NEWS

Chris Lutzke, long time Pete Dye design associate and Dye’s right-hand man for more than 20 years, has been accepted into the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA).

Desination Kohler, the Kohler, Wis., resort that is home to four Pete Dye golf courses in Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run, is introducing “The Baths of Blackwolf Run”—featuring a 10-hole par-3 course, a two-acre putting course, and four strategic water features (hence “The Baths”) designed into the routing.

Lutzke started his career at the most basic level of golf course construction. He was a just-out-of-high-school kid hired to work at Blackwolf Run as an unskilled laborer performing such unglamorous tasks as digging trenches and installing drainage pipes.

Located on 27 acres between the first and 11th holes of the Meadow Valleys course at Kohler’s at Blackwolf Run golf course, The Baths of Blackwolf Run is named for Kohler’s history in designing bathroom appliances.

Lutzke is adding a 10-hole, par 3 short course to the famed area featuring designs from ASGCA Past President Pete Dye.

Chris Lutzke doesn’t have a business card, doesn’t grant many interviews and has never been big on promoting himself. He’s most comfortable on a bulldozer or a loader, pushing dirt around, moving it here and there, sculpting the skeletons of golf courses.

Lutzke is a rural, small-town Wisconsin native that first met Dye in the 1980s as a teenager working a bulldozer at Blackwolf Run (host of U.S. Women’s Open, 1998 and 2012) for his family’s landscape construction company. Lutzke never stopped working for Dye, and to this day is finishing a handful of projects Dye started, including adjustments to Whistling Straights for the upcoming Ryder Cup in September (we all hope). 

Chris Lutzke, a Pete Dye design associate for more than 20 years, has been accepted into the American Society of Golf Course Architects.