Erin Hills

Erin Hills was selected to host the 2017 U.S. Open before the course had finished its first season of public play — an unusual move by the USGA that signaled how directly the routing had been designed with championship-tournament hosting in mind. Dr. Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry, and golf writer Ron Whitten collaborated on the routing in 2006, working with the Kettle Moraine glacial terrain forty miles northwest of Milwaukee. The course is one of the few American championship venues built on naturally-glaciated land — the kettles, kames, and eskers left by the Wisconsin glacial retreat give the routing its natural mounding without significant earthwork.

The course plays around 7,800 yards par 72 from the championship markers, with fescue rough and a slope in the mid-140s. Brooks Koepka won the 2017 U.S. Open at sixteen under par — the lowest score relative to par in U.S. Open history at the time — on a setup that visitors and tour pros both criticized for being too wide off the tee. The width was deliberate; Hurdzan and Fry routed the fairways generously so that the fescue could grow tall outside the corridors, and the criticism reflected a misunderstanding of how the routing was meant to play. The eighteenth is a 660-yard par-5 that finishes uphill into the clubhouse, and it has been described as one of the most demanding closing holes on the U.S. Open rotation.

Erin Hills is walking-only. Carts are not permitted for any round, which is rare among American daily-fee courses at the championship scale. Caddies are available, and the resort has built up a local caddie program over the years since opening.

The Wisconsin climate keeps the course playable from late April through October. The fescue dries to a golden mid-August color that holds through the early autumn. Frost delays push tee times into late morning through May and again in October. The course closes through Wisconsin winter and reopens when the soil thaws.