The Making of a U.S. Open course: Erin Hills, Part 6

Sixth in a series leading up to the U.S. Open, June 15-18, at Erin Hills

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.

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."

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.’ ”

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

The Making of Erin Hills: The complete story

Part 1: 'The most perfect site.'  How this intoxicating patch of land came to be Erin Hills, site of golf's prestigious U.S. Open next month, is a story filled with drama and conflict, triumph and tragedy. But it started with a small ad in the newspaper.

Part 2: 'You should really give him a call.' Delafield businessman Bob Lang is looking for a piece of land to build a small golf course for his employees and friends. Steve Trattner is looking for a job in golf. Together, they embark on a journey that will transform hundreds of acres in the Kettle Moraine.

Part 3: 'Best piece of golfing property I'd ever seen.'  Bob Lang passes on Jack Nicklaus and other big-name course architects to design Erin Hills. Instead, based solely on a gut feel, he hires the relatively unknown trio of Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten.

Part 4: 'It was just craziness, is what I remember.'  Years pass without a shovel of dirt being turned and the architects have their doubts that Erin Hills will ever be built. Then Bob Lang attends the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and everything changes.

Part 5: 'He just kept making everything bigger.'  Erin Hills finally opens in 2006, but Bob Lang isn’t finished with the course. His passion turns into obsession as he borrows millions to make “enhancements.” Eventually, he runs out of money … and time.

Part 6: 'I don’t know who will own it.'  Bob Lang and wealthy money manager Andy Ziegler can’t come to an agreement on terms of the sale of Erin Hills and Ziegler walks away. Then he attends an extraordinary meeting with United States Golf Association officials.

SERIES FINALE: 'Golf is a journey.' In a race against time, superintendent Zach Reineking prepares Erin Hills for the 2011 U.S. Amateur. The championship is a huge success – but the course has a long way to go before it can play host to the U.S. Open.

How we reported this story

Gary D’Amato interviewed dozens of people over several years to tell the story of how Erin Hills was built. Original course owner Bob Lang declined to be interviewed for this series; his quotes come from interviews D’Amato conducted before Lang sold Erin Hills to Andy Ziegler in 2009. D’Amato has covered golf for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel since 1992. He wrote a coffee table book, “Erin Hills,” which was published by Classics of Golf and was released in April.