Buddy Trip? Try Whistling Straits

Enchanted by the TV coverage of Whistling Straits? Consider it as a destination for a buddy trip.

First you fly to Milwaukee. Milwaukee? You bet. The land of polka fests and cheeseheads also happens to be the home of the Midwest’s only AAA Five-Diamond resort and the site of the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits. When they played it there in 2004, you may recall, Vijay Singh won his third career major. The Straits course, which opened in 1998, is two miles of rugged Lake Michigan shoreline sculpted into brutal, windswept links by golf architecture’s bad boy Pete Dye.

At the same complex and just inland from the Straits Course, Dye built the deceivingly tranquil Irish Course, where the grassland and dunes are crossed by four meandering streams. There’s also a flock of Blackfaced sheep complete with bells, which makes for an other-worldly experience when they trot between the pot bunkers as you’re aiming your tee shot. Kohler also offers two slightly more conventional courses at nearby Blackwolf Run, also Pete Dye designs. All the courses—-and everything else in town—-are operated by Destination Kohler, a division of the well-known plumbing fixture company.

There are basically two places to stay in Kohler, a quaint, carefully manicured company town where stately elms line the streets and even the bricks in the old factories look scrupulously clean. The AAA Five-Diamond facility is the distinguished American Club, where every room features a Kohler whirlpool bath (it is a plumbing fixture company), down comforters, and memorabilia honoring famous Americans. Less posh but still comfortable is the Inn on Woodlake, a 121-room hotel overlooking an eleven-acre lake with private beach and its own putting green. The tiny village also offers ten places to dine, including the Whistling Straits Restaurant in the stone clubhouse overlooking Lake Michigan, which received the 2005 Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.