| Whistling Straits golf course on Lake Michigan | |
| Club information | |
|---|---|
| Location | Town of Mosel, Sheboygan County, at Haven, Wisconsin |
| Established | 1998 |
| Type | Public |
| Owned by | Kohler Company |
| Operated by | The American Club |
| Total holes | 36 |
| Tournaments hosted | 2004, 2010, and 2015 PGA Championship, 2007 U.S. Senior Open, 2020 Ryder Cup |
| Website | Whistling Straits |
| Straits Course | |
| Designed by | Pete and Alice Dye |
| Par | 72 |
| Length | 7,514 |
| Course rating | 76.7 |
| Irish Course | |
| Designed by | Pete and Alice Dye |
| Par | 72 |
| Length | 7,201 |
| Course rating | 75.6 |
Whistling Straits is one of two golfing destinations associated with The American Club, a luxury resort located in nearby Kohler, Wisconsin, and owned by a subsidiary of the Kohler Company. The other course is Blackwolf Run. The Whistling Straits complex is located in the unincorporated Sheboygan County community of Haven in the Town of Mosel, north of the city of Sheboygan. Although the course is located in Haven, it officially has a Kohler postal address, and is mentioned within promotional materials as being in Kohler.
The two courses at Whistling Straits were designed by Pete and Alice Dye.
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The Straits Course is the flagship course at Whistling Straits. It has a length of 7,514 yards and a par of 72. It hosted the 2004 PGA Championship won by Vijay Singh in a playoff over Chris DiMarco and Justin Leonard, the 2007 U.S. Senior Open won by Brad Bryant, and the 2010 PGA Championship won by Martin Kaymer in a playoff over Bubba Watson.
The Straits Course replicates the ancient seaside links courses of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Nestled along a two-mile (3 km) stretch of Lake Michigan, the course features vast rolling greens, deep pot bunkers, grass-topped dunes and winds that sweep in off the lake. At 7,514 yards, it is the second longest course to host a major.
The seventeenth named "Pinched Nerve", the unofficial signature hole, is the most difficult par-3 on the course. At 223 yards, with towering sand dunes and the lake to the left leaves golfers with no option but to go straight for the green.
The course also features two miles (3 km) of shoreline on Lake Michigan, eight holes hugging the lake, a flock of Scottish Blackface sheep, elevation changes of approximately 80 feet (24 m) and three stone bridges at holes 10 and 18.
Although the Straits Course duplicates British and Irish links layouts, its original state was not linksland. Before the course was built, the property was a more or less featureless abandoned airfield called Camp Haven (1949–1959),[1] with a stream running through the middle. Its one saving grace, from a golf standpoint, was its two miles (3.2 km) of lake frontage. Kohler Company CEO Herbert Kohler signed up Dye as course architect. During construction, the original landscape of the Straits Course alone was covered with about 800,000 cubic yards (610,000 m3) of dirt and sand, all of it remaining on-site with none brought in from outside sources. Until recently, the amount of earth moved would have been considered extreme for a golf course, but this amount has been dwarfed by that required by several other courses, most notably Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, where 25 million cubic yards (19.1 million m3) of earth were moved.[2]
Liang Wen-Chong holds the course record for the Straits Course with a 64 in the third round of the 2010 PGA Championship.
The second course at Whistling Straits, the Irish Course, is an inland grass-and-dune layout. It is a par-72 18 hole course that features 7,201 yards of golf from the longest tees. The course rating is 75.6 while the slope rating is 146. It was designed by Pete Dye, and opened in the year 2000.[3]
Having served as a PGA Championship host site, the Straits Course has more notoriety, but the Irish Course is rated more difficult to play as it is trouble-filled with forced carries, gnarly rough, ponds, streams and ravines, and waste bunkers — tremendous in size and number — which are minimally maintained to let the elements shape and reshape them.
While playing the final hole of the 2010 PGA Championship Dustin Johnson, who was leading the tournament at the time, hit his drive deep into the gallery to the right of the fairway. His ball came to rest in the sand, and he proceeded to complete the hole in bogey to drop into a tie with Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson. However as he left the 18th green, an official informed him that he may have been guilty of a rules infraction while playing his second shot on the 18th hole. It was determined that Johnson's ball had been in a bunker and he had grounded his club, an offence which attracts a 2-stroke penalty. As a result, he fell out of the playoff and into a tie for 5th place.[4]
Since the bunker lay outside of the gallery ropes in an area where the crowd had been walking, Johnson had not realized that the sandy area where his ball lay was in fact a bunker. Prior to the tournament, the Rules Committee had notified all competitors and posted statements throughout the clubhouse locker room, informing the players of a local rule that declared that all sandy areas, regardless of their location and condition, were to be considered bunkers (hazards).[5] Martin Kaymer ultimately won the three-hole playoff to win his first major championship.[6]
| Year | Tournament | Winner | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | PGA Championship | Vijay Singh | 280 (-8) |
| 2007 | U.S. Senior Open | Brad Bryant | 282 (-6) |
| 2010 | PGA Championship | Martin Kaymer | 277 (-11) |
| 2015 | PGA Championship | ||
| 2020 | Ryder Cup |