Erin Hills: A Success Story
Owner Bob Lang Has Turned Heads In Golf World With Links-Style Layout In Wisconsin

By David Shefter, USGA

Erin, Wis. – Up in a corner room of a rustic, Irish-style clubhouse, Bob Lang sits behind an antique desk and gazes out toward a small wooden starter’s shack near what is the championship teeing ground for the first hole at Erin Hills Golf Course.

A side view of the green at the 14th hole at Erin Hills Golf Course (USGA Photo Archives)

His face is beaming with the kind of pride a parent would get upon a son or daughter’s graduation or wedding. A certain glow overcomes his face.

The moment had taken some eight years, ever since Lang first laid eyes on this natural 652-acre piece of farmland 30 miles northwest of Milwaukee.

Welcome to Erin Hills, a golf course that has the potential to join elite golf destinations, a course so natural that only a handful of dirt was moved to create the tees, fairways and green complexes.

The course had so much future value that USGA Executive Director David Fay and the Executive Committee awarded the venue the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links nearly two years before Erin Hills ever opened to the masses. It was an unprecedented move. Three years later, before the WAPL ever took place, the USGA awarded Erin Hills the 2011 U.S. Amateur.

Some are even saying the course can host a future U.S. Open, although Lang won’t publicly politic for the crown jewel of USGA competitions. He would rather leave that up to others and glowing praise is what Erin Hills is receiving this week at the WAPL.

“I think it’s got it in it,” said PGA Tour pro and Wisconsin native Jerry Kelly, who worked two days as a caddie during the WAPL. “I think even the girls have shown what kind of course this is.”

Erin Hills owner Bob Lang lured the '08 WAPL before the course opened in '06 and the venue was recently awarded the 2011 U.S. Amateur. (Steven Gibbons/USGA)

There is enthusiasm in Lang’s eyes, in his smile, when people offer their comments.

Few American courses offer this kind of a links-style experience, and Erin Hills is often described as a cross between Shinnecock Hills on the east end of Long Island and Prairie Dunes, a rustic gem in Hutchinson, Kan.

Mike Davis, the USGA’s senior director of Rules and competitions, has visited six times. Fay has been out twice. Members of the Executive Committee and senior staff have also visited.

Some recent Amateur sites have later hosted the U.S. Open and the Amateur Championship has been used to gauge the playability for the world’s best players since elite amateurs often hit the ball the same prodigious distances sans the course-management skills. Winged Foot (2004) and Oakmont (2003) each held U.S. Amateurs prior to having Opens in 2006 and ’07, respectively.

Chambers Bay, another spectacular new municipal layout south of Tacoma, Wash., was awarded the Amateur in 2010 and Open in 2015 during the USGA’s Annual Meeting last February, the same time Erin Hills landed the ’11 Amateur. Merion got the 2013 Open after hosting a highly successful Amateur in 2005.

“I think they easily could make it into a U.S. Open course,” said WAPL contestant Stephanie Kono, who was competing in her 13th overall USGA championship. “The golf course is awesome.”

Added Kate Ackerson, who carded a championship-low 69 during stroke play: “I love it. It’s beautiful. And there’s a lot of room out there.”

When asked to rate the course among the toughest she’s played, Ackerson replied, “It’s up there.”

Lang just absorbs every word and files it in his subconscious. In 2004, before he started construction on the course, Lang visited Shinnecock Hills for the U.S. Open. He met Davis and told him about the property. He wanted him to pay a visit. A few weeks later, he received a surprise phone call from Davis, saying he was going to be in the area for the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits and that he wanted to tour the course.

It was then Lang made an uncharacteristically bold statement. “I told him someday I’m going to build Erin Hills to host the U.S. Open.”

Davis told him he needed to see a finished product. Blueprints are nice, but you can’t make judgments based solely on speculation. The next day, Lang was on the phone with his banker and by Sept. 15, construction had begun on the project.

“I am not spinning, I am not exaggerating, I am not padding,” said Lang, whose partner at Erin Hills is former USGA Executive Committee member Jim Reinhart. “I’m telling you everything the way it happened.”

Planting The Seed

The 15th hole at Erin Hills showcases the prarie and links-style layout. (USGA Photo Archives)

Back in 1997, noted golf course architect Tom Doak was brought to the Erin Hills property by investors who wanted to build a golf course. At first glance, Doak fell in love with the land and drew up routing plans. Unfortunately, the solvency of the group wasn’t on solid footing and the deal went under.

Just prior to the property going into a trust fund, an acquaintance of Lang alerted him to the land. Lang was not a golfer but he caddied as a kid at Danville (Ill.) Country Club because there was something romantic about being on a golf course. He loved the late-afternoon shadows, the smell of fresh-cut grass and the inherent values the game teaches.

Through the years, he developed a company that published greeting cards and calendars, which he sold five years ago for a sizable profit. He also loved to build things and several buildings near the town of Erin bear his name. But golf and golf courses were not his thing.

His acquaintance brought him out to see this farmland, which had been created thousands of years ago by the retreating glaciers on a Saturday in August 1999. By Monday morning, Lang was drawing up plans to buy the property.

For several years, Lang just groomed what would later become the fairways with a tractor. At the time, he didn’t have the investors to build a golf course. And Lang was ambivalent enough to admit he didn’t know such things as golf course architects existed.

But shortly after that meeting with the USGA’s Davis in 2004, architects Mike Hurdzon and Dana Fry teamed up with Golf Digest architect editor Ron Whitten to design Erin Hills.

Is it perfect?

There are rough edges, but Lang doesn’t want an Augusta National experience. He wants visitors to experience a rustic Irish country setting. The clubhouse was designed in the manner of an Irish country inn right down to the wooden tables inside the pub. There are even rooms for those who choose to stay overnight. It’s a place where the chef will come out and ask what you want for dinner. It’s a place to enjoy a favorite Irish adult beverage and relax by a fireplace to chat or play cards.

The golf course occupies only 225 of the 652 acres. Lang could conceivably build a second championship golf course or a short course, but it’s doubtful. “I’m a one-man band,” he says.

A Different Kind Of Course

Stand on the championship tee at the fifth hole and the beauty of Erin Hills comes into focus. You see the rolling hills, the stone clubhouse and the Basilica of Holy Hill, a Franciscan church that serves as a beacon for the area. Not a single home sits on the property. There are no power lines and very little signage. In fact, it can be tough to locate the next tee, unless you follow the understated paths.

Golf carts are available but this was a course meant to be walked, just like the gems across the pond.

Ancient sand and gravel dunes dot the entire property. The par-3 seventh hole, which wasn’t used for the championship – Lang had 19 holes constructed with a special Bye Hole that could settle ties – will remind some of the famous Dell Hole at Lahinch with a huge dune protecting a sunken green complex that creates a blind tee shot.

Many holes have blind tee shots or blind second shots to complexes subtly hidden behind dunes or situated on plateaus.

Just like in the British Isles, tall, wispy fescue frames the fairways. Native grasses are everywhere. Tee shots roll and bump their way along the land. This course has no artificial flavoring other than the hill that was shaved to form the two-tier fairway on the first hole.

In a sense, Erin Hills meets all the criteria of a links-style course: sandy base, tall fescue, natural contours and wind. “We have all of that,” says Lang, whose course can be stretched to as much as 8,200 yards from the tips.

The design isn’t without flaws. Prior to the 2011 U.S. Amateur, several renovations are going to take place, mainly at the par-4 second hole, which has a green the size of a penny. Improvements also will be made at the third, 10th and 17th greens. There is also discussion about shaving down the hill that separates the lower and upper fairway on the first hole. All of these recommendations come from USGA officials and Lang, along with the architects, has agreed to make these improvements.

“I looked at it and said, ‘You don’t have to do much to make this a great, great golf course,’ ” Davis told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in June of 2007. “It’s a great layout. It’s a great piece of property.”

The USGA has made no secret of its desires to have a Midwest U.S. Open site. Olympia Fields south of Chicago is the last venue in the region to have the championship and that was in 2003. The next Opens all will be on the East or West Coast, beginning with Bethpage in 2009, Pebble Beach in 2010, Congressional C.C. outside of Washington, D.C., in 2011, The Olympic Club in San Francisco in 2012, Merion near Philadelphia in 2013, Pinehurst in 2014 and Chambers Bay in 2015. Some believe Oakmont near Pittsburgh will get another return engagement in 2016, leaving 2017 as the next possible open slot.

That would be six years after the 2011 U.S. Amateur and allow plenty of time to gauge the plausibility of an Open. Space certainly is not an issue, although the lone complaint from the WAPL competitors this week was the time it took to go from the hotel to the course (about 25 minutes).

While Chicago would love another Open, the USGA hasn’t committed to a return to Olympia Fields or going to a spot like Cog Hill, which hosted the 1997 U.S. Amateur and has been a longtime site for the Western Open. Medinah, which had the Open in 1975 and ’90, has closely aligned itself with the PGA Championship, as has Whistling Straits, the property developed by Herb Kohler that hosted the 2007 U.S. Senior Open.

But the USGA is not ready to tip its hand over Erin Hills beyond the 2011 Amateur.

“It really is so premature it would be unfair to comment other than say they have the infrastructure there to do it,” said Davis in the same MJS piece.

Moving Forward

Seeing what’s transpired this week at the WAPL, Lang could not be more pleased. He didn’t enter into this venture with the USGA for the money. Nor did he do it for fame. He did it because he knows this is a special place and special places should hold special events.

When the USGA sent him the contract for the 2008 WAPL, Lang didn’t even read the entire document. He signed it immediately and sent it back to Golf House, prompting Mike Butz, the USGA’s deputy executive director, to say it was the fastest turnaround in championship history.

Now Erin Hills isn’t the first new course to be fast-tracked with championships. Pumpkin Ridge near Portland landed the 1996 U.S. Amateur and ’97 U.S. Women’s Open not long after its doors were opened. The U.S. Junior and U.S. Girls’ Junior were played on both of Pumpkin Ridge’s courses in 2000 and that was followed by the 2006 Women’s Amateur.

No venue can boast such a pedigree of USGA events in such a short time frame.

But Lang isn’t seeking history. He’s more concerned about giving a unique experience to those who come to this small town.

Visitors driving to Erin Hills could easily miss the entrance. A small, understated sign stands on Country Road O and it’s difficult to make out the course from the highway.

As one approaches a circular road, another small sign greets guests. Three small boards are bolted to a pair of posts. The two pieces of wood feature the two USGA championships to be played at Erin Hills. The top rung is for the 2008 WAPL, the second spot for the 2011 Amateur and the lowest spot is left blank.

It was purposely left open by Lang.

Could it be for a U.S. Open?

“You never know what’s going to happen,” Lang says honestly. “It’s not a decision for me. It’s a decision by anyone else who wants to come here. We have two championships already and we would love it if somebody else wants to come here.”

David Shefter is a USGA New Media staff writer. E-mail him with questions and comments at dshefter@usga.org.