Friday, August 18, 2000
Peters puts stamp on Hoosier Links
This affordable course measures long 7,400 yards
By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MILAN, Ind. — Three-year-old Hoosier Links is a monstrous 7,400 yards from the back tees. Two par 5's are 620; another is 598. It's the longest public course in the Tristate.
Some people assume that whoever designed, built and operates Hoosier Links must be golf's Marquis de Sade.
But Dan Peters isn't.
“I wanted to build a course on which women, juniors and seniors would have fun, and that the better players would also find challenging,” Peters said. “When you have a flat piece of farmland, there's not a lot you can do on a small budget to make it a test for the better golfers. Unless you make it long.”
From the front tees it's fun; from the back, it's scary fun.
The emphasis here is on the layout. A small budget didn't allow for bentgrass fairways (they're bluegrass) or sand bunkers (they aren't missed). Most importantly, the greens putt true.
The 430-yard par-4 3rd hole features a small beech tree in the middle of the fairway about 350 yards off the tee. The green is guarded by a stream full of wild yellow primrose. The left side of the green on the 419-yard par-4 9th hole is guarded by a 50-foot high hickory tree. The 125-yard par-3 7th hole is the shortest, but arguably the best (and certainly the prettiest) hole here. The tee box is surrounded by pink-and-white flowering bushes and located on a spit of land that juts into the lake. The shot is all carry.
These holes are typical of Peters' design philosophy: There is almost always something to aim at — or around.
Hoosier Links' name pays homage to the movie, Hoosiers, about Milan High's 1954 improbable state basketball championship. But Hoosier Links stands on its own. It is a solid “country” design with monster 5's, big 4's and picturesque 3's.
Peters, 62, was raised in Cheviot and Westwood and graduated from Elder High School. He had played some in Milan.
He had worked for Messer Construction and majored in architecture and minored in civil engineering at the University of Cincinnati. At 43, Peters passed the players' test and business school to earn PGA membership.
He owns and operates Miami Golf & Sports driving range in Miamitown (I-74 and Route 128) that is distinguished by an island green inside a 30-acre lake. The range is two-decked and heated.
Peters bought Lakeside Golf Club in Milan in 1987 ... and then bought 160 acres more.
Back in the early 1920s, Peters said, Lakeside had been a six-hole course next to a facility where alcoholics, some of them from Cincinnati, had come to dry out. But, after a scare about the safety of drinking the mineral water here, people stopped coming; a year later, the place burned.
The course remained a six-hole course into the 1940s. Later, Alvin Heller, who is still the course superintendent here, bought some adjacent land and added three holes to make it a nine-hole track.
Six years ago at a seminar, Peters asked golf-course architect Michael Hurdzan what should be the qualifications of somebody who wanted to design a course. Hurdzan mentioned a background in engineering and architecture. Peters nodded.
“There's no reason why you can't design your own golf course,” Hurdzan told Peters.
Peters redesigned six of Lakeside's original nine holes (putting three on the back and three on the front) and bulldozed the ground for fairways, built the greens, mounded the tees ... and renamed it all Hoosier Links. He and another fellow installed the irrigation system.
Peters built 10 homes on the property and granted the homeowners lifetime playing membership. It encouraged development; there are 25 homes now.
“We (wife Dianne and daughter Debbie Voss) believe that golf, like eggs, should be cheaper in the country,” Peters said.
Eighteen holes with a cart is $28. The course is on Country Club Drive (just off Highway 350) a mile east of the town of Milan, a 42-mile drive from Cincinnati.
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