Golf Course Architecture - Issue 60, April 2020

61 it’s the best shot values, the best variety of par fives and par threes.” Andy Staples said: “When I was a kid, thinking about getting into the business, I remember seeing pictures of the Golf Club in Ohio, with all the railroad ties. But, being from Wisconsin, my first actual exposure to his work was when he started building Blackwolf Run and Whistling Straits. His courses look harder than they actually do play. I’m very drawn to his early stuff – which Pete didn’t like that much, he referred to them as his ‘mistakes’. One of the things you never see with Pete is a driveable par four – he said that a driveable hole is a par three. But yet he still had some of the best strategic short fours I’ve ever seen. On all his short fours, he tries to bait you into going to a particular spot, from where you’ll have a very difficult approach.” Richard Mandell said: “I first encountered his work on television, watching the TPC. When I started working for Dan Maples in 1990, I was driving back from Miami and I went around Long Cove. The fifth at Long Cove is kinda blind and it’s one of my favourite holes. Pete always talked about the grey area – not everything was black and white, and that’s how to confuse the good player. I think in the same terms.” Brandon Johnson of Arnold Palmer Design Company emphasised the strategic quality of Dye’s work. “Harbour Town was very important to me,” he said. “First of all, just watching it on TV as a kid and realising that it looked so different from all the other courses the Tour played, but when I eventually went there, realising how tight it was, and how Pete had woven it through a housing development. You’ve got to plot your way around that golf course like no other. TPC Sawgrass was my home course for a while, and I learned a lot from playing that course over and over again.” Steve Forrest also brought to mind Dye’s strategic excellence. “Pete might use fifteen bunkers where two would do, but you can always guarantee that the strategy of the hole will work,” he said. GCA “He could create a greater impact with a single, abrupt contour than most architects can by contouring a site from wall to wall” The famous closing hole at Harbour Town. Right, Pete with wife Alice, who “brought him back down to earth” Read more about Pete Dye’s influence on golf course architects in the latest issue of By Design from the American Society of Golf Course Architects.