Kohler’s Straits Should Be Ryder Cup Popcorn

HAVEN, WISCONSIN | “Make it look like Ireland.”

That was Herb Kohler’s response when Pete Dye asked the head of the eponymous company best known for its plumbing products what kind of course he wanted. Then Kohler walked away.

It was the summer of 1995. The two men were standing on a scruffy piece of property nine miles northeast from the village of Kohler. The ground ran two miles along Lake Michigan, rising as high as 50 feet above the water in places. The views were stunning. But the land itself, which had once housed an airfield and an Army anti-artillery training facility, was flat as a flounder.

Dye’s first impulse was to laugh at Kohler’s edict and the prospect of fashioning an Old-World style links on the lackluster site. Then, he began muttering about Kohler’s sanity and whether the man for whom he had already designed and built two courses at nearby Blackwolf Run had taken complete leave of his senses.
Much to Kohler’s delight, Dye had given him just what he was looking for – the Emerald Isle in the American Heartl...