An Impressive
Beginning
Situated about nine miles northeast
from the village where John Michael
Kohler began making bath tubs and other
plumbing products more than a century
ago, it was built on a pancake-flat piece of
property 560 acres in size, with clay-based
soil and a twisting sliver of water called
Seven Mile Creek running through. It had
once housed an Army anti-aircraft training
facility and was later owned by the
Wisconsin Electric Power Company, which
considered building a nuclear plant there.
Scruffy and overgrown, it contained more
than
22 hazardous waste dumpsites as well
as concrete bunkers and fuel storage tanks.
The only redeeming features were the
views of Lake Michigan, and some two
miles of shoreline.
Those last two features were what drew
current company Chairman and CEO Herb
Kohler Jr. to the property in the mid-
1990s, as he looked for a place to construct
another golf course. You see, the 36-hole
facility called Blackwolf Run he had
constructed over the previous decade in the
southwest part of town had not resolved
the golf capacity issues he was having with
the destination he was building around
those golf layouts and his acclaimed
American Club hotel. And he decided he
needed to add at least one more golf course.
Kohler considered a couple of sites
before settling on the old Army base, and
on May
26, 1995, he finalized a deal for the
land.
Given the success of the two courses
architect Pete Dye had previously built for
him at Blackwolf Run, Kohler didn’t even
think of hiring someone else for that job.
As different as the two men were in many
ways, they shared a passion for golf and an
innate talent for artistic expression. They
also had developed an excellent working
relationship, with Kohler playing Lorenzo
the Magnificent, the 15th century Medici
heir who lavished money and opportunity
on Florence’s great artists, to Dye’s
Michelangelo, who created masterpieces
with this patron’s support.
As good as the layouts at Blackwolf Run
were, however, the new layout on Lake
Michigan was going to be different. Kohler
wanted it to be a true seaside links. With
massive dunes and plenty of mounding.
With lots of bunkering and fescue grasses
for the fairways, tees, rough and greens.
IF THE TINY COMPANY TOWN OF KOHLER, WIS. (POPULATION:
2,001) was the most unlikely place for a AAA Five Diamond resort in America, then Whistling Straits was the most improbable locale for a golf course good enough to host a major championship. Or more
accurately, several of them, including this week’s PGA Championship.
Just 12 years
old, Whistling
Straits already
boasts a
distinguished
resume of major
championships
By John Steinbreder
The 560-acre stretch of land where Whistling
Straits now sits once housed an Army anti-aircraft training facility.
KOHLER CO.
THE OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF THE 2010 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP 61
