Pete Dye and Bulle Rock

[Mike Mosely]

Guys, I know we tend to not like tournament venues much, but of all the guys doing tournament venues, does Dye not stand out way above the rest?  Aren't his routings and options and greens time in and time out the best?  Don't they get the respect of player and hacker alike?  isn't he a prince of a guy and smart to boot and a good role model?  Isn't alice a great story?  Why dont we talk more about him?  Have events and meetups at his places?

Also, I like the routing and strategies at Bulle Rock.  Its pretty, yet brainy, has interesting tee decisions and greens.  How about we have a day where we play beechtree in the a.m. and bulle in the p.m.?

[John Moore II]

I think that Pete Dye does golf courses that can make for great tournament sites, he is however, in many cases given land that is very very good to build a golf course on. Fazio's work is in many cases just as good, only much of Fazio's best work is at ultra private clubs that don't want tournaments, Fazio admits that himself.

[Anthony_Nysse]

I would have to say that Pete Dye DOESNT usually get the best pieces of property and probably doesn’t necessarily care. Whistling Straits used to be a old landing strip/army base, Harbour Town has 4 feet of elevation, (Take away 16-18 and HT wouldn’t have EVER sniffed a Top 100) TPC Sawgrass was an awful site for a course; a muck field if you will, Old Marsh was a marshland with very little elevation or movement, TPC Louisiana is a lifeless site, and Hampton Hall is awful, no features to enhance what so ever-One of Dyes most bland layouts, but he had nothing to work with.
  Dye used the lagoons at Long Cove and the dune like ridge on #6-8, but they were man made also.

Tony Nysse
Asst. Supt.
Colonial CC
Ft. Worth, TX

[TEPaul]

"Guys, I know we tend to not like tournament venues much, but of all the guys doing tournament venues, does Dye not stand out way above the rest?  Aren't his routings and options and greens time in and time out the best?  Don't they get the respect of player and hacker alike?  isn't he a prince of a guy and smart to boot and a good role model?  Isn't alice a great story?  Why dont we talk more about him?"

MikeM;

That's a good question and it's been asked and discussed on  this website a number of times but there'll probably never be easy answers, and I think the reason for that is Pete Dye and his style and perhaps his approach to architecture and the game is complex both historically and otherwise.

He has done projects on some sites that are really tough for a number of reasons including massive drainage factors and that he did what he did on them obviously shows his imagination to solve really massive site problems for architecture.

I think Pete may be something of a genius or revolutionary in the area of "strategic" values but there has always been more than a little "edginess" or really razor thin margins for error in his architectural strategies. And I think Pete has always had his own reasons for that.

That same "edginess" to his architecture is also in look---eg a certain amount of artificiality somewhat akin to the old man-made features of linksland courses but applied by Dye with different and more modern materials, and the reason for that goes all the way back to some of the things he (and Alice) first became fascinated by in old golf on the other side.

With all the foregoing, I think Dye is and always has been in somewhat of his own category in the entire evolution of golf architecture.

Some love it, some like it and some don't. But all-in-all I think it is really important both in and to the entire history of golf architecture.

In some ways I look at Pete Dye and his contributions to architecture as something of a modern day C.B. Macdonald.

[Matt_Ward]

Mike:

In regards to Pete Dye -- I see his career as one which rocketed to unsurpassed heights early on -- even Pete himself admits he used his design scheme to be completely opposite of the manner by which RTJ (then the top dog) employed at his sites.

But the issue is whether the more recent Dye designs of the last 10-15 years can rival those from the earliest stages.

I'd have to say the early ones are better.

What's interesting to note is that Nicklaus was involved in a minor way with Harbour Town and his design career seems to have gone the opposite way of Dye's Early on the Nicklaus layouts were seen as one-dimensional -- very demanding and quite limited to a given style of play. Years later Nicklaus has evolved to a far different style that integrates playability as a key item.

Tony N:

Good point on the relative lack of overall quality of land that Dye has worked on over the years. The only question I have is whether or nor Dye "overworked" such sites to the point of overkill. Compare his work at Oak Tree -- which I believe is vastly under-appreciated against his work at Whistling Straits which I see as being overworked to the point of obsurdity.

I also see Pete's work at the Irish Course at WS as being one of the five worst designs of his I have ever played.

[Mike Mosely]

"Guys, I know we tend to not like tournament venues much, but of all the guys doing tournament venues, does Dye not stand out way above the rest?  Aren't his routings and options and greens time in and time out the best?  Don't they get the respect of player and hacker alike?  isn't he a prince of a guy and smart to boot and a good role model?  Isn't alice a great story?  Why dont we talk more about him?"

MikeM;

That's a good question and it's been asked and discussed on  this website a number of times but there'll probably never be easy answers, and I think the reason for that is Pete Dye and his style and perhaps his approach to architecture and the game is complex both historically and otherwise.

He has done projects on some sites that are really tough for a number of reasons including massive drainage factors and that he did what he did on them obviously shows his imagination to solve really massive site problems for architecture.

I think Pete may be something of a genius or revolutionary in the area of "strategic" values but there has always been more than a little "edginess" or really razor thin margins for error in his architectural strategies. And I think Pete has always had his own reasons for that.

That same "edginess" to his architecture is also in look---eg a certain amount of artificiality somewhat akin to the old man-made features of linksland courses but applied by Dye with different and more modern materials, and the reason for that goes all the way back to some of the things he (and Alice) first became fascinated by in old golf on the other side.

With all the foregoing, I think Dye is and always has been in somewhat of his own category in the entire evolution of golf architecture.

Some love it, some like it and some don't. But all-in-all I think it is really important both in and to the entire history of golf architecture.

In some ways I look at Pete Dye and his contributions to architecture as something of a modern day C.B. Macdonald.

That's all good stuff, Tom.  I also like how Pete said that early on, to establish an identity, he had to do exactly the opposite of what Trent Jones was doing.  yet both of them had long careers designing tour and resort facilities.

[Tags:]

Tags: