The man who first imagined the grassy Wisconsin cattle farm as a potential piece of the U.S. Open’s hallowed history will see that vision come to life this week.
Steve Trattner will be watching on TV from his prison cell, 40 miles away from Erin Hills.
Trattner, 55, is the one-time software programmer whose passion for golf led him to call a Milwaukee-area millionaire businessman, Bob Lang. He persuaded Lang to look at the farm on what’s known as the Kettle Moraine, a land formation in east-central Wisconsin shaped thousands of years ago by buried glacial ice.