Golf Course Architecture - Issue 60, April 2020

58 golf courses ever since. I can hardly approve a feature without feeling Pete’s influence. Pete was always ahead of his time. How many golf designers could that be said about? As much of a legacy as his courses will be, the impact he had on those fortunate to work with him may be more enduring. The stories and memories are plentiful but seem insufficient. We all have someone who took hold of us and set us on our life’s path, maybe without our even knowing it. For me, that was Pete. Everything I hold dear in golf took root from my relationship with him. Not bad for someone that lived to be half of 188!” Ron Forse said: “I first saw his work at The Golf Club in New Albany, Ohio. Knowing how early it was in his career, and how soon after visiting Scotland, it was fascinating to see how visiting Prestwick had been so influential on the design; also the degree of imagination which he brought to bear on what was really a pretty flat site. But after four or five holes, I just started laughing, because it was almost comical; this stuff was so brazen, so bold and so iconoclastic. It was almost like golf humour – ‘Look at all this new stuff, I’m going to make you freak out; you can’t figure out what I’m doing.’ “One thing we learned was that he always wanted earthmovers who knew nothing about golf – because he wanted to change the rate of change. His ‘children’ may not build courses that look like his, but in spirit they do – they do it with his sense of strategy and his sense of natural randomness. Pete went to Culver Academy, where they have a nine-hole course by William Langford. Langford built plateau greens with undulating, rolling contours, often with three high points. When I went to see TPC Sawgrass years ago I saw lots of things that reminded me of Langford.” Bruce Charlton of Robert Trent Jones II said: “There was a period of about ten years when Bobby Weed, Brian Huntley and I were the golf committee for the ASGCA so I got to decide who played with who – and who I played with! Once we were in Charleston and playing the Ocean course at Kiawah, and Bobby [Jones] said to me, ‘Let’s you and me play with Pete and Alice’. So, we did, and for eighteen holes there was a constant dialogue between the two of them, Pete would say ‘Ah, why d’you do that Alice?’ and Alice would explain ‘Well, Pete...’ and the banter would continue back and forth between them. I really do believe that Alice was a great balance to Pete’s whackiness, and Pete’s whackiness was “After four or five holes, I just started laughing, because it was almost comical; this stuff was so brazen, so bold and so iconoclastic” Dye with Jack Nicklaus, collaborating for the design of Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, which would become Nicklaus’s first design. Right, the par-three fifth hole on the Teeth of the Dog course at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, often credited as Dye’s favourite of his designs PETE DYE Photo: The Sea Pines Resort