Mike Lee has heard the comments that Whistling Straits isn't a true links course, that it's too lush and soft to be considered in the same echelon as the Scottish courses that play host to British Opens.
That might have been true about 10 days ago. The fescue grass that makes the Straits' fairways one of the most unique aspects of this very unique course couldn't have been greener or softer, due to an early summer full of soaking rains.
But pro golfers will be sadly mistaken if they think they can throw darts at the pins with high iron shots or expect bullet drives to stop quickly on the fairways when the PGA Championship begins there August 12.
Lee, the 39-year-old Madison native who is manager for the four Kohler Co. golf courses, understands better than just about anyone that the Straits' fairways are in the process of changing.
As Lee sat recently in a golf cart overlooking the Straits' par-4 10th hole that snakes dramatically uphill through sandy craters and fescue-filled hills, he pointed to the narrow fairway and said calmly - and with pride - that the course should be links-hard by the time the tournament begins.
"The fairways won't be as green as they are now if we have any control over it," Lee said matter-of-factly. "If it rains they will be green, but we're going to let it start drying out and you'll see the yellow tinge on the nobs in the usual places.
"You'll see the typical setup that you see at the British Open where the fairways start going off-color," Lee added. "That's when you know things are rolling."
Everything has been rolling right for quite some time for the confident Lee, who is secure that he'll fulfill his mission of making sure that the Straits will be ready for the start of the 86th PGA Championship and stay that way until the final putt drops during the 72-hole event.
Ready means following every order that tournament director Kerry Haigh has made during the years, months, weeks and days leading up to the start of the tournament, which could turn out to be one of the most interesting major championships in years.
Ready means keeping the fairways narrow. It's not uncommon to find many of them less than 30 yards wide. If they're hard and narrow and the wind blows, it could create one of the most difficult playing venues in the history of the PGA Championship.
Lee said they have not been widened in recent weeks despite public assurances - or wishful thinking - by some pro golfers who loudly groused about the course. The setup is just as the PGA wants; it ordered that 16 of the Straits' original 38 acres of fairways be turned into rough for the tournament.
"We might have a few tight spots here, but you don't have wide fairways in the major - even the British Open," added Lee.
Lee said some of the long, forced carries from the tees to the start of the fairways have been shortened by just a few yards. But the grass in question is still rough. The difference is it went from primary to intermediate rough, Lee explained.
Ready means 18 greens at a uniform height and speed every minute of the tournament due to a new program created by Lee in which mowing, rolling and Stimp Meter measurements are done on all 18 greens almost simultaneously.
"I don't believe that anybody has gone to that extent, to get the consistency out of each green so the players can really get used to them," Lee said.
Ready means every crew member understanding his job down to the most minute detail. That includes workers who help build scoreboards, grandstands and roads, set up the ropes for spectators, fluff the primary rough with rakes, paint the holes and roll the greens.
The responsibility all falls in the lap of Lee, who has been under great scrutiny for the past few weeks as unsuspecting pros head to the difficult Pete Dye-designed course on the Lake Michigan shoreline near Sheboygan.
"I'll tell you, I'm having a blast," said Lee, who has followed a well-organized schedule literally to the tee for over a year.
"When you've been meeting for so long and talking about so many details about every job and who's doing what and how the equipment is going to perform and all the what-ifs, there's a calmness that comes over you because no new information comes up that you haven't heard before," Lee added.
That's why Lee doesn't lay awake at night worrying about flooding rains or having the course go the opposite direction and turn into another Shinnecock Hills. The United States Golf Association was roundly blasted by players and observers for making that New York course almost unplayable due to greens so dry, balls rolled off them like marbles on concrete.
That's why Lee doesn't chew his fingernails contemplating the scenario of fog enshrouding the course, equipment ruining greens or some other unforeseen problem.
Lee believes there is no chance that he or the four superintendents who work for him have overlooked even the most minute detail.
"We don't want to sound overconfident," he added, "but there just isn't anything we can think of at this point."
Lee respected throughout state
Organized, passionate and knowledgeable, Lee certainly has made sure that the only laws enforced during the tournament will be by the PGA and not by Murphy. In the process, he has made the rest of the state's golf course superintendents very proud.
Wisconsin has always had a tremendous reputation around the country for producing respected golf course superintendents and Lee is one of the best, and youngest, examples.
One reason is that he has learned from some of the best of the best. Lee got his start in the business in 1980 when his best friend and neighbor, Jim Berbee, convinced legendary Blackhawk Country Club superintendent Monroe Miller to give them jobs at the course. They were 15 at the time.
"I got into this business because I liked working for Monroe and I liked working on a golf course," said Lee, who grew up in the Indian Hills neighborhood next to Miller and Berbee.
"I didn't grow up playing the game. I just loved being on a golf course," he added. "The days went fast and I couldn't believe I made $21 a day....I thought that was unbelievable. I picked up the game later. I'm still a hack."
What Lee learned from Miller, whom he calls his mentor, was invaluable. "He really has that balance of discipline and compassion at the right times and knowing when to use both," said Lee. "He's really good."
Lee continued to work at Blackhawk after he graduated from Madison Memorial in 1983 and through most of his four years at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a degree in Agriculture.
He moved on to spend a year at Cherokee Country Club, interning with Pat Norton, and then spent two years working at the UW under Gayle Worf, one of the best turfgrass pathologists in the country.
From there Lee spent five years working as an assistant superintendent at Blue Mound Golf and Country Club for another legendary superintendent, Carl Grassl. During that time, Lee gained statewide fame for his unique marriage proposal to his high school sweetheart, the former Nancy Hanson.
Instead of taking a knee, Lee talked Nancy into getting in a small airplane with a WTMJ-TV camera crew and flying over a grass field near Saukville where Mike had spent the summer mowing "Marry Me Nancy" in 55-foot letters. They now have four daughters: Abby, 9, Annika, 7, and 5-year-old twins Laura and Catherine.
Lee moved to Kohler in 1993 to accept the job as the golf course superintendent at Blackwolf Run and prepare it for the 1998 U.S. Women's Open. He then was entrusted with Kohler's entire golf course maintenance operation, which included overseeing the completion of the Straits and Irish courses at Whistling Straits.
That was about the same time that Lee and his wife were coping with four kids all under the age of four. "That was the true test," said Lee with a laugh.
Battle-tested, PGA-groomed
Patience and planning got him through it. They do now, too.
The experience Lee gained from setting up parts of the River and Meadow Valley courses at Blackwolf Run for the Women's Open paid big dividends as he set up the Straits.
"It's all relevant," Lee said. "One thing we do is we start planning way in advance. Anything that you can think of you can do right now, you do it. Don't wait for the sake of waiting. That helps a lot coming into this time period so you don't get too overloaded with too many requests."
But there are big differences between the way the USGA and PGA set up their courses for major championships. That's when Haigh's name surfaces in the conversation and it becomes apparent that the PGA exec is another great influence in Lee's career.
Lee has endured several day-long walks through the course with Haigh in preparation for the PGA Championship. Lee said the USGA had walk-throughs, too, "but to a lesser extent.
"We worked with an agronomist there -- that's what the USGA uses," he explained. "We set up well in advance and pretty much left it that way. Here we've been tweaking things down to the smallest detail."
That's why Lee is certain what happened to Shinnecock, when it became virtually unplayable and crews had to syringe greens during the final round, could never happen at Whistling Straits.
"Knowing Kerry Haigh, he wouldn't allow that to happen at the PGA Championship. That's not his history of setting up PGA Championships. He doesn't have a record of that," Lee said.
Walk-throughs with Haigh are akin to residents following a well-known surgeon on his daily rounds. "We do open-heart surgery and hopefully the patient is recuperating by the time we get to championship year," Lee said.
Lee and Haigh start the walk-through around 5:30 a.m. They never take a cart because they walk over every inch of the course.
"You walk from No. 1 through 18 and talk about absolutely everything," said Lee, who will have one more walk-through with Haigh prior to the start of the tournament. "You get to No. 9 at around 11:30. You don't stop for lunch. You bring your lunch in your fanny pack and you keep going on to the back nine and you get done around 4 o'clock. It's very intense."
"We talk about every mow line, every leaderboard, where the ropes are going, how the players are going to play this or that," Lee pointed out. "There are questions like, Do you mow this down or that down? How fast are the greens? How high is the cut of the collars? How high is the grass on the outside of the collars to make sure a ball doesn't hold up?'
"We discuss just about everything you can imagine. It's a tiring day."
At the end of that day Lee has one more reason to be confident that the Straits will be ready for the tournament.
"Monroe keeps asking me if I'm nervous. I'm not," said Lee.
What helps is that Lee is already passing the baton of experience to young, impressionable interns and students who are just as passionate about taking care of golf courses.
"We get 12-14 guys in a room who love to talk about this subject and you have a hard time getting them out there in two hours," said Lee. "Everything comes out because all of us know certain areas of the golf course really well. I don't know everyone's job, but the supervisors do. And it all comes out and it's all written down and that's where the confidence comes in."
What's left is for the golfers to decide. If only the golfers were as confident.
Source: The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)