was going to kill me for doing that,” he says
with a chuckle.
Former PGA of America Chief Executive
Officer Jim Awtrey remembers Kohler’s
dismay with some of the low scores. “I
tried to calm him by saying he had to wait
until the end to judge things,” he says. “The
tournament is held over four days, and a lot
can happen over four days. I was sure the
wind would eventually blow and the scores
would come down. I also told him that he
didn’t want the course to be so difficult no
one wanted to come back.”
Days Two and Three were similar to the
first weather-wise, though the Straits did
toughen up a bit. Then came the final
round. Vijay Singh was 12-under after three
days, with Leonard one back. “But the
wind finally started to blow, and the golf
course played during the fourth round the
way we had hoped it would all along,”
Friedlander says. Singh shot
76 and
Leonard
75 to finish in a tie at 8-under with
Chris DiMarco. Then Singh won in a three-
hole playoff.
By any measure, the 2004 PGA
Championship was a grand success. The
winner was one of the game’s best players,
the crowds broke attendance records,
merchandise and concession sales set new
highs, as did hospitality.
“The Straits had everything you looked
for in a major venue,” Awtrey says. “And we
also saw it as one of those sites that could
last for a long time. It had the room to
adjust to changing dynamics of competitive
play. If you needed to add tees, for example,
you could. It also had the lake, the wind
and that links-style feel.”
Not surprisingly, those attributes were
not lost on USGA executive director David
Fay, and he talked to Kohler a year after the
’04 PGA Championship about hosting
some majors for his organization. In time,
they settled on the 2007 U.S. Senior Open,
which was won by journeyman Brad Bryant.
He finished three strokes ahead of Ben
Crenshaw and five in front of Tom Watson,
who had led after
54 holes.
Prior to working out that deal with the
USGA, Kohler had also struck an agreement
with The PGA of America to hold its 2010
and 2015 Championships at Whistling
Straits, as well as the 2020 Ryder Cup.
Herb Kohler had always said he wanted
to host majors. Now, he had a whole bunch
of them. ●
John Steinbreder is an award-
winning writer from Redding,
Conn., and author of the book:
“Golf Kohler – In The New and Old Worlds.”
Even after building his third golf course, Whistling Straits, Herb Kohler felt he needed another 18 holes.
Demand for golf from his guests at The
American Club continued to grow, and he
had plenty of land for a second course at
that site.
So he and Pete Dye went back to work.
They started in 1997, before the original
Whistling Straits course was even done,
on adjoining land just to the west. While it
wasn’t directly on Lake Michigan, per se,
the property did offer stunning views of
the expansive water as well as the rugged
dunes Dye had fashioned next door. But
neither Kohler nor Dye had any intention
of simply replicating the links-style Straits,
as the initial layout had come to be known.
Rather they wanted to give the new track
another kind of aura. Dye used the phrase
“grassland and dunes” to describe it, and
a unique layout melding two very
different styles began to take shape.
Called the Irish, the fourth course of the
Kohler quartet (the Straits course and
Blackwolf Run’s River course and Meadow
Valleys course are the others) came to
boast many of the characteristics of the
great links of the Emerald Isle. It featured
massive dunes,
the same vagaries of weather that often
made the Straits so challenging to play.
At the same time, Dye gave the Irish its
fair share of American characteristics. An
irrigation pond, for example, served as a
water hazard on the 16th and 17th holes.
He also planted some 2,000 trees, and
instead of using the same fescue grasses
on the fairways he had with the
Straits, he employed bent grass, ensuring
those on the Irish would usually run
somewhat slower.
The result was a beguiling layout that
forced golfers to employ two styles of
play – the low, running game of Scotland
and Ireland and the target golf so popular
here in the States, with forced carries over
ponds and streams to precise landing
areas.
Early reviews of the Irish when it
opened in the summer of 2000 were
strong, and the course quickly came to
serve as a nice compliment to the Straits.
To be fair, it wasn’t tough or spectacular
enough to be major championship
material. But it became a terrific test for
golfers of all abilities, as well as a first-rate
venue for resort guests. And it could
certainly show its competitive mettle
when it had to, such as the time in 2005
when it hosted to great acclaim the
Palmer Cup, an annual, Ryder Cup-style
match between top collegiate players in
Europe and the United States.
—John Steinbreder
Located by the Straits course, Whistling Straits’ Irish course opened in 2000
THE OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF THE 2010 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP 65
