Places
The Story of Straits
See how a completely flat army airfield was masterfully sculpted into the rolling hills of Kohler’s Whistling Straits golf course.
This is the story of the decades-long drive which led Kohler to create the Straits course at Whistling Straits, host of the 43rd Ryder Cup.
The origin of Kohler’s Whistling Straits golf course is a story that builds over time. It can be traced back to the renovation and 1981 grand reopening of The American Club, redesigned as a five-star resort in the Village of Kohler. Guests of the resort inquired often about options for golf in the area. The seed of an idea was planted.
Herbert V. Kohler, Jr., Executive Chairman of Kohler Co., met with Pete Dye in the mid-1980s to interview him for the job of designing Kohler’s first golf course. Dye was considered among the best modern golf course architects in the world. He was hired and quickly became a close friend to Mr. Kohler.
Kohler and Dye worked together to plan, develop, and open Blackwolf Run in 1988. The course expanded twice to meet demand, resulting in two 18-hole courses named River and Meadow Valleys.
Blackwolf Run held three Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf events in 1995, 1996, and 1997, as well as the 1998 and 2012 US Women’s Open.
With aspirations for more championship golf events in Kohler, the planning for a new world-class course began. Herb Kohler envisioned a course along the Lake Michigan shoreline, but finding the right location wasn’t easy. After considered several pieces of property along the lakeshore, he landed on an old landing strip.
The large piece of land near the Village of Haven, about nine miles northeast of The American Club, was once an Army anti-aircraft training facility in the early 1950s. Later it was used as a landfill. Owned by Wisconsin Electric Power Company, Mr. Kohler negotiated for a year and half with the power company before a deal to purchase the land was finalized on May 26, 1995.
Beginning as a pancake-flat airfield, the property required a lot of sculpting to make it, as Mr. Kohler envisioned, “look like Ballybunion” in Ireland. More than 7,000 truckloads, approximately 105,000 cubic yards, of sand were brought in from a nearby farm to create the rugged links-style course with massive dunes, roughly 1,000 bunkers, fescue fairways and wispy rough along two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline.
The sense of old-Ireland golf certainly has been achieved at Whistling Straits, whether you’re considering the design of the Straits course or the addition of the 18-hole Irish course in 2000, the sheep roaming the property, the walking-only policy, or the slate-roofed clubhouse with the rough side of rubble stones used for the exterior, giving it an authentic, aged look. But don’t be lulled into comfort by the course’s old-world charm.
The challenging par-72 course plays just over 7,790 yards from the tips. Winds off the lake are a constant force and temperatures can vary as much as 20 degrees on any given day. Weather conditions are such a signature feature of the course that it’s the very reason for its name: Whistling Straits.
Relentless are the challenges, the 18th hole is named “Dyeabolical,” as a nod to Pete Dye’s crazed vision for a championship-caliber course. When asked by a reporter about some player’s concerns that the Straits would play too difficult during the 2004 PGA Championship, Dye responded, “Nah, this course is popcorn. But sometimes people choke on popcorn.”
Since opening, the Straits course has held the 2004 PGA Championship won by Vijay Singh, after a three-hole playoff with Justin Leonard and Chris DiMarco; the 2007 US Senior Open won by Brad Bryant; the 2010 PGA Championship won by Martin Kaymer, after a three-hole playoff with Bubba Watson; and at the 2015 PGA Championship, Jason Day set a PGA record for the lowest winning score in relation to par in any men’s professional major with a total score of 20 under par. And most recently, the world watched golf’s grandest event play out at Whistling Straits when it hosted the 43rd Ryder Cup in 2021.
