – because he commented on how well the two of them hit it off – and several other designers, and I was near the end of the list,” he said. “That didn’t fill me with confidence.

“Also, one of the questions he asked me in the interview was whether I thought I could build an 8,000-yard course that could host the U.S. Open. I believe I answered, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ There are lots of developers who think they’re going to host a U.S. Open, and the Open hardly ever goes to a new course. I thought it was pretty delusional.

“Steve Trattner tried to be reassuring, but I never felt that I was the frontrunner in Bob’s eyes.”

Next up, according to Trattner, were Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten. Their RFP was the most comprehensive and impressive of those returned. It included a multi-page report that rated every aspect of the land on a 10-point scale – size, location, soil, topography – though they had not yet set foot on the property.

“Based on the RFPs we got back, Hurdzan-Fry’s was clearly superior,” Trattner said. “It screamed, ‘We want this job.’ ”

Hurdzan and Jason Straka, another talented young architect in the firm, flew in from Columbus, Ohio, and Whitten met them in Delafield. Fry was busy with another project and did not make the initial trip.

Before they saw the land, Lang showed them his office and his Lincoln and Civil War collections. Hurdzan was keenly interested.

“Mike and Bob did most of the talking while Ron, Jason and I were off to the side,” Trattner said. “It was evident within 10 or 15 minutes that Bob and Mike were like long-lost brothers or kindred spirits – they were both history buffs, into collecting, into quality and they were of a similar age.

“I was certain within 10 minutes that we would hire these guys. And golf hadn’t even been discussed.”

Finally, they drove out to the Millikin property, which the architects had studied on topographic maps. Hurdzan was familiar with the Kettle Moraine, having raced karts with his son at Road America in Elkhart Lake. When they weren’t at the track, they went for drives through the countryside and played some of the golf courses in the area.

“We loved the terrain,” Hurdzan said. “Even when we weren’t playing golf we’d go out and drive around just because the land is so beautiful.”

But seeing the Millikin property on a U.S. Geologic Survey map and seeing it in person proved to be two different things.

“We were like, ‘This is nirvana,’ ” Hurdzan said. “I already knew what my expectations were but when you saw it, it was just even better.”

He explained that the glacial features – the kettles, mounds and eskers – were perfectly spaced for golf. The glaciers had moved dirt in all the right places, leaving behind natural fairway corridors and green sites. A golf course architect and a team of bulldozers couldn’t have done any better.

As he surveyed the land with Bob Lang, golf course architect Michael Hurdzan explained
that the glacial features – the kettles, mounds and eskers – were perfectly spaced for golf.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

“There’s a rhythm to the land,” he said. “You can have topography like this, but if it’s all scrunched up then it goes too fast. If you stretch it out then it moves too slowly. This land has a perfect rhythm to it so that you can go to the high points and you can play down and then you can go back up to the high points.

“There’s a uniqueness to this particular piece of Kettle Moraine land that was very, very good for golf.”

Whitten was equally smitten.

“It was the best piece of golfing property I’d ever seen,” he said. “First of all, the location was ideal because it was close to a metropolitan area. It wasn’t so remote, like Sand Hills or Bandon Dunes (in rural Nebraska and Oregon, respectively). But Mike hit the nail on the head. The scale of this place was magnificent, but it was still golf-able.”

Lang and Trattner were amazed at how well the architects knew their way around the land, despite having never seen it.

“It was as though they’d been there more than Bob and me,” Trattner recalled. “I especially remember Mike worked his way through the dense brush and trees on what’s now the 17th hole – then the fourth – and took a Sharpie and wrote ‘#4 landing area’ on a white wooden stake and pounded it into the ground. Bob and I looked at each other like, ‘Yeah, right, how can he know that?’

“A year or two later, when all the brush was cleared, there it was – the stake was dead center of the fairway, about 300 yards from the back tees and 220 from the whites. Perfect.”

When the group got to the site of what is now the par-4 third hole, which Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten had designed to play from east to west, Trattner started to explain that Doak had routed a similar hole on the same ground, though he had it playing from west to east.

Hurdzan interrupted him.

“Please don’t tell us anything more about Doak’s routing,” he said. “We really don’t want to know or in any way be influenced by it. However, since you brought it up, I will say that the hole makes much more sense going the direction we have it.”

Hurdzan explained that the way Doak routed the hole, the fairway tilted from left to right toward a wetland. Since most golfers were slicers, their tee shots would tumble down the fairway and often wind up in the hazard. Hurdzan’s routing had the wetland on the left, with the fairway sloping up to the right, so a slicer’s tee shot would either miss the fairway right – preferable to a lost ball in the hazard – or bounce back into the fairway off the hill.

Even before the group returned to Delafield, it was clear to Lang that he would be hiring Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten. The architects were enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but Lang made his decision based on something unrelated to golf: his personal connection with Hurdzan, a retired U.S. Army colonel.

For Lang, patriotism was a strong pull.

“Mike Hurdzan had been a Green Beret,” he said. “I respected him. He’s a man of integrity. That’s the reason he got the job. I knew nothing about golf.”

Erin Hills architects Dana Fry, Michael Hurdzan and Ron Whitten (foreground, left to right)
basked in the spotlight during a media day at the course last summer.
(Photo: Mike De Sisti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Lang had scheduled interviews with the other finalists, but they now became perfunctory.

Forse, who was doing some restoration work on the Links Course at the Golf Courses of Lawsonia in Green Lake, not much more than an hour away, was the next architect to be interviewed. Lang and Trattner took him out to the property and chatted, but Lang soon excused himself and returned to his office.

Next up was Carrick, who flew in from Toronto. This time, Trattner conducted the interview alone.

There was no need to continue the process. Lang had made his decision. He called Jack Nicklaus’ son Jackie, who was scheduled to stop in Delafield on his way from Florida to a job in Minneapolis, and politely asked him to cancel the trip.

Eventually, there was just one call left to make.

Doak had his heart set on the job. Still a relative unknown, he thought the Millikin property would be his big break, his first crack at designing a top-100 course. He’d even featured “Charolais Hills” in his annual Christmas newsletter a couple years earlier, when he was working with Williamson.

Lang, a non-confrontational sort, didn’t want to give Doak the bad news so he delegated the task to Trattner. It was an uncomfortable phone call. Doak couldn’t believe what he was hearing and was upset.

“This is a business full of disappointments,” he said. “I’ve done routings for a half-dozen projects I thought would be top-100 courses that never got built at all. My perspective now is that it’s a miracle that we ever get to build any of them and I’m just grateful for the opportunities I’ve had.”

Doak has since built an impressive portfolio with acclaimed designs all over the world and is very much in demand.

As for Hurdzan, he was excited about the opportunity to build a challenging public course on a sprawling property that was perfect for golf.

“Especially when we are, in a lot of people’s minds, second-tier architects,” he said. “And I say that with all candor and truthfulness. People don’t put us in the same class as Tom Fazio or Pete Dye or (Robert Trent) Jones or Nicklaus or even Palmer or (Gary) Player. That’s silly, but it’s just perception. And so this all of a sudden validates what we know: We do good work.”

Lang closed on the land in December 2001. The architects were anxious to get started on Erin Hills.

But it would be three long years before the first shovel of dirt was turned.

 

Mike Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten were growing impatient. Three years had passed since Bob Lang hired them in 2000 to design a golf course on hundreds of acres he would soon own in the Kettle Moraine.

Whitten, the architecture editor for Golf Digest magazine and a partner in the project, had made dozens of site visits from his home in Topeka, Kan. Hurdzan and Fry, whose office was in Columbus, Ohio, had visited often, too.

They’d routed and re-routed holes over tumbling glacial topography, changing their minds so many times that project manager Steve Trattner said Erin Hills Golf Course was in a constant state of flux.

This was a circa 2000 routing of Erin Hills by Hurdzan-Fry-Whitten. The course underwent many re-routings after this.
(Photo: Courtesy of Dana Fry)
 

But that was only on paper.

The first shovel of dirt had yet to be turned and the architects were anxious for construction to begin on what they envisioned to be an affordable public course. They loved the idea of a stern test that could be built for less than $3 million – a “blue-collar Whistling Straits,” as Hurdzan called it.

“We were pitching a $50 green fee, which Bob really liked,” Whitten said.

Unknown to the architects and Trattner, Lang was thinking bigger. He had attended the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and thought his land was better. Why couldn’t he build a course worthy of hosting the U.S. Open? He knew it sounded absurd to those who knew golf, so he shared his dream with only a few.

“Bob and I have been friends for 40 years,” said Tom Manthy of Pewaukee. “He calls me one day and says, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ He had an option on that land and he drives his Jeep up a hill and I assume he's going to tell me he's building a subdivision. He says, 'There’s a golf course here. I’m going to buy this land and I’m going to get the U.S. Open.'

“He says, 'There’s a golf course here.
I’m going to buy this land
and I’m going to get the U.S. Open.'”

Tom Manthy, recalling conversation with his friend Bob Lang
 

“I said, ‘You’re crazy. Donald Trump can’t do that, what makes you think you can?’ His exact words were, ‘Because I can, and I will.’ I’ll never forget him saying that.”

But now it was 2003 and Lang still hadn't pulled the trigger on construction. Hurdzan, Fry and Whitten were concerned Lang had lost some of his zeal for Erin Hills. Trattner started to wonder if the course would ever be built. He knew Lang’s wife and children were unanimously against the idea; they wanted him to focus on his greeting card and calendar business.

Then, during one of his site visits, Whitten got some distressing news.

“Bob said, ‘My wife wants me to sell this (land) because I’ve got a company to run,’ ” Whitten recalled. “He said, ‘We aren’t going to build this course.’

“I remember calling Mike and saying, ‘We’ve got to do something to light a fire under Bob. Would you mind if I dangled the idea that we could build a course that could host a major championship like the U.S. Open?’

“And Mike goes, ‘Ron, the (United States Golf Association) is never going to take the U.S. Open to a public course in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.’ I said, ‘I know that. You know that. But Bob doesn’t know that.’ ”

Whitten sent a letter to the USGA in July 2003, extolling the virtues of a golf course that had yet to be built. It got the desired reaction from Lang. His U.S. Open dream, which the architects still didn't know about, was rekindled. He sold his Lang Companies in November, paid off the bank and owned the land debt-free.

Still, it wasn’t until Lang attended the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills that he went all-in on Erin Hills. Jim Reinhart of Mequon, then a member of the USGA's executive committee, had befriended Lang and arranged for him to meet veteran USGA official Mike Davis during the championship on Long Island.

“Bob shows these pictures (of the land) to Mike, and Mike is going, ‘Wow, Bob, these are beautiful. This looks great,’ ” Reinhart said. “And Bob is just lighting up. There were all these dignitaries in the room. Prince Andrew was there. He was captain of the R&A at the time. Bob was in hog heaven. At that moment, in that USGA hospitality tent, I think that’s when Bob decided to get the project rolling.”

Lang invited Davis to visit his land and two months later, on Aug. 10, Davis stopped in the Town of Erin on his way to the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, which had been awarded the 2007 U.S. Senior Open.

Lang had been mowing the natural fairway corridors with a tractor and though not a shovel of dirt had been turned Erin Hills looked like a golf course.

Bob Lang tends to his Erin Hills property early on.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

“It was just raw land that I had been mowing for four years,” he said. “I had old flags stuck in the ground. We hit some golf balls. And Mike said, ‘This is one of the best pieces of land I’ve ever seen for a golf course.’ ”

It was all Lang needed to hear.

“Thirty days later,” he said, “I took out a loan and started construction.”

The contract to build the course went to Landscapes Unlimited. Lang had met the company’s founder, Wisconsin native Bill Kubly, a couple years earlier at the annual Hurdzan-Fry golf outing outside Toronto. Hurdzan shrewdly paired Lang and Trattner with Kubly.

“Mike was hoping a day on the golf course with Bill would do the trick and he was right,” Trattner said. “Bob and Bill hit it off. After the round, they shook hands and Landscapes Unlimited was hired, with no financials even discussed and no other construction firms contacted or asked to bid. Bob simply said, ‘Bill, just be fair,’ and Bill said, ‘I will, I promise.’ And that was that.”

Kubly chose Canadian Rod Whitman to shape the greens and tees. The job requires as much imagination as it does precision with a bulldozer and Whitman was widely considered to be among the best in the business.

“I thought it was going to be a really good golf course,” he said. “I liked the property and the space and the scale of it all.”

The architects’ goal was to take full advantage of the glacial dunes, ridges and kettles and build a course that fit the land. In Erin Hills’ first incarnation, dirt was moved on only two holes.

“There were just so many corridors that all we had to do was mow out the fairways,” Whitten said. “The fairways fit right where they fit. You didn’t have to do anything. And that’s the secret of minimalism. That was our mantra here. We wanted to find as natural a golf course as we possibly could.”

Because the terrain and soil were ideal for an inland links – a course that would play much like the classic seaside links in the British Isles – it was necessary to remove acres of scrub brush and hundreds of trees to achieve the proper feel and playing characteristics.

Lang, however, liked the look of trees framing the fairways and fought to preserve as many as possible, especially a majestic, century-old oak guarding the corner of the dogleg on the par-5 first hole.

Whitten called it the “best tree on the whole property” but agreed with Fry that it was in the wrong place – squarely in the way of golfers who would go for the green with their second shots. Lang knew little about golf strategy. He just loved the way the oak looked. And he was starting to assert himself.

“There were some really gorgeous shag-bark hickories, but they were running right up number 10,” Whitten said. “It took us nine months to convince him to take those trees down. On 17, there was a plantation of pines. Bob wanted us to design a hole around them. I kept telling him, ‘There are no (other) pine trees out here. This is an anomaly, because they’re not natural.’ ”

On another hole, No. 11, a thicket of trees and brush lined the right side of the fairway. After the scrub was cleared, several mature trees remained. Lang wanted them to stay but Fry pointed out that cutting them down would open a stunning vista to the west. Lang grudgingly relented.

Even the types of grasses to be used was the subject of debate. Hurdzan argued for fine fescue fairways, which would be true to an “Irish links” and provide the firm and fast playing conditions coveted by the USGA.

Fescue was a gamble, considering it was relatively new to the Midwest, where heavy soils and the summer climate are more conducive to bent grass strains. Just 90 minutes away, Whistling Straits had opened in 1998 with fescue fairways but bent encroached and eventually became the dominant grass.

Hurdzan, regarded as a turf expert, was certain fine fescue would work in the Kettle Moraine, though it would require stringent maintenance.

“The USGA people, the turf grass people there, did not think that fescue would work well here,” Fry said. “Of all the things Mike fought for, I think that was the most important. The reason Erin Hills is fescue is because of him.”

There was never a debate about the greens. They would be A-4 bent, which provides an exceptional putting surface and has a track record of success with the USGA.

Seeding the fairways presented a challenge. The topsoil was ideal, but the layer beneath it consisted of gravel and rock left behind by the glaciers. The architects feared that disking up the soil would bring rocks to the surface.

Erin Hills' architects Ron Whitten (from left), Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry sit next to a bunker on the ninth hole.
(Photo: Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Hurdzan came up with an unusual solution. The fairways were staked and a farmer was hired to make a couple passes with Round-Up. The fescue was then slit-seeded directly into the dead plant matter.

“I’ve been involved with 1,400 golf course projects and built probably 300 courses and that’s the first time I heard of doing that,” Kubly said. “That’s why all the little bumps and rumps are all there. It truly is natural.”

With the architects tweaking the routing, Trattner offering his opinion, Landscapes Unlimited superintendent Steve Posler overseeing construction, Kubly periodically checking in and Lang becoming more and more involved in every decision, there was a lot of creative tension.

“There was a big discussion about everything,” Whitten said. “But looking back, that was the fun of it.”

Hurdzan usually took the high road but even he could be pushed to the limit.

“I wanted some cross bunkers in the second landing area on No. 10 (then a par-5),” he said. “I’m out here on one trip and Ron’s not here and Dana’s not here, so I flag in the cross bunkers and I come back the next time and there’s no bunkers.

“I said to Steve, ‘What the hell happened? Why didn’t you build those bunkers?’ He said, ‘Ron took your flags out.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, Ron took my flags out?’ Steve said, ‘Ron said you weren’t here to defend yourself.’

“So I said to Steve, ‘Did Ron put any flags out here?’ He said, ‘Yeah, he did.’ I said, ‘Where?’ After I pulled his flags I told Steve, ‘You tell Ron that he wasn’t here to defend himself.’ ”

Whitman, meanwhile, kept his head down and did his job.

“I’m not sure I was always on board with what we were doing, but I tried to please the group,” he said. “Bob was out there all the time. There were a lot of cooks and they didn’t always agree. So it was a little bit confusing.”

“Bob was out there all the time.
There were a lot of cooks and they didn’t always agree.
So it was a little bit confusing.”

Rod Whitman, hired to shape the greens and tees
 

Having sold his company, Lang was at Erin Hills every day. His enthusiasm and energy were off the charts. Though he was nearing 60, he often jumped into bunkers with a shovel and worked alongside the laborers, all of whom he knew by name.

Eventually, Lang started tinkering with the design of the holes, making changes without telling the architects.

“We meet a lot of unique people in our business, putting it mildly, and Bob was one of them,” Fry said. “He’s a good guy. Everybody knows that. He’s got a big heart. But he’s a very tough guy to work with and for because he’s so demanding and he’s so all over the place.

“Just going on a drive around the golf course with the guy was a mind-blowing experience because he’d be going here and talking about this, then he’d go here and go there. It was just craziness, is what I remember.”

The more golf courses Lang visited, the more he fell in love with bunkers. He thought Erin Hills needed more bunkers and started adding them on his own.

“I come up here one time and we come over that 10th hill and Bob had put in four square bunkers,” Whitten said. “They were the ugliest-looking things. It took me weeks to convince him to take them out. It was one of those things where if somebody wasn’t here, he was going to do something.”

To be fair, many of Lang’s changes strengthened the course.

For example, the green on the fourth hole originally was built in a natural punchbowl and rewarded too many mediocre approach shots. On his own, Lang had it moved back some 20 yards onto a ridge and fortified it with bunkers. Some would argue that the fourth hole is now one of the best, and most difficult, at Erin Hills.

Lang also convinced the architects to flip the front and back nines so that the ninth hole – a spectacular par-5 played toward Holy Hill, with its twin spires bathed in sunlight at dusk – would become the 18th. Davis has since called it one of the best finishing holes in championship golf.

RELATED: Hole-by-hole how Erin Hills ended up
 

The routing was a five-year work in progress and the architects estimated it changed as many as a dozen times. There were a couple reasons for this: Lang not only was calling some of the shots, he was still acquiring land east of the course.

He’d started with two 40-acre parcels before he closed on Bernice Millikin’s 437 acres. Erin Hills was routed over that land, but Lang wasn’t finished. He added six more parcels totaling 135 acres. The 652-acre footprint greatly exceeded the USGA’s requirement for U.S. Open infrastructure, but Lang didn't want to take any chances.

This 2006 aerial photo shows Erin Hills before it opened that year.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

He wound up spending $8 million for all the land. In most cases, he paid many times the average price per acre for farmland in the area.

“Every time he got a new piece of ground we tried to use it,” Hurdzan said. “I do give him a lot of credit for that.

“The second thing is, I’ve got this map that I sent Bob of the routing. There was writing all the way around it, 360 degrees, where he critiqued every single hole. So he was now starting to get involved in the routing, and we work for the boss. It’s his land, his money, and we tried to accommodate him if it was reasonable.”

The architects' final routing included Whitten’s favorite hole, a par-3 with the green hidden in a natural valley – controversial because many golfers don’t like “blind” tee shots – and a 19th hole for deciding tie matches and settling bets.

In August 2005, then-USGA Executive Director David Fay toured the course for the first time and was sold on its potential. The next week, the USGA announced that Erin Hills would play host to the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, despite the fact that it was still under construction.

It was a remarkable leap of faith. As far as anyone knew, the USGA had never before offered one of its championships to a course before it opened.

Later, on his own, Lang decided to make substantial changes to the course, including the elimination of Whitten's favorite hole. He didn't want to deal with what he knew would be Whitten's strong disapproval. The former prosecutor was not afraid to voice his opinion and could be obstinate.

“I was intimidated by Ron,” Lang admitted. “He was very vocal to me. He and Dana would get in arguments and would be shouting at each other.”

Lang's solution was to fire Whitten in a roundabout way.

“I was uninvited to the team,” Whitten said. “Mike called and said, ‘I don’t know how to put this, but Bob has asked to do some changes and he asked me to ask you to stay away.’ They were afraid I was going to chain myself and refuse to make any changes.”

Still, Whitten was grateful to have had the opportunity to work at Erin Hills. He spent hundreds of hours on the property and many of his ideas were implemented. Rightfully, he shares one-third of the credit for the design with Hurdzan and Fry.

“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” Whitten said. “I learned a lot from everybody involved. I learned a lot from Bob Lang. I learned that the hardest thing about this job is dealing with owners.”

Erin Hills was starting to create a national buzz. The golf world eagerly awaited its opening in the summer of 2006.

But Trattner, the man who had found the land for Lang and was as responsible as anyone for the course, would never see opening day.

In January 2006, he was arrested and charged with killing his wife, 36-year-old Sin Lam, in their home in the quiet, leafy Ville du Parc neighborhood of Mequon. According to the criminal complaint, he became enraged when she asked for a divorce and threw her to the ground, pummeled her face, strangled her and covered her with a blanket. He then left her on the floor overnight and got his kids ready for school the next morning, telling them not to disturb her.

People who knew the diminutive and genial Trattner were stunned and his arrest cast a pall over Erin Hills.

Steve Trattner (left) is serving a 35-year prison term in the 2006 killing of his wife, Sin Lam (right).
(Photo: Journal Sentinel files, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

D'AMATO: Inmate No. 500995 was key to Erin Hills
 

On the advice of his then-attorney, Michael Fitzgerald, Trattner pleaded no contest to first-degree reckless homicide. Judge Thomas Wolfgram sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He is incarcerated at Waupun Correctional Institution, about 40 miles northwest of Erin Hills.

One of his regular visitors is Lillian Williamson, who had worked with him years earlier, when she was trying to buy the Millikin property.

Another is Bob Lang.

 

Ten days before Erin Hills opened to the public on Aug. 1, 2006, Steve Stricker played the course at owner Bob Lang’s invitation.

Stricker, of Madison, was 39 and in the early stages of a career resurgence. He would win nine of his 12 PGA Tour titles over the next six years.

He played Erin Hills from the back tees – all 7,824 yards of it – and shot a 3-over-par 75. Lang walked along, chatting with Stricker and grinning from ear to ear.

Steve Stricker (second from right) and his father-in-law, PGA professional Dennis Tiziani, pose on the
18th green at Erin Hills with the rest of their foursome after playing the fledgling golf course in July 2006.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

The proud owner could barely conceal his excitement. He’d spent millions acquiring the golf course property and surrounding parcels of land, sold his greeting card and calendar publishing company, and presided over construction.

There had been plenty of stressful moments along the way.

Ron Whitten, one of three architects who designed Erin Hills, was “uninvited to the team” after countless arguments with Lang. Steve Trattner, who persuaded Lang to visit the land in 1999 and then served as project manager, killed his wife seven months before Erin Hills opened and in a matter of weeks would be sentenced to 35 years in prison. Lang was overextended financially and soon would be looking for partners.

But the owner wasn’t thinking about those things as he walked with Stricker and Stricker’s father-in-law, PGA professional Dennis Tiziani, on a sunny, breezy day. He was eager to show off the course that represented his life’s work. And he couldn’t have been more delighted with Stricker’s assessment.

Stricker compared Erin Hills favorably with Shinnecock Hills, a historic course on Long Island that had played host to the U.S. Open four times, most recently in 2004.

“It’s fantastic,” Stricker said. “A lot of the holes remind me of Shinnecock. Some holes just have that U.S. Open look. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in our state.”

Erin Hills opened to the public on Aug. 1. Many golfers had a hard time finding the course. A small wooden sign marked the entry off Washington County Hwy. O and it was easy to miss. The green fee was $150, three times what Lang and the architects originally had in mind. Wisconsin residents paid $125.

Lang personally greeted golfers as they came off the course and bought them beers in the clubhouse pub. He wanted to hear about their experiences. He beamed at compliments about the layout, the beauty of the sprawling course and the difficult but fair test it provided.

Erin Hills owner Bob Lang chats with a guest overlooking Erin Hills in 2006.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

Most golfers thought Erin Hills had tremendous potential, but there were complaints about the conditioning, which pained Lang though he knew them to be accurate. The fescue fairways hadn’t had time to mature and the rough was full of weeds and thistle. More than a few golfers said they wouldn’t come back.

If Lang could have waited another year to open, some of the criticism could have been avoided. The course simply wasn’t ready, but the financial pressure on him was great and he had no choice but to start generating revenue.

In his zeal to make Erin Hills the best it could be, he had stretched his budget to the breaking point. Not only had he made additional land acquisitions, but he had bought nearby houses – overpaying in almost every instance – and removed them because they were visible from the course.

Bob Lang bought and moved numerous houses off the Erin Hills property, including this
3,800-square-foot house that was moved to the Watercress Springs subdivision in Town of Erin.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

He told people that someday golfers wouldn’t be able to see a single sign of civilization from the course, other than the clubhouse and the twin spires of Holy Hill in the distance. No roads, no power lines, no houses, no cell towers – nothing that would detract from the solitary, one-with-nature feel of the place.

It was a noble pursuit, but instead of making it a long-range goal for Erin Hills, Lang sold off his real estate holdings, borrowed large amounts of money and went ever deeper into debt. He couldn’t wait, and he couldn't be dissuaded.

“The (owners) knew how bad he wanted the houses and they just kept jacking the prices up,” said Dana Fry, who designed Erin Hills along with Whitten and Mike Hurdzan. “Bob created his own problem. But the scale, he just kept making everything bigger, which is what makes the place what it is.”

The architects and Lang’s friends all but begged him to stop spending money.

“We argued and argued and argued with Bob about it, because we were concerned about him being able to be profitable,” Hurdzan said. “We want all our clients to be profitable.”

A particular source of concern to the architects was Lang’s desire to build an expensive clubhouse. They tried to convince him that he could convert a farmhouse on the property into a serviceable clubhouse until he had enough money to build a new one.

Instead, Lang built a rustic-looking Irish manor clubhouse with guest rooms on the second floor. The interior was tastefully done in rich, dark woods. It was warm and inviting, though the golf shop was tiny and there were no locker rooms. The cornerstone read, “Erin Hills: Dedicated to all golfers who share a passion for the game.”

Lang was rightfully proud of the clubhouse, which perfectly fit the course and the property. It cost $3 million.

Bob Lang spent $3 million building a rustic-looking Irish manor clubhouse at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

And he wasn’t done. He built the Delafield Hotel in downtown Delafield, a short drive down the road from Erin Hills, for golfing guests. The boutique hotel had 38 luxury suites. No two rooms were alike and all were appointed with Kohler Spa Bathrooms. Lang furnished the lobby and some of the rooms with antiques from his private collection.

The hotel also boasted Andrew’s Restaurant & Bar, named after Lang’s son and recognized as one of the top restaurants in the Milwaukee area.

“He built that fine hotel in Delafield, but it just wasn’t needed,” said Bill Kubly, whose company, Landscapes Unlimited, built Erin Hills. “You could have done that in downtown Milwaukee and it would have been a gold mine. He kind of did it Bob’s way.”

The architects acknowledged that without Lang’s extravagant spending, Erin Hills would not be what it is today.

“The richest guy in Wisconsin would never have kept buying all the land he did,” Fry said. “But as crazy as it was, that’s what made the place what it is.”

In subsequent years, stories came out that the architects had bled Lang into insolvency. The opposite was true.

“If you knew how hard Ron would fight, and Mike, too,” Fry said. “You’d have to be around Bob to understand. When we made the first series of changes (to the course), you’d agree on two bunkers and he would put in six.”

The United States Golf Association had awarded the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship to Erin Hills before it opened and by now Lang had cultivated relationships with USGA executives and staffers.

It helped that he had a friend and ally in Jim Reinhart, who served on the USGA executive committee from 2001-'07 and chaired the organization’s finance and Rules of Golf committees. He was founder and CEO of Reinhart Partners Inc., a Mequon-based firm that managed equity and fixed-income portfolios.

Reinhart was a member of Augusta National Golf Club and Milwaukee Country Club. He held a single-digit handicap and was liked and respected by the game’s movers and shakers.

It was Reinhart who had introduced Lang to U.S. Open championship director Mike Davis at the 2004 U.S. Open. Davis visited Erin Hills two months later and was blown away.

Mike Davis (in yellow hat), now the executive director of the USGA, and
Bob Lang (foreground) walk Erin Hills during a scouting visit in 2006.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

“I remember thinking, ‘This is spectacular. This looks like Shinnecock Hills on steroids,’ ” Davis said. “Obviously, it was a sandy, gritty-type soil, which really appealed to me. That type of soil drains so well but beyond the drainage you can get the ball bouncing and it’s firm and fast. At that time there were some trees out there but there still weren’t many. It really looked like this perfect site.

“We literally walked all 18 holes of the proposed routing. I just remember saying to Bob and Steve Trattner, ‘Please keep us apprised of your progress because this has great potential to be a fantastic golf course and maybe good enough to be a championship course.’ ”

Two years later, Erin Hills was open but it bore little resemblance to the immaculately groomed courses that hosted USGA championships. The maintenance team, led by superintendent Zach Reineking, lacked equipment and resources.

Lou Patscot, the USGA committee man in charge of conducting Wisconsin qualifying for the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, took the qualifier to Erin Hills in 2007 against the advice of other committee members.

“They said, ‘Erin Hills is not going to be ready for a long time,’ ” Patscot recalled. “Well, it wasn’t ready. It was still in the grow-in stage. I remember a discussion with (Wisconsin State Golf Association staffers) Gene Haas and Bill Linneman about marking the ground under repair. After a lengthy discussion we said, ‘There’s not enough white paint.’ We decided not to mark anything.”

Still, Patscot said, the Wisconsin qualifier led the nation in entries that year with 135, in large part because of the buzz Erin Hills had generated.

Later that summer, Lang held the “Back Black Challenge,” inviting some of the state’s top mini-tour professionals, club pros and amateurs to play all 19 holes (there was an extra hole at the time) from the tips of the back tee boxes, some of which won't even be used during the U.S. Open next month. Par was 75 and the course measured a backbreaking 8,348 yards.

In 2006, Bob Lang held the “Back Black Challenge,” inviting some of the state’s top mini-tour
professionals, club pros and amateurs to play all 19 holes (there was an extra hole at the time)
from the tips of the back tee boxes. Par was 75 and the course measured 8,348 yards.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bob Lang)
 

David Roesch, a former University of Wisconsin standout and State Open champion who had played on the Web.com Tour and made the cut at the 2004 U.S. Open, shot a 5-over-par 80 in the wind to win.

Lang, beaming at the feedback from golfers, whipped out his personal checkbook and magnanimously wrote Roesch a check for $5,000.

One thousand miles away, in Far Hills, N.J., the USGA was paying close attention to every development at Erin Hills.

Davis and other USGA officials were convinced it had the potential to be one of America’s great public facilities. It met all their requirements for the U.S. Open, from the size of the property to the firm and fast playing conditions to the almost limitless flexibility in how to set up the course.

The USGA had been searching for a Midwest site for the U.S. Open since a disappointing experience at Olympia Fields in suburban Chicago in 2003.

Cog Hill, a public course not far from Olympia Fields, was undergoing a $5.2 million renovation, but there were reservations about whether it would be Open-worthy. Medinah, a private club in Chicago with a long tournament history, was aligned with the PGA of America, as were Whistling Straits and Hazeltine National in Chaska, Minn.

Davis knew that awarding the U.S. Open to Erin Hills could blow up in his face given the number of unknowns and the newness of the course. But there was so much upside he was willing to take that chance.

On Feb. 6, 2008, he called Lang from the USGA annual meeting to tell him that Erin Hills had been awarded the 2011 U.S. Amateur Championship. It was significant news and it came as a shock to many golf insiders. Everyone knew the Amateur, at least in recent years, was a prelude to the U.S. Open.

“Mike said, and I quote, ‘We only award an Amateur to a course where we plan on bringing the Open,’ ” Lang said.

First up, however, was the 32nd U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, in June 2008. It was a test for the 156-player field and for the course. The U.S. Open also is held in June, so the USGA would get to see how Erin Hills looked and played at that time of year.

Tiffany Joh 2008 Women's Amateur Public Links Champ
YouTube
 

Tiffany Joh, 21, a member of the UCLA golf team, became the fifth two-time winner of the championship when she beat Jennifer Song, 2 and 1, in the 36-hole match play final.

After the WAPL, Davis suggested a few changes. He wanted to see the tiny second green enlarged; the green on the third hole moved closer to the bunkers; the landing area lowered on the fifth hole; the green lowered on the 10th; and the fescue cut back around the green on the 17th.

They were relatively minor changes and could have been phased in. Lang estimated they would have cost $150,000 to $200,000.

But where Davis saw the need for a few tweaks, Lang saw the need for a massive facelift. By now, his mission to make Erin Hills the best it could be had clouded his judgment. He borrowed another $2.7 million, money he knew he would have trouble paying back.

“I exceeded the budget by tenfold,” he later admitted.

The course closed Oct. 5 and Lang dug in, literally and figuratively. By now, Whitten was out of the picture and Hurdzan and Fry had done the bulk of their work. They were not being consulted much, if at all. Lang was calling all the shots.

In addition to making the alterations suggested by Davis, Lang added numerous bunkers and made substantial changes to the routing. He built a new green complex on No. 4, eliminated the blind par-3 and converted the par-4 seventh into a par-5 (the next year, and for one year only, Erin Hills played to a par of 73).

Some of the changes, such as the new green on No. 4, strengthened the course. Others were unnecessary.

“I’m spending every day on the golf course,” Lang said that fall. “Literally, every day. Other than family, I’ve never done anything in my life that has been as exhilarating, satisfying and enjoying as these last two months. It’s beyond description.”

“I’m spending every day on the golf course...
Other than family, I’ve never done anything in my life
that has been as exhilarating, satisfying and enjoying as these last two months.
It’s beyond description.”

Bob Lang in 2008
 

Erin Hills didn’t reopen until July 2009, so Lang missed out on potential revenue in May and June. Worse, the course’s construction scars hadn’t yet healed. Landing areas were roped off and played as ground under repair. Lang had no choice but to offer a reduced rate.

He had gotten the course up and running and made many improvements along the way. But he’d reached the financial breaking point, even after selling his businesses and most of his properties, including the Delafield Hotel.

Lang had financed his dream with the entirety of his small fortune and borrowed millions more. He had searched unsuccessfully for partners. Bank notes were coming due and he wouldn’t be able to make payments.

“In 2009, I went from being possessed to being obsessed,” he admitted. “I kept borrowing money to get it where it was. I had just borrowed $2 million more.”

Driving home from the course one day, it hit Lang all at once. He pulled his car to the side of the road and sat in silence.

“I realized,” he said, “that I was done.”

If he couldn’t sell the course, and soon, there was a very real chance the bank would own it.

Would anyone step forward?

 

Bob Lang used every dollar from the sales of his eponymous greeting card and calendar publishing company and his real estate holdings – and borrowed millions on top of that – to build Erin Hills Golf Course and pursue his dream of bringing the U.S. Open to Wisconsin.

Not long after the course opened in 2006, he came to the realization that he would have to take on partners. He desperately needed an infusion of capital. His friend, Jim Reinhart, agreed to help him search for investors.

Reinhart, a former United States Golf Association vice president, understood that Erin Hills’ relationship with the USGA and its suitability as a site for future championships hung in the balance.

“Bob knew the handwriting was on the wall as far back as ’06,” he said. “One of the reasons he wanted me involved, I think, was because my job is to know a lot of people with money, and golf people with money.”

Reinhart pitched Erin Hills to Mike Keiser, a Chicago businessman and developer who had built Bandon Dunes, a sprawling golf resort on the Oregon coast. He tried to interest PGA Tour star Phil Mickelson; the two were friends and played together occasionally at Augusta National Golf Club, where Reinhart is a member.

Kohler Co. president and CEO Herbert V. Kohler Jr., who built four world-class courses little more than an hour away in Sheboygan County, also took a pass, saying Erin Hills “didn’t fit our program.”

No one, it seemed, wanted to invest in a public course built amid farms in the Kettle Moraine.

Reinhart kept working on Andy Ziegler, his partner in team matches at Milwaukee Country Club. Every chance he got, Reinhart tried to sell Ziegler on Erin Hills’ potential and persuade him to buy a majority stake.

U.S. Open chairman Jim Reinhart (right) kept working on Andy Ziegler (left), his partner in
team matches at Milwaukee Country Club, to buy into Erin Hills, which was struggling financially.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Ziegler had the financial wherewithal to do so. He co-founded Artisan Partners Holdings, a global investment management firm, with his wife, Carlene. The company had nearly $100 billion in assets and offices in Milwaukee, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, Kansas City and London.

Ziegler was an avid golfer with a single-digit handicap. But he had played an immature Erin Hills shortly after it opened and wasn’t impressed.

“The golf course was in terrible shape,” he said. “I said, 'I'm never going to play that again.' I literally put it out of my mind at that point.”

In 2008, the USGA committed to taking the 2011 U.S. Amateur to Erin Hills, but the course had a bare-bones maintenance budget and was a long way from being ready to host the prestigious championship. The fescue turf was so thin in some fairways that it was more dirt than grass.

Reinhart made yet another pitch to Ziegler on Lang’s behalf. The USGA cachet was intriguing.

“I was sort of interested,” Ziegler said. “I met with Bob a couple times in the fall of ’08. I knew the USGA was interested. I think Erin Hills had already been awarded the Amateur. At the end of 2008 I was prepared to make Bob an offer for a potential ownership interest.

“Without going into all the details, the dialogue was just so (strange) that I never made the offer. I think that was upsetting to him.”

“Without going into all the details,
the dialogue was just so (strange)
that I never made the offer.”

Andy Ziegler, on conversation he had with Bob Lang in 2008 about investing in Erin Hills
 

By summer 2009, Lang was desperate. His obsession to take Erin Hills to another level had clouded his judgment. The previous fall he had borrowed another $2.65 million in a bad economy to make course “enhancements” – a number of substantial changes, many of which weren’t necessary in the eyes of the USGA -- and soon he would have to start making payments on the loan.

Lang was out of money and running out of time.

“Bob asked me to talk to Andy again,” Reinhart said. “I got a bunch of my friends at Milwaukee Country Club, who also were Andy’s good buddies, to say, ‘Come on, Andy. What are you going to spend all your money on? Why don’t you go ahead and buy Erin Hills?’

“Things in the world still weren’t great financially but he was doing fine and the market had bounced back some. So he actually sat down again with Bob, with me twisting his arm.”

Ziegler had come to the conclusion that he couldn’t work with Lang as a partner. Their personalities didn’t mesh and Ziegler sensed Lang was so emotionally invested in the course that he would fight every change, big or small.

Ziegler told Reinhart he would be interested only if he could buy 100% of Erin Hills.

“It wouldn’t have worked on a number of different levels,” Ziegler said. “So we had a discussion and I floated a concept of valuation (the value of Erin Hills) that Bob didn’t like. He was not interested in that deal and rejected it. So, fine. I really wasn’t crazy about the idea at that point in time, anyway.”

Reinhart was caught between two friends. But more than that, he had helped sell Erin Hills to the USGA and now was concerned about the status of the 2011 U.S. Amateur.

“Andy and Bob were going back and forth, back and forth,” he said. “Finally, Andy just said, in August of 2009, ‘Jim, I’m out. I’m not going to talk about it anymore.’ ”

“Andy and Bob were going back and forth, back and forth.
Finally, Andy just said, in August of 2009,
‘Jim, I’m out. I’m not going to talk about it anymore.’”

Jim Reinhart, recalling conversation between Andy Ziegler and Bob Lang about sale of Erin Hills
 

That conversation occurred about a week before Reinhart and Ziegler were scheduled to fly to the U.S. Amateur at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. They’d planned to meet with USGA executive director David B. Fay, U.S. Open championship director Mike Davis and other USGA officials, to discuss Ziegler potentially buying Erin Hills.

Ziegler told Reinhart to go to Tulsa without him and break the news to the USGA that the deal was off.

“I said, ‘Andy, I promised them that we were coming out to see them,’ ” Reinhart said. “He said, ‘You can go see them, but I’m not going to go.’ So I called up those guys and said: ‘It’s just going to be me. But let’s have dinner and I’ll tell you what’s going on at Erin Hills. And it’s not going to be good, and you’re going to have to find, on short notice, a different place to go for the 2011 U.S. Amateur.’ ”

The night before Reinhart was to leave, Ziegler called him. He’d had a change of heart and would accompany his friend to Southern Hills, after all. Ziegler emphasized that he was not going to buy Erin Hills but felt that he owed it to Reinhart and the USGA to make the trip.

On Monday, Aug. 24, after the conclusion of the first round of stroke play qualifying for the U.S. Amateur, Ziegler and Reinhart dined at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Tulsa with Davis, Fay and other high-ranking USGA officials, including president James F. Vernon and vice president James B. Hyler Jr.

It was an extraordinary meeting.

“I spent the first 45 minutes giving them the down and dirty,” Reinhart recalled. “I said, ‘Bob Lang is not going to own (Erin Hills) come October. I don’t know who will own it, but it might be a bank. I’m telling you, it is not going to be ready for a U.S. Amateur and I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to find a different place to go.’ It was terrible.”

When Reinhart finished, Vernon thanked him and Ziegler for coming to Tulsa and for being candid about Erin Hills, even if the news wasn’t good. Vernon expressed his disappointment and concluded by saying that he thought the course was special and would have been a great venue for a potential U.S. Open.

“Then David Fay chimed in: ‘Boy, what a special place. This is really sad. This could have been a wonderful Midwest U.S. Open site,’ ” Reinhart said. “Then Mike Davis chimed in and now we’re about an hour and 20 minutes into this dinner and Andy hasn’t said a word.

“Finally, he can’t take it anymore and he goes, ‘You’re right, this course is special. It could be a great golf course.' It was so funny because they got him all juiced up and rejuvenated.”

If Ziegler had stayed home, it’s a near certainty the USGA would have found different venues for the 2011 U.S. Amateur and the 2017 U.S. Open.

“No way Andy does the deal if he doesn’t get on the plane,” Reinhart said. “No way in hell. So we come back and within a week or 10 days he puts a final offer together and says, ‘This is what I’m willing to do.’

“By this time, Bob had no choice. He just didn’t.”

Erin Hills superintendent Zach Reineking recalled the difficult period in late summer when the employees didn’t know who would wind up owning the course or whether they’d even have jobs come spring 2010.

Zach Reineking has been the course superintendent at Erin Hills since the beginning.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

“We knew there were financial issues, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” Reineking said. “Bob kept that pretty close to his chest. Andy’s name had been talked about – there was this person in Milwaukee who potentially was interested. But Bob pulled us all into his office one day and said, ‘Andy Ziegler is out. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out.’

“We were all just like, what are we going to do? We were pretty concerned about how Erin Hills was going to carry itself into the off-season.

“All of a sudden, out of the blue, Andy came back in.”

Ziegler closed on Erin Hills on Oct. 23, 2009. The sale price for the course – not including other considerations – was $10,041,900, according to Washington County tax records. Lang had lost more than $10 million pursuing his dream.

The new owner's top priority was to make sure the 2011 U.S. Amateur had a good home. Down the road, he wanted to bring the U.S. Open to Wisconsin and understood it was a possibility. But if he couldn’t get Erin Hills in shape for the Amateur, now just 22 months away, all bets were off.

“For me, it was almost a philanthropic investment,” Ziegler said. “I did it for the good of golf and to try to save the Amateur for the state. ... (The USGA) wouldn’t have held an Amateur on a foreclosed golf course that was owned by a bank that wasn’t going to spend any money on it. It would have been really bad for the state, for the USGA, for Erin Hills, for the area.

“That was really basically my thinking: Save this thing.”

“For me, it was almost a philanthropic investment.
I did it for the good of golf
and to try to save the Amateur for the state.”

Andy Ziegler, on finally deciding to buy Erin Hills
 

His first task was to put together a team of professionals. He retained Reineking and golf professional Jim Lombardo, both of whom had worked at Erin Hills since Day 1. He hired an old friend, Rich Tock, to be the course’s “professional ambassador.” Tock, the longtime pro at Ozaukee Country Club, was perfect for the job – popular in golf circles and known for his upbeat personality.

Erin Hills owner Andy Ziegler (right) poses with Rich Tock in 2010. One of
Ziegler's first moves when he bought Erin Hills was to hire Tock, the longtime pro
at Ozaukee Country Club and an old friend, to be the course’s “professional ambassador.”
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Ziegler convinced a close friend, Andy Bush, to be the general manager and named John Morrissett the competitions and marketing director.

The latter was an important position given Erin Hills’ commitment to amateur golf and its relationship with the USGA. Morrissett was considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the Rules of Golf. From 1993 to 2010, he worked in the USGA’s Rules Department, teaching seminars and officiating at various tournaments and championships.

Next, Ziegler and his team tackled a checklist of projects to get Erin Hills ready for the U.S. Amateur. Ranking high among them was building a state-of-the-art maintenance facility and giving Reineking the equipment and resources he needed.

In 2010, for the second consecutive year, Erin Hills was closed in the spring and early summer so significant improvements could be made to drainage, bunkers and turf conditions. Also, the par-5 10th hole was shortened and reduced to a par-4, changing par for the 18 holes from 73 back to 72.

“I didn’t understand the degree of what had to be done,” Ziegler said. “I didn’t understand that they had never top-dressed the fairways. When the first fairway was built they scraped it and tried to plant fescue on clay. The first fairway was fescue seeds on clay and that’s why it was all dirt. So there were a lot of things I didn't understand.”

The first decision Ziegler made with regard to the course was perhaps the most important: there would be no more motorized carts. Starting the day Erin Hills reopened in 2010, golfers would be required to walk the course, with or without a caddie. In the absence of cart traffic, the struggling fescue fairways finally would have a chance to fill in and mature.

When Erin Hills reopened in the summer of 2010 after Andy Ziegler had taken over, it had become a
walking-only golf course, in part to help the struggling fescue fairways have a chance to fill in and mature.
This photo was taken in July 2010 from the tee box of the par-4 third hole.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Second, Ziegler instituted an aggressive top-dressing program. For the last eight years, Reineking and his staff have top-dressed the course with 800 tons of sand annually, which promotes the health of the greens and the fescue fairways and in the long run helps the turf become firm and fast.

Ziegler determined that Lang’s clubhouse, though attractive, did not fit the needs of a destination course that would bring in USGA championships and other important events. He built a second clubhouse, high on a ridge overlooking the course and offering dramatic views, especially at sunset. The new clubhouse has a full-service restaurant and an expansive golf shop, plus locker rooms.

The original clubhouse now is called the Lodge. Ziegler added a brick patio with fire pits, which quickly became a popular post-round gathering place. He also built five guest cottages, each with four bedrooms, to supplement the rooms on the second floor of the Lodge.

A maintenance road sturdy enough to handle semi trucks carrying heavy loads – such as television equipment or materials to build hospitality tents and grandstands – was built with major championships in mind.

Substantial improvements, suggested or approved by the USGA, were made to the course, starting with the removal of some 400 trees, including the specimen oak on the first hole that Lang had fought so hard to keep. Reinhart and course architect Dana Fry championed the tree removal for cosmetic reasons.

“As we cut more trees down the golf course just got better and better and better,” Reineking said. “I think as we took the trees down we really saw how special this golf course could be.”

The rough was seeded with native fescue, which frames the fairways in hues of gold and brown and, when the wind blows, ripples like waves on the ocean.

“When we bought the place, there was none,” Ziegler said. “It was a little bit of smoke and mirrors. People would write about native fescue but it was Wisconsin prairie weeds. That’s what it was. And so we converted 140 acres from prairie to fescue.”

Ziegler spent millions on multiple projects to get Erin Hills ready for the 2011 U.S. Amateur. The result was a magnificent course that was starting to realize its potential and now boasted the infrastructure and amenities commensurate with a world-class facility.

“As a team, we look back at what we accomplished from the fall of ’09 to the date of the Amateur and say, ‘That was a flat-out sprint,’ ” Ziegler said. “I think at one time we had 83 open permits on this property, whether it was the Department of Natural Resources, the Town of Erin, Washington County. … I mean, it was crazy.

“But it also was a lot of fun.”

Bob Lang, who sold the property to Ziegler, is known to talk to friends incessantly about the course but has said little publicly. As part of the sale, he signed a 10-year non-disclosure to keep the terms confidential.

He remains a paid consultant to the Erin Hills team.

But it is a hollow title. No one consults him.

 

Jim Reinhart was on his way to an important United States Golf Association announcement at Pebble Beach on June 16, 2010, when he ran into a friend.

Bob Lang was sitting alone on a stone wall near the course entrance. Thousands of people streamed past him as they made their way onto the grounds to watch Wednesday practice rounds for the 110th U.S. Open.

Reinhart, a former member of the USGA executive committee, stopped dead in his tracks.

“Bob!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

The answer was that Lang couldn’t stay away. Exactly 10 years earlier, he had walked these same fairways on California’s spectacular Monterey Peninsula and dreamed of building a public golf course in Wisconsin that would someday play host to the U.S. Open.

Lang had seen his dream to within inches of the finish line, buying a sprawling, one-time cattle farm in the Kettle Moraine, building Erin Hills Golf Course and successfully courting the USGA. But he paid a steep price financially. Eight months earlier, facing insolvency, he’d sold the course to Reinhart’s close friend Andy Ziegler.

This should have been one of the happiest days of Lang’s life. The USGA was about to announce, before several dozen reporters in the media center, that it was awarding the 2017 U.S. Open to Erin Hills.

Among those in attendance were Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, Ziegler, Reinhart and members of the USGA staff and executive committee, including executive director David B. Fay, president Jim Hyler and Tom O’Toole Jr., chairman of the championship committee.

Lang was not invited to the announcement. He had signed a 10-year nondisclosure when he sold Erin Hills to Ziegler but couldn’t let go of the course emotionally. He’d come to Pebble Beach on his own to thank the USGA privately.

“We’re pleased to announce that the 2017 United States Open Championship will be conducted at Erin Hills in Erin, Wisconsin,” O’Toole told those assembled. “Many of you know Erin Hills is a special place, a public golf course (with) predominantly fine fescue grasses. … The course is very open and natural and has much topographical movement.

“The USGA is confident that Andy is committed to making Erin Hills a world-class golf facility, the type of facility (where) the USGA will be proud to conduct our national open championship.”

Erin Hills will play host to the 117th U.S. Open June 15-18.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Erin Hills, a 4-year-old public course built amid farms and winding country roads three miles west of Holy Hill, actually had been selected to host the U.S. Open by the USGA's championship committee eight months earlier. The decision was made, coincidentally, on the same day Ziegler took ownership of the course and Lang's dream ended.

The formal announcement came as a surprise to many.

The untested course beat out six other Midwest sites, including venerable Cog Hill in suburban Chicago, which had undergone a $5.2 million renovation and was thought by many to be the front-runner.

“We had seven Midwest sites that we were considering,” Hyler said. “Each one would be a great place to have an Open, but at the end of the day we felt like Erin Hills was the right place to go in ’17.”

Gov. Doyle beamed throughout the announcement and touted the economic impact of the U.S. Open.

“In Wisconsin, we have shown that we know how to put on a successful major championship,” he said, referring to the 2004 PGA Championship held at Whistling Straits, which set PGA attendance records (the Straits would host the championship for a second time later that summer).

When it was his turn to speak, Ziegler said, “I’m deeply honored that Erin Hills has been selected to host the 117th U.S. Open, and I thank the USGA for its confidence in our ability to produce an outstanding championship. Bob Lang had a wonderful vision for Erin Hills. We are building on that vision through significant course renovations and are dedicated to providing a world-class test of golf.”

The truth was, at that very moment, Erin Hills wasn’t ready to host a weekend scramble let alone the U.S. Open. The course was undergoing a major renovation and would be closed for much of the summer.

Ziegler’s team, led by superintendent Zach Reineking, was in a race against time to get Erin Hills ready for the 2011 U.S. Amateur, a prelude to the U.S. Open.

So much had to be done – changing the 10th hole from a par-5 to a par-4, fixing problems with drainage and bunkers, improving poor turf conditions – that there were concerns the course wouldn’t measure up to USGA standards.

And a disappointing U.S. Amateur would create doubt that Erin Hills was worthy of hosting the U.S. Open.

Ziegler spent millions on all the fixes, built a state-of-the-art maintenance facility and added a second clubhouse with locker rooms, which would better accommodate the U.S. Amateur contestants.

By the time the prestigious championship was held in August 2011, Erin Hills was ready.

Golfers are silhouetted on the sixth tee with a view of Holy Hill in the background at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Tom Lynn, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Spectators watch the action on hole No. 3 at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Tom Lynn, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Gallery watches the action at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Patrick Cantlay hits out of the rough on the 14th hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images)
 

Kelly Kraft chips onto the green out of the rough at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images)
 

Patrick Cantlay tees off on the 18th hole during a playoff at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

A view of the ninth green at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images)
 

Tripp McAllister watches his fairway shot on the first hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Andrew McCain hits from a fairway bunker on the 10th hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Former Milwaukee Brewer Mike Ignasiak watches his shot on the 13th fairway at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Tom Lynn, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Gregor Main chips toward on the first hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Russell Henley sinks a long putt on the 16th green at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

John Hahn tees off on the 15th hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Beau Hossler hits from a bunker on the 18th at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Patrick Cantlay hits out of a bunker on the third hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Kelly Kraft hits out of bunker on the 18th hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Kelly Kraft reads the green on the 18th hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Patrick Cantlay hits out of a fairway bunker at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Kelly Kraft hits out of bunker on the final hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Patrick Cantlay hits out of a bunker on the 18th hole at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Kelly Kraft poses for photographs following his victory at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Kelly Kraft celebrates his victory at the 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Among those in the field were future PGA Tour winners Harris English, Emiliano Grillo, Russell Henley, Si-Woo Kim, Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas.

After Kelly Kraft upset world No. 1-ranked amateur Patrick Cantlay in the 36-hole finale, the USGA’s Mike Davis, who by then had replaced Fay as executive director, raved about the course.

Davis compared Erin Hills favorably with Shinnecock Hills on Long Island and Oakmont Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh, a pair of time-tested U.S. Open venues and among the most revered golf courses in America.

“When we’re all long gone, they are going to be playing big championships on this course,” he said of Erin Hills. “I just think it’s marvelous. This is just my opinion, but I think it’s going to go down as one of the great championship tests in the United States.”

“When we’re all long gone,
they are going to be playing
big championships on this course.”

Mike Davis, USGA executive director, after 2011 U.S. Amateur at Erin Hills
 

When the best players in the world arrive at Erin Hills in two weeks, they will find a golf course in pristine condition, with amenities second to none.

The course closed earlier than usual last fall as Reineking and his staff began preparations, and it will stay closed until after the U.S. Open concludes. There won’t be a single round of public play before the USGA pulls up stakes. That’s believed to be a first in the history of the U.S. Open.

At a recent media preview day for the U.S. Open, Davis was effusive in his praise of Ziegler and his staff.

“For everybody here, they’re not only the owners, the custodians, the keepers of this, but they have put their heart and soul into it,” Davis said. “It’s been all about what is best for Erin Hills and also what’s best for the game of golf.”

“For everybody here, they’re not only the owners, the custodians, the keepers of this,
but they have put their heart and soul into it,” USGA executive director
Mike Davis said at a recent media day for the U.S. Open at Erin Hills.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

Reinhart, the general chairman of the 2011 U.S. Amateur, will serve in that same capacity for the U.S. Open. He will oversee all aspects of the championship from Erin Hills’ perspective, including the management of some 5,200 volunteers.

It was Reinhart who introduced Lang to Davis back in 2004. It was Reinhart who encouraged Ziegler to buy the course. And it was Reinhart who had ties to the USGA and was liked and trusted throughout the organization. All along, he has championed Erin Hills.

“I’m not sure the USGA ever gets to a level of interest of bringing (the U.S. Open) here without Jim’s encouragement and advocacy for it,” Ziegler said. “I think it’s very under-appreciated how much he meant to getting the Open. It literally doesn’t come here without him.”

Of course, there would be no U.S. Open without Lang, whose dream was bigger than his bank account. He made poor choices along the way, borrowing and spending at a frenetic pace, and wound up losing millions.

“It has been difficult to watch Bob's dream of one day hosting a U.S. Open crumble before my eyes,” Reinhart said. “Conversely, it has been rewarding to be a part of Andy's unwavering efforts to make the golf course and the guest experience as good as it can be and also to watch the dedicated staff at Erin Hills transform a raw golf course into a golf course deserving of not only the majestic property it sits upon but also of our country's national championship, the U.S. Open.

“It has been difficult to watch
Bob's dream of one day hosting a U.S. Open
crumble before my eyes.”

Jim Reinhart, U.S. Open chairman
 

“I hope that Bob can somehow enjoy the moment on June 15 when the greatest players in the world compete on what he always hoped would be a grand coming-out party for Erin Hills, a place that will forever be very special to him. I know that Andy feels the same way.”

Though Ziegler and Lang do not speak to each other, Ziegler respects the man who started it all.

“Here’s how I look at it,” Ziegler said. “Bob Lang was the first steward of Erin Hills, I’m the current steward of Erin Hills and there will be other stewards of Erin Hills in the future. I greatly appreciate him handing it off to me. I’ve done my best to improve it, to make it special and to create a business model that will sustain it far into the future.”

Andy Ziegler, the current “steward” of Erin Hills, tees off on the first hole during a recent U.S. Open media day.
(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

As for Lang, the course represents his life’s work and is his pride and joy, yet it has brought him unspeakable pain. He had so much faith and confidence in his vision for Erin Hills that he put ownership of the course in a trust for his three children.

In essence, when he lost Erin Hills, his children lost their inheritance.

In July 2016, Lang's only son, Andrew, made headlines in New York newspapers when he died sitting upright, with his legs crossed, on a park bench next to a bakery in Lower Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. An uneaten slice of pizza was at his side.

The police weren’t called until people started lining up at 5 a.m. at the famed Dominique Ansel Bakery and someone noticed Andrew's body. The family said he died of natural causes. He was 47.

Andrew never wanted his father to build Erin Hills.

Bob Lang, described by friends and acquaintances as a man of integrity and character, with a big heart and a strong moral compass, anguishes over mistakes he made and how they affected his family. There are some things he can never fix.

In his office in Delafield, Lang keeps two reminders of his tie to Erin Hills: the small wooden sign that once marked the entrance, and the cornerstone, chiseled out of the original clubhouse. He becomes emotional just talking about them.

In Bob Lang's office in Delafield he keeps two reminders of Erin Hills: the small wooden
sign that once marked the entrance, and the cornerstone, chiseled out of the original clubhouse.
(Photo: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
 

People who are close to Lang worry about him as the U.S. Open draws near. He has been sending out lengthy emails at all times of the day and night, all of them about Erin Hills and the Open. He ends every one with his favorite phrase: “Golf is a journey.”

He surely will be there in two weeks, when the best players in the world tackle the course he built. He’ll be standing high on a ridge, looking down on the fairways he mowed with his John Deere tractor all those years ago, when it was just Bob Lang, a wondrous piece of ground and a dream.

You’ll have to look hard to find him.

He’ll be just another face in the crowd.