Pete Dye received a couple of pretty nice honors recently. Down in St. Augustine, Fla., not far from the once-controversial TPC Sawgrass Course that he built and that hosted the PGA Tour’s premier event, The Players Championship, this past weekend, the octogenarian golf course architect was named to the World Golf Hall of Fame. He’ll be officially inducted in November.
A day later, on Friday, Dye, wife Alice, son P.B. and daughter-in-law Jean were at South Carolina’s Colonial Center, where Pete was awarded an honorary doctorate in business – a thank-you of sorts from outgoing USC president Andrew Sorensen to acknowledge the economic impact Dye’s golf courses have had on South Carolina over nearly 40 years.
You could make a strong case that the first honor outshines the second, but not with P.B., 52 and architect of Columbia's Northwoods Golf Club, built during the mid-90s while he and his father were also constructing The Windermere Club. After all, it was while here that P.B. met his wife of 15 years, who maintains a home in Seneca.
As for Pete … well, after all the honors he’s received in a long and productive lifetime, he’s just glad to return to South Carolina, which he calls “No. 1” in terms of states where his courses have changed the golf scene.
“I guess (the degree) is for digging all that dirt at Harbour Town and Kiawah (Island),” he said with a laugh. “Wherever we’ve built golf courses, it’s had an impact on the economy in those areas.”
Two cases in point: Hilton Head’s Harbour Town Golf Links, and Kiawah’s Ocean Course.
The two courses are as different as night and day – which Pete loves, since it refutes the notion that every Dye course is like every other one – but both are demanding (Harbour Town for its tight fairways and small greens, the Ocean Course for its ubiquitous sand dunes and wind) and rated among the best in the world.
The former is home to the Verizon Heritage, S.C.’s only annual PGA Tour event since 1969 and a major player on the state’s sports calendar. The latter has played host since 1991 to two of the biggest golf events in the world – the 1991 Ryder Cup and 2007 Senior PGA Championship – and will add the state’s first major, the PGA Championship, in 2012.
Does South Carolina have golf tournament resume without the handiwork of Dye? Maybe. Doubtful.
Of course, getting Pete to take a bow for all that is a tough job. He’s plain as an old pair of work khakis, a man who takes into consideration not just the world’s best players but also “Joe Q. Public” when building his courses. The fact that high- and mid-handicappers flock to play his designs – even the ones that beat them up – never ceases to tickle his funny bone.
Take Dye’s recent renovation of Sea Pines’ Heron Point Course at Hilton Head. He turned a mediocre previous design into a beautiful – and difficult – layout right out of the box. Did he intend to make it so tough?
“You know, when people come to play a resort,” he said, chuckling, “they go to the Ocean Course, to (TPC Sawgrass). And every time I ease off (on the difficulty) at a resort, it’s not financially successful.
“PGA West (in Palm Springs, Calif.), oh, that’s the worst, hardest course in the world – and it gets the most play. … There’s got to be a reason.”
As much as he’s known for demanding layouts – there’s a reason his nickname is the “Marquis de Sod” – perhaps Dye’s signature achievement is not just TPC Sawgrass, but one hole: the island-green, par-3 17th.
On Sunday, the first hole ever to have a camera mounted there so Internet fans could watch every shot during The Players, and one of few holes to have its own half-hour Golf Channel feature show, was the difference-maker at The Players. The PGA Tour in its infinite wisdom decided to begin any playoff at No. 17, and so it was there that Paul Goydos drowned his wedge shot, moments before Sergio Garcia hit safely to the green and two-putted from four feet to win the title.
Dye loves to tell how that “brilliant” hole design – the first island green in PGA Tour history – came about partly by accident and partly due to the vision of his favorite architect: His wife of more than a half-century, Alice.
“I was going to put in a little par-3 there, and we had a lot of organic material with one pocket of sand, and we kept digging out the sand,” Dye said. “When we were done, I said, ‘I’ve got no place to put a green.’ So Alice said, ‘Stick it in the middle (of the hole from which the organic material was excavated), bulkhead it and make it an island green.
“We piled the old organic back under the bulkheading, put a little sand on top, and there it is.”
Dye says he had no idea the hole would become instantly controversial – players love it or hate it, but no one is neutral. “My only worry was, we might end up someday with a 17-hole golf course,” he said. “But so far, it’s fine.”
Which brought Dye back to talking about his South Carolina courses. Eight of the state’s top 50, according to the S.C. Golf Course Ratings Panel (of which the author is a member) and three of the top five – Harbour Town, Ocean Course and Hilton Head’s Long Cove – bear his signature. But one hole also has Alice’s direct stamp on it.
That’s the water-guarded par-3 17th at the Ocean Course, which famously played such a huge role in the ’91 Ryder Cup. Left to Pete’s way of thinking, it would’ve been, he says, a so-so hole. Then Alice stepped in with her philosophy of golf, which her husband knows well. “My bride has played with Babe Zaharias, Beth Daniel, Ben Hogan, and still plays good golf,” he said. “But at our club she plays Ladies’ Day with three ladies who can’t break 120. So when it comes to par-3s, she wants me to make them distinctive and hard – the reason being so she can stick the ladies’ tee somewhere where they can play that hole (better than men from the back tees).
“When I built Kiawah, she looked at 17 and said, ‘That’s not strong enough. You’ve got to put a pond there.’ I said, ‘You can’t put a pond on a hole next to the ocean.’ So she went to Scotland, Ireland, found holes with ponds next to the ocean. Well, if I wanted to eat” – he laughs again – “I had to dig that pond at 17 at Kiawah.
Ask Mark Calcavecchia about that pond, where he dumped multiple tee shots during the final round of the Ryder Cup en route to blowing a sure win against Colin Montgomerie (the two wound up halving the match) and nearly costing the U.S. its triumph. Ask the Senior PGA players who managed everything from birdies to a 10 there.
“It’s a little controversial,” Dye said. “But I just had to dig it out. She gets the blame for it.”
Chances are in November, when he joins other legends of the game in the Hall of Fame, Alice will be there. Making sure to get her share of that “blame,” too.
BOB GILLESPIE
Dye was given an Honorary Degree -- but this is NOT a Ph.D. degree, which is an earned degree and the highest one can earn at Carolina or any other institution.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 13, 2008 at 08:34 AM