As Erin Hills stages its first major championship, the course architect Steve Trattner is serving 35 years in jail for murdering his wife

The tragic scenario attached to one of Augusta National’s founding fathers, Clifford Roberts, may be well known but the similarly grim circumstances which form a backdrop to Erin Hills have barely featured in the buildup to the US Open. For obvious reasons, perhaps; this tale of money problems, homicide and a lengthy jail term is hardly in keeping with an upbeat major championship narrative.

Imagery of Roberts remains a constant feature during any Masters week. In September 1977, aged 83 and a year after standing down as the long-term Augusta chairman, he committed suicide on the very premises he played such a major part in establishing.

The scenario around Steve Trattner is even more troublesome because it involves others and criminality. As Erin Hills stages its first major this week, Trattner has watched via television in a nearby jail. He is serving a 35-year sentence for the murder of his wife. And, make no mistake, from the Waupun Correctional Institution, Trattner is observing every shot. “I’m going to be watching every minute of the tournament,” he said in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated. “For so many years, that place was my home away from home.”

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Trattner, a former software engineer, clearly had an architect’s eye. While living a seemingly unremarkable life on the outskirts of Milwaukee, married and soon to be a father of two, he had a dream to build a public golf course. Such a concept is fanciful without identifying appropriate land; in itself an infamously tricky business. But Trattner did it, just as he convinced multi-millionaire Bob Lang to fund the project.

“Only two people, Bob Lang and I, experienced the day-to-day transformation of the property,” explained Trattner. “All the ups and downs, challenges, hundreds of conversations about tweaks.”

The $2.5m land deal was pieced together in 1999 and at the last minute, with the farmer who owned what is now known as Erin Hills on the verge of removing the land from the market. Trattner became project manager on a salary of $2,000 a month. “I would have done it for free,” he claimed. He was fulfilling a long-term dream.

By 2005, a year before the facility opened, Trattner was concerned by Lang’s increased spending on the golf course. The former’s marriage to Sin Lam was also in trouble owing, mainly, to Trattner’s addiction-like approach to Erin Hills. “I was going to be the general manager and that would have been heaven for me,” he later said.

The upshot instead was altogether different. After a domestic dispute on 3 January 2006 – Lam was intending on filing for divorce – court papers reveal Trattner threw his wife against a cabinet, banged her head against the floor and performed strangulation. He covered his wife with a blanket, dragged her into the living room and went to bed before taking his children to school the following morning as if everything was normal. That afternoon – after meetings at Erin Hills – Trattner called police, sleeping pills having been placed at Lam’s side to imply suicide.

Trattner went on to plead guilty to first-degree reckless homicide. He is currently in the midst of an appeal, on the basis he was not properly advised or represented during courtroom hearings. Trattner now claims self defence was key to his actions.

“If you’re a judge, sitting up there with this guy sitting in front of you, and you see his wife who was supposedly strangled to death for no reason, you’re not going to care about some golf course that nobody knows about,” admits Lew Wasserman, Trattner’s lawyer.

“Is this a case of perfect self-defence? Maybe not. But that’s not the issue. We’re not dealing with a jury’s verdict. We’re dealing with whether he was properly advised to enter a plea for first-degree reckless homicide.

“It’s sadly ironic because without Steven Trattner’s efforts, there wouldn’t be an Erin Hills.”

Having become more smitten with the dream than was healthy, Lang found himself at the bottom of a fiscal hole. Spending had spiralled out of control. The businessman, who attended this week’s tournament, sold the site in 2009, before the US Open dream became reality. “I had a come-to-Jesus with myself,” he said. “I had no choice. I had to sell.” The price was listed at $10m, less than half what Lang reckons he had spent.

On Wednesday, the United States Golf Association hosted its annual pre-event media conference. “The golf course is a championship venue that will make history,” said the USGA president, Diana Murphy. “And we also want to say thank you to its owner Andy Ziegler and congratulations.” Ziegler stood up, waved and took recognition from the floor.

During correspondence with Sports Illustrated writers, Trattner expresses regret over Lang’s financial blow. “At times I definitely wish I never would’ve pursued and started Erin Hills,” he said. “I can’t help but feel guilty and awful for how it devastated Bob and his family.”

It is the US Open storyline that will not feature in any guidebooks. That does not prevent it from being both fascinating and horribly sad; any golfer falling agonisingly short at this major is not the key component in a tragedy.