Course of the Week: Erin Hills

By Golfdom Staff| June 12, 2017 0 Comments

IMG_0037R Built over the kettle moraine areas left by glaciers, Erin Hills will be hosting the 117th U.S. Open this week, the first ever hosted in Wisconsin.

The property, located near Erin, sprawls over 658 acres. The course itself occupies 350 acres. Fine fescue rough — don’t call it no-maintenance, and maybe don’t even call it low-maintenance — accounts for 155 acres.

Speaking of fescue, on a breezy day, the golden fescue rough moves in waves, like coastal courses in the United Kingdom. The unique turf at Erin Hills is one of the things that appealed most to Zach Reineking when he started working at the course in December of 2004, when it was still a construction site.

Construction began on the course in 2004, with one primary focus in mind: to take full advantage of the natural terrain to limit earthmoving, aside from developing bunkers and tee complexes.

By eliminating earthwork, grading and shaping on more than half of the course’s 18 holes, the architects’ crews spent nearly $3 million on construction costs in a year and a half, a relatively low aggregate, especially considering the size of the property. A majority of the property’s native soil structure remained undisturbed, resulting in further short- and long-term cost savings, as the soils required significantly fewer drainage basins and pipes than usual.

To further preserve the property’s natural environment, its wide array of prairie vegetation and wetlands were protected from the onset of construction. As the architects developed their initial layouts for Erin Hills, they ensured the wetlands would remain completely intact and surrounded by vegetative water filtration buffers. The property’s Ashippun River corridor, which bisects the site, is protected as well, as the course never crosses the river.