The most extensive work will be on the greens. Often criticized for being too spongy, they will be completely redone. Each green also will have a SubAir system, which will suck the moisture from the green in wet conditions. The result should be much firmer and faster greens.

“Obviously, it’s going to become more challenging,” said Trevor Immelman, who won the last Western Open. “Once you put in the SubAir system, you really can control the firmness of the turf. It’s going to improve the golf course and improve the event.”

The other major changes call for a pond to be built on the right side of the seventh fairway. The intention also is to have the water come more into play around the eighth green. And if you didn’t think the par-4 18th hole was hard enough, Jones said the new green will be shifted closer to the pond.

The fairways bunkers also will be repositioned to accommodate today’s power hitters.

“With the fairway bunkering, we’re establishing the locations so they match the original intent of the hole,” Muirhead said.

Some applaud, or at the very least, don’t see it as a big deal. I tend to disagree – this is not only a sign of the times, it’s a sign of the problems the game faces. 8,200 yard courses are not sustainable for any number of reasons – from the added cost of maintenance to the time it would take to play a course that long, golf literally can’t afford for technology and/or ego to allow this to become common place. To top it off, the wildly undulating greens stimped at a 12 for the tournament, making three putts common.

The purpose of the Back Black Challenge was to put some of the better players in the state to the ultimate test and also to see how difficult Erin Hills would play from the tips. The course is considered a potential U.S. Open site by the United States Golf Association.

But not even the USGA would make Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson play an 8,400-yard course. For comparison, Whistling Straits measured a record 7,536 yards for the 2004 PGA Championship, but the actual yardage for three of the four tournament rounds was considerably less.

“I was looking at it from a U.S. Open perspective,” said David Albrecht, the head professional at Blackwolf Run. “I don’t think they’ll use some of the tees we played.”

The opening hole was a 655-yard par-5. There were par-4s of 535, 535, 521, 516, 512 and 509 yards and par-3s of 242, 223 and 221.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” said Charlie Delsman, who shot an 83. “Nowhere else can you go and play an 8,400-yard course. The yardage is intimidating. You stand up there on the par-4s and it’s 535 or 520.”

Sorry, but I have no interest in half the par 4s playing in excess of 500 yards – I don’t find that compelling golf at any level. Think how drab Augusta was this year – and it has one par 4 in excess of 500 yards, the now goofy 11th hole which should be renamed “Tree Farm”. Let’s hope that the USGA finally gets somebody back in charge that understands two things – golf needs compelling leadership on both technology and pace of play and tournament golf needs compelling course setups. Perhaps then there is hope for the future of golf.

Q. Where do you think this course ranks? You played them, just about played them all.

BEN CRENSHAW: This is an incredible creation. I knew what happened here and what was put together and how it was done is astounding. I mean, it just doesn’t, you cannot, there’s not too many people in the world who have an eye and a will to work and to do things in a bold fashion as Pete Dye does.

As I said earlier in the week, he’s probably the best at working with a certain material. And just, he just goes at it like a badger. But he’s remarkable. I mean, if you go out here, if you looked out there, you, and if you knew something about what the property was and what it looks like now, you, what a creation. It is a heck of a creation.

One major criticism of Whistling Straits is that the approaches are bent grass, which doesn’t allow for shots to land short of the green and bounce/roll forward. That’s a major departure in many ways from a links golf course, which the Straits is supposed to emulate. It’s interesting that nobody has ever asked Pete Dye about this very important aspect of the golf course. I also think it’s why Crenshaw, who has praised Pete Dye this week, doesn’t really talk about the virtues of the golf course itself – simply what the property was prior to construction compared to what it is now.

Q. As an architect yourself when you see a course like this, does that possibly inspire you maybe to?
BEN CRENSHAW: This is a great piece of work. You know, I know a little something about what was here, which was not anything like this. This is unbelievable.

Q. What’s the most unbelievable thing about it?
BEN CRENSHAW: Well, this is, to make a course look like this from what it was, is just spectacular creation. This is incredible.

Q. Does it go along with your design philosophy?
BEN CRENSHAW: Well, Pete is probably the best with working with material and just working at it. God, it’s just unbelievable.

Crenshaw gets flagged for that last non-answer answer. I think it would be perfectly fine for him to say that it doesn’t fit his design philosophy, but still give the credit to Pete Dye. This follows closely on his comments that he made earlier in the week.

What’s interesting is the lack of questions directed at the players about the golf course. Back in May at the Senior PGA Championship, there were many questions about the golf course. Whistling Straits is also a Pete Dye creation that is at least as interesting as Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course.

On a side note, I’ve watched a few hours of the coverage at the US Senior Open this week and it’s a shame that the course setup for the seniors isn’t used for the US Open. The course setup has been fair and challenging.

Kohler gave an interesting interview prior to the start of the competition. He talked about everything from the past of Whistling Straits (and their problems with Wisconsin’s DNR) to the future.

KOHLER, WISCONSIN

RAND JERRIS: It’s a pleasure and an honor to welcome Herb Kohler to the interview room this afternoon. Maybe you could start us off with some thoughts on what it means to you personally to have the U.S. Senior Open this week here at Whistling Straits.

HERB KOHLER: You know, I’ve been walking out there, and it gives me goosebumps. To see these legends, people that I recognize, know by name, long before I played the game, walking these fairways, Hale Irwin, Ben Crenshaw, Fuzzy Zoeller, and just to go down there and talk to them about how they’re dealing with this wind is quite an experience.

RAND JERRIS: Talk a little bit about for those who might not know, talk about the story behind the creation of Whistling Straits. How did this golf course come to be here?

HERB KOHLER: Oh, goodness. It goes way back almost to the beginning of our involvement in golf. We opened a 125-room hotel in 1981, and this was long before the day of the email. By 1983 I had a stack of papers that one of my managers brought to my attention. These were suggestion slips, about 100 of them, and the essence of those slips were, Mr. Kohler, we thank you for taking us to a little public course over here and a private course over there, but you built what we thought would be a resort hotel. But you don’t have a golf course. You have all this land; why don’t you consider building something?
I didn’t know much of anything about golf. I played maybe twice a year with my father’s wooden shafts. But I had a great vice president of business development by the name of Bob Melbourne, and he happened to be a 3 handicap. We sat down and just talked about it for ten days, and the gist of that was we came up and decided to bring in six different designers and interview them, and we picked a pair who had done two courses for the PGA TOUR, had them lay out five holes, and then we brought them back and talked about their philosophies.

And their idea of designing resort golf was to make sure that the green surface was always two feet or more below the landing area on a par 4 or 5 or the tee of a par 3. Now, that’s all well and good for resort golf; it tends to speed the game.

But here we were over at what is now Black Wolf Run in and out of a river valley. What it did was to extend the distances between greens and tees, applying that philosophy. And that’s all well and good if you have carts, but if you’re going to walk the fairways, that’s not acceptable. 100 yards, 150 yards between the green and tee, just doesn’t work. And our notion even back then was championship golf. Even though we were building something for a resort hotel.

So believe it or not, in our ultimate wisdom, we terminated our relationship with that pair of designers and brought in another set of six different designers, and in the second set we found this curious fellow by the name of Pete Dye.

Well, after some conversation and a fair degree of turmoil, I happened to be a tree hugger, at that time especially, and Pete also loved trees but he liked to plant them after he wiped them out to build his course.

Anyway, we got through that first course, and it created such interest, such demand, that we were literally coming up, our lead time for getting a tee time was three months. Well, obviously that’s not acceptable for resort golf, especially someone who fashions themselves as running a five-diamond operation.

So we had no vision at all. We looked around, where could we build a third nine to relieve the pressure. We built that third nine, attached it to the first nine, didn’t affect demand one iota, still covered up. We went out and found land — this one actually took a month, found some more land for a fourth nine and attached it eventually to the second nine.

Well, when we did that, Golf Digest, which had named the first 18 holes the best public course in 1988, they wrote an editorial and said Kohler and Dye had committed the greatest crime in golf by tearing apart that first course and doing these attachments. Mind you, they wrote the article without ever seeing the course or the two new 18s. When they finally did a year later, they thankfully wrote a page of apology.

The upshot, however, was that those two 18s didn’t affect demand, and I had to go out and literally search for land for a third course, and that took me a long time because I was looking for sand-based land, and we have a fair amount on the lake shore, but it all happened to be owned by multiple property owners.

And I negotiated for well over a year and couldn’t get it done. Then I finally ended up taking out a plot map and looking for the biggest property I could find on Lake Michigan owned by a private party, and I found some land owned by a utility. Well, I called up the chairman and went down to visit him.

After a year and a half of conversations, he finally said to me, Mr. Kohler, the only way you’re going to get some land to build this course, at least get the land from me, is if you go out and buy an adjacent farm and then trade me that land so I can still build my utility. Well, the thought of a golf course next to a utility gave me a frightful image, but it was the only way I could get the land. So I went and bought the farm, made the trade, and we ended up with 500 acres on what you now see is Whistling Straits.

No sooner had we bought that and we got into a real tiff between the Department of Natural Resources, which had jurisdiction over wetlands, and the Army Corps of Engineers, which had jurisdiction over the lake shore. They wanted to protect erosion, the Army Corps did. And the Department of Natural Resources had to protect their wetlands. Wisconsin had a law that no mitigation — unlike the great water States of Florida, California, Maryland, et cetera. They prevented mitigation but not Wisconsin. So we had an impossible obstacle.

Thankfully the Army Corps rose up and said, now, look, DNR, why don’t you permit Mr. Kohler to build this course and do to them what state law requires of these other water states. For every acre of wetland they take, they have to put three back of active wetland. What we had out here was a flat dish about one foot deep, and that was enough — clay-based, enough of a base to contain the water. You couldn’t see it, it grew aquatic plants, but that was it.

But DNR persisted. The Army Corps said, now, look, if we let the erosion take its course, at about five feet per year, it’s going to be about ten years before the edge of the bank cuts into that wetland, and it’s going to drain it. So if you don’t let Kohler do something, you won’t have a wetland and we’re going to have an eroded bank and a mess in Lake Michigan. The outcome of all of that was they finally let us go ahead.

Then they asked Pete Dye to give them a precise drawing of the course we intended to build. Pete Dye has never drawn anything in his life. He puts a dot on the paper for a tee, a dot for the landing area and a dot for a green. Connect the dots, and that’s the last time pencil meets paper.

Everything Pete’s way and everything in building a course is with the eye. That’s the artist in Pete. That’s really why these courses are what they are and why they’re such a high degree of excellence, because of Pete Dye. No one back in the office drew any course.
We built that third course. The lead time was reduced slightly to two months. We finally ended up having to build a fourth course, and finally we now have an infrastructure that can balance the demand for golf. It’s this demand that we see in Wisconsin that’s been absolutely remarkable at making these courses successful. So that’s the story. I was a little long.

Q. I understand that when you go out and walk around your course, you get approached by quite a few fans who thank you for what you’ve done for golf, and it even happened at Oakmont I hear where people were coming up to you and thanking you. How does it feel to be signing autographs for golf fans, when 20 years allege you probably didn’t barely imagine getting to this point, and now here you are with people recognizing you for your golf instead of your generators or your hospitality. How does that feel?

HERB KOHLER: I have to start by telling you a cute little story. Pete Dye and I were standing near the first tee at Cruden Bay, Scotland, and talking to the owner of a hotel that we had stayed in that day. Pete was telling him about me and about some of the things he had done in the United States, and all of a sudden this chap popped up and said, “You mean to tell me he’s more than just a plumber?”

My life has changed dramatically since we broke ground for that first golf course, in the kinds of friends I have and the people you meet. Obviously the world of plumbing doesn’t attract this kind of media (laughing), nor do generators or even furniture.

It’s a remarkable experience. It starts with the values of the game and then impacts all the people around golf. You know, I think it’s remarkable how those people have been impacted by those values as suddenly as can be. It helped me sort out some of my executives, the importance of those values.

And then you come to the recognition and the spotlight that it shines on the company. So what this game has meant for Kohler has been remarkable. It couldn’t have happened any other way.

Q. Do you like to see the wind whip up like this, and do you hope it’s going to last through the weekend?

HERB KOHLER: You know, in 2004 I was just begging for it. It’s a little brisk right now (laughing). These guys even without the wind are going to have as much as they can handle.

Q. What kind of scoring would you like to see this week, and will you be rooting for players to go higher or lower?

HERB KOHLER: Well, back in ’04 on the first day of the tournament when they were 7-under, I was scared to death. Mind you, I restrained myself and didn’t say anything to the director of the tournament because I knew he’d just react the wrong way if I did say something, so I didn’t. And he adjusted. He adjusted in tees and greens, and it got progressively more difficult as the tournament went on.

And on the last day, the leader on the last day, 11-under, came back to 7-under, shot a 76, and they ended up for the four days at 7-under.

Now, was that a good score, a bad score? For me it was a great score. It was a great lesson on how you manage a golf course throughout the course of a tournament and you’re adjusting conditions. You’ve got to make it fair. You’ve just got to make it fair. It’s hard enough to hit these fairways in placid conditions, but it’s very, very difficult under the kind of wind that you’re feeling out there now.

So what kind of scoring? I know the USGA are absolute experts at adjusting to the extent they can to the conditions, as you can adjust out there with the tees and with the pin placements on these greens. So I want a fair and tough test, and this is the national championship for we owners. So be kind, USGA, be kind. Well, be slightly kind.

Q. As interesting as it’s all been to hear the history of how the properties have evolved to where they’re at today, it seems like when we read golf travel magazines it seems like resorts are doing things to keep pace with competition at golf courses, spas, other things. Where do you go from here? What’s next? Or are you in a stand pat mode for a while?

HERB KOHLER: It may seem like we’re standing pat but we aren’t. Our minds are going, and our search for land is continuing. There aren’t many areas left in this country, frankly, especially shoreline, especially on water you can’t see across. Very little land in this country left to build great golf courses. But there are those kinds of areas elsewhere in this world, and that’s what we’re looking for.

By the same token, as the game has evolved, courses have to keep up with the game. And when this tournament is over, Pete Dye is coming in here and going to take a hard look at some adjustments at Black Wolf Run. He may even tweak this one. But you have to make those tweaks. We have to keep challenging some of these players; they’re awfully good. We’re doing two things. We’re searching and we’re making some internal adjustments at the same time. But you’ll be hearing from us again.

Q. What are some of the areas that you’d be looking at, and just in terms of specifics, what kind of tweaking are you talking with on Black Wolf and here at Whistling Straits?

HERB KOHLER: Just really additional points of interest. One of the great holes on the River Course at Black Wolf is No. 11. It’s a long par 5 that wraps around the water. That’s a particular challenge on every shot, on each of the three approach shots. What we’re trying to do is get that level of imagination and difficulty, requiring imagination of the player, to create his own strategy in how he plays that. We hope to get that kind of difficulty of requiring that kind of strategy, strategic approach, on each of those holes, on both courses at Black Wolf. So those are the things we’re looking at. Any one thing I can’t tell you until Pete gets out there and we talk about it.

Q. Pete Dye is going to come out next year?

HERB KOHLER: Well, he’s coming out in a week and we’re going to walk.

RAND JERRIS: Can I ask you if you have a favorite hole out here? Is there a place on this golf course that to you really represents your vision, your dream of what this could be and a place that you sort of like to retreat to?

HERB KOHLER: You know, you ask me anything favorite, favorite course, favorite hole. How many children do you have? Which one is your favorite (laughter)? I mean, I can literally talk about every hole on the Straits course and tell you about things that fascinate me. But you take the last four holes coming in on this course, and it’s going to be hard to find four holes that create that kind of interest, that kind of variety, that kind of difficulty. And I think that’s the real test for a national championship.

Q. Talk about Dale Douglas. He’s 71 years old, 22nd straight U.S. Senior Open. As a golfer yourself who’s been slowed by a few injuries, what do you think of that kind of durability to just be able to do 600 Tour events, 22 in a row at this level?

HERB KOHLER: I can’t even imagine it. You know, you would think the arthritis, whatnot, would take over and slow down the swing a little bit. But he keeps going. I mean, how he does it, I — maybe it’s diet, maybe it’s continual exercise and a good, loving wife.

Q. Compare from 2004 to 2007 some of the course changes. I know Jay Haas said he didn’t think there was much of a difference other than some of the distances maybe being shorter. What do you see as the difference in the course setup or something that is a little bit different from ’04?

HERB KOHLER: The 18th hole is just different. The fairway from the tee shot is substantially different. The level — the fairway used to slope. We leveled the fairway, put up a set of bunkers on the right-hand side and a fairly significant drop on the left-hand side and a wasteland, and then he changed the bunkering at the very end of that plateau. If the ball runs to the end, chances are fairly good if it’s running, if it’s flying or a big bounce, it’ll run into a bunker. It takes — Tiger could out-drive the fairway today with a 320-yard shot, but Tiger, unless the wind is blowing in his face, wouldn’t use a driver. So I don’t think anyone is going to be beyond that fairway, especially the way the USGA is setting up those tees.

But then that second shot, Peter actually reduced the lobes on the green and probably will be a little bit more difficult than it was in 2004. And the 2004 greens created a lot of excitement. But this one will, too, and I think more so. When he cut out those big lobes, it made it look a little bit like a four-leaf clover, thankfully.

RAND JERRIS: We thank you very much for your time this afternoon.

HERB KOHLER: You’re welcome. Appreciate it.

“There’s a lot to digest,” he said. “I’d really like to see it another day or two. That was my first look today and I’m just trying to find my way around. It looks formidable, I’ll say that.”
…
“Pete works with raw material and it’s unbelievable how he has a certain element and he seizes upon it and goes with it,” Crenshaw said. “He moved a lot of material out there. It’s a spectacular thing to look at. The lake is just gorgeous. It’s amazing.

Crenshaw said scores could potentially be high if the wind blows this week.

“It’s certainly a course where the elements and the weather play a huge part,” he said. “It could get really nasty. It’s a pretty formidable task on a good day, it seems. So I don’t know. I think we’re all trying to figure out a way to get around it.”

Hmmm… not a lot to chew on there. The author, Gary D’Amato, stated that Crenshaw “came away impressed”. I don’t draw that same conclusion from those statements. It will be interesting if we hear more from Crenshaw this week. I’d particularly like to get his take on this course compared to Dye’s Kiawah’s Ocean Course where they played the Senior PGA Championship earlier this year.

“It’s one of those happen-chance things — we’re walking through the USGA tent, and there was Mike Davis,” Lang said. “Jim introduced him to me and said I was building a golf course called Erin Hills. Now remember, we hadn’t started construction yet. Mike says, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard about that.’ So we talk for a minute, and I say, ‘Why don’t you come out and see it?’ And he said, ‘Maybe sometime I will.’”
…
Though a U.S. Open for Erin Hills is not a sure thing, it would fit nicely on the calendar sometime between the 2015 PGA Championship and the 2020 Ryder Cup, both at Whistling Straits.

Erin Hills seemingly has everything the USGA would want for its national championship. The golf course is magnificent and challenging. It can play as long as 8,266 yards from the back black tees and the extra hole — the 164-yard, par-3 “Bye” hole — will be used in place of the only hole the USGA doesn’t like (No. 7, a blind par 3).

Now, here’s a good tidbit that I’d not heard before. (Perhaps it’s common knowledge and I’ve just missed it.)

Lang is a self-made businessman with a construction company in Delafield and a calendar/greeting card company he sold in 2003. He intended to build a 9-hole golf course for family and friends. In 1999, a friend told him about some land near Holy Hill. Little did Lang know at the time that renowned golf course architect Tom Doak two years earlier had designed a course on that site for some local investors, but the deal fell apart.

A few questions – who were the previous investors, what was the Doak routing and why was Doak not retained?

“Five-iron,” said 1962 champion Jack Nicklaus, predicting what some players will hit. “Don’t think it won’t be. They’ll play some kind of iron there.”

And here’s what Gouge uses to slam Nicklaus.

But Jack is off his meds if he thinks the prevailing club of choice will be 5-iron.

Huh? Where does Nicklaus say “prevailing club”? Nicklaus says “some”. “Some” is a lot less that “prevailing”.

The interesting thing is that they use the USGA’s Mike Davis to defend their belief that Nicklaus is crazy to think that some players may play a 5-iron. Here’s the selective quote they use.

Said Davis, “We thought this distance would really put, you know, 1-irons, 3-woods, even drivers back in the players hands. If we have a few players that just cannot get it there, so be it, because at the end of the U.S. Open, we’re looking for the guy that scores the lowest on 72 holes.”

Here’s another Davis quote, conveniently missing from the B&G blog, from the article that Jack said he thought some players may play 5-iron.

“When we were here in 2003 and we started watching players in the U.S. Amateur routinely hit 2-irons, 4-irons, 5-irons [from 252 yards], a few of us shook our heads and said, this doesn’t need to be done for the Open,” Davis said. “We thought this distance would really put, you know, 1-irons, 3-woods, even drivers, back in the players’ hands. If we have a few players who can’t get it there, so be it.”

Is it such a leap of logic that if amateurs in 2003 were playing 5-irons at 252 yards that in 2007 some professionals can play a 5-iron 288 yards? No, it’s not. And it’s not Nicklaus who is “off his meds”.