Steve Trattner discovered the land for Erin Hills, but he'll watch the U. S. Open from prison. This story is the latest installment in the Sports Illustrated True Crime series, which explores the intersection of sports and crime through in- depth storytelling, enhanced photos, video and interactive elements.

For more features in this series, visit the SI True Crime homepage.***An hour northwest of Erin Hills golf course, site of this month's U. S. Open, Wisconsin Highway 4. Waupun, a sleepy 1. Past its commercial fringe of convenience stores and diners, Waupun gives way to a grid of modest homes, which in turn surround the most striking local structure: a sprawling stone fortress ringed by barbed wire, with a crenellated watchtower rising from its heart. Built in 1. 85. 1, Waupun Correctional Institution resembles a medieval castle but functions as a maximum- security penitentiary for murderers, rapists and other violent felons, including the likes of Steven Avery, the central character in Netflix's 2. Making a Murderer.

On a recent afternoon the facility's visiting center, a large, fluorescent- lit cafeteria- like room, was filled with tattooed and scarfaced inmates. Seated at low- slung, evenly spaced tables, they chatted with their wives, girlfriends and children, uniformed guards presiding on all sides. The outlier in the room, a soft- spoken man in a green prisoner's jumpsuit, leaned forward in a chair with his hands clasped in his lap.

The man who found the land for Erin Hills will watch the U.S. Open from prison. We are a patriot organization that believes in upholding. the united states constitution.this is. Watch breaking news videos, viral videos and original video clips on CNN.com. There are many free movies on YouTube, from silent films to musicals, mysteries, horror, and science fiction. Finding them can take some time, but the rewards often.

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Oh, I'm going to be watching every minute of the tournament," he said. For so many years that place was my home away from home."At 5. Steve Trattner cuts the profile of a guy you'd ring for help with your computer—which is precisely the type of work he did before setting off on his improbable path to incarceration. In the mid- 9. 0s, married, with a home in the Milwaukee suburbs and two children on the way, Trattner, a middling golfer who nonetheless fantasized about carving out a life in the game, abandoned a steady job as a software programmer and embarked on a quixotic quest to build a golf course.

He possessed nowhere near the wealth for such a project, much less the land to accommodate it. But he had in mind a site, in the small town of Erin.

The initial tweet, posted yesterday and already garnering close to 500,000 retweets, depicts a small green duck succumbing to the heat and becoming the flat-faced.

He also had the gumption to cold- call would- be investors until he found his man in a mercurial entrepreneur with no previous interest or experience in the business side of the sport. In August 2. 00. 6, Erin Hills opened to the public. GOLF Magazine named it the Best New Course of the Year.

But on June 1. 5, when the national championship gets underway, Trattner will watch on TV in the prison where he has resided for the past 1. Steve Trattner, SI 2. Trattner quit his software job and spent two years traveling the state in search of the perfect piece of land for a golf course. The coverage he sees is bound to feature retrospectives on the architects, investors and assorted industry bigwigs who helped bring Wisconsin its first- ever U. S. Open. Likely to be omitted from the broadcast, however, is any mention of Trattner, his instrumental role in developing Erin Hills or the horrific deed he perpetrated just months before his dream course came to fruition."The U. S. Open is a big deal for Wisconsin; it's going to bring millions and millions of dollars to the state," says Bob Lang, the investor who teamed with Trattner on the project.

But the fact is: Without Steve there is no U. S. Open [in Wisconsin]. Because without Steve there is no Erin Hills."***The account Trattner offers today of the crime that put him away differs from the crime he ultimately copped to. But the narrative he tells of his life in golf and his involvement in Erin Hills, relayed through phone calls, letters and a face- to- face meeting, is unwavering in its detail. It's the story of a man who loved the game more than it loved him back. Raised in a leafy suburb of Milwaukee as the eldest of three children, Steve Trattner wasn't born into a golf family—his father was a history professor, his mother a housewife.

But like most golf junkies, he remembers the moment he got hooked. It was 1. 97. 4, the summer after sixth grade.

His best friend took him to a local par- 3, nine- hole course, and from his first swing Trattner was enchanted. A few hours, a par and two bogeys later, the spell was permanently cast. At Whitefish Bay High, Trattner gave up baseball, his first sport, for a summer job caddying at Milwaukee Country Club, among the most exclusive courses in the Midwest. He worked the job through college and between his junior and senior years was promoted to the rank of caddiemaster.) Playing high school golf would have been nice too, but it was out of the question.

Whitefish Bay's state championship- winning squad was stocked with studs, and on good days Trattner struggled to break 8. His connection to the team came instead through his work as the yearbook's sports editor, which frequently had him at practices, snapping photos."Steve was not what you would call a jock, but he loved sports and he hung out with a lot of athletes," says Bill Linneman, a member of Whitefish Bay's golf team who graduated with Trattner in 1. Wisconsin State Golf Association. He was a quiet, nerdy kind of guy—a team manager type."Steve Trattner, SI 2. Trattner told much of his story to our reporter through a series of handwritten letters. Watch Crocodile Dundee Online Facebook more. Trattner was both an academic achiever and a wannabe golf bum, and he found outlets for both interests at Williams College, a well- regarded school whose campus course, Taconic, is the top- ranked public track in Massachusetts.

There he studied math and computer science. He also signed up for Williams's golf team, embarking on a brief competitive career that was as humiliating as it was short- lived. With his first tournament swing ever, on Taconic's par- 5 opening hole, Trattner duck- hooked his tee shot into the trees en route to a double- bogey 7. His opponent, meanwhile, smashed a driver down the middle, smoked a five- wood to 1. Convinced that he was in over his head, Trattner shook his partner's hand, apologized and left. One year after college, Trattner was back in the Milwaukee area, working a job he hated at a banking software company.

He was making a living but what he wanted was a way of life—specifically one scented with the smell of fresh- cut grass and punctuated with the clack of spikes on gravel. Watch Ida Online Facebook. Here his country club connections came in handy. In 1. 99. 0, through a referral from a venerated teaching pro at Milwaukee Country Club, Trattner landed an entry- level position at the Wisconsin State Golf Association.

The salary was half of what he'd been making at the software company, and his responsibilities were as basic as helping to computerize tournament scorekeeping and course ratings—nothing high glamor—but it was a start, and it kept him close to the greens and fairways. For a while, at least.

Trattner's boss was executive director Gene Haas, a prominent figure in Wisconsin golf circles who was known for his tough- as- nails tournament setups as well as for a confidence that verged on arrogance. Trattner disliked the way Haas ran things, and Haas grew disappointed with how Trattner handled his job."Looking back, maybe I could have done more to bring him along, to get him to take more of the initiative," says Haas. But he was a behind- the- scenes kind of guy who had what you might call a ‘different' way of expressing himself.