Since Pete Dye carved it out of the dunes along Wisconsin's Lake Michigan shoreline, Whistling Straits has etched its name among golf's great destinations.
Owned by the Kohler Co., the maker of small engines and bathroom fixtures among a variety of solutions for other markets, Whistling Straits is part of the company's 72-hole golf Mecca north of Milwaukee. Its courses have been the site of several major championships, and recently were chosen by the USGA to be the host of three more — the 2028 U.S. Amateur, 2033 U.S. Junior Amateur and the 2037 U.S. Girls' Junior.
Wisconsin has a strong history of championship golf, and Whistling Straits, with its colorful past, is at its forefront.
Whistling Straits is located on a site that during the 1950s was a U.S. Army air base. Wisconsin Electric bought the installation in 1960 with the idea of building a nuclear plant on the site before eventually selling it to the Kohler Co. in 1995, and the company's public-access golf complex opened in 1998. In the years since, Kohler's flagship layout, the Straits Course, has been the site of four national championships and other high-profile events.
The 2004, 2010 and 2015 PGA Championships; 2007 U.S. Senior Open; and the 2021 Ryder Cup Matches all were contested on the Straits Course, that, along with the Irish Course, was designed with Irish links-style golf in mind.
Kohler's other property, Blackwolf Run, is home to the River and the Meadow Valley courses. A composite of the two served as the layout for the U.S. Women's Open in 1998 and again in 2012.
A total of 17 USGA championships have been contested in Wisconsin, including the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills in Milwaukee, two U.S. Senior Open Championships (2007 at Whistling Straits; 2023 at SentryWorld) and one U.S. Amateur (2011, Erin Hills).
Erin Hills, a 2006 Hurdzan-Fry design 30 miles northwest Milwaukee, also will be the site of the 2025 U.S. Women's Open, and Sand Valley Resort in Nekoosa also was recently picked to play host to four USGA championships over the next decade — the 2026 U.S. Mid-Amateur, 2029 U.S. Junior Amateur, 2030 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur and 2034 U.S. Girls' Junior.