Pete Dye Interview on Whistling Straits...and some Seth Raynor

[Jay Flemma]

http://www.cybergolf.com/golf_news/pete_dye_on_whistling_straits

Pete gave me solid gold!  We had a ball:)

My editor is putting up the pictures as we speak.

Also, two big thank yous to Dick Daley for mentioning the switch to A4 for the greens and new fairway grass too.  I'm thrilled to hang out at the Abbey with him for the week!  

http://jayflemma.thegolfspace.com/?p=3045

Here's a snippet:

JF: I know some of my readers will want to know about your thoughts on National Golf Links of America. Did it have an impact on your design concepts?

Pete Dye: I played National with Tommy Taylor, and he was a character. I love the golf course. It has a lot of blind shots, but that's okay. My only wish is that could have put 18 right on the water. But I've always been a fan of Seth Raynor, and he came along and did that with Macdonald and later banks, and he built all those other courses, and I like a lot of them.

JF: What other Raynors do you like?

PD: There's a great one south of Cincinnati called Camargo. It's one of his best. Then of course there's Shoreacres, which I love and is another one of their best. But Camargo is my favorite.

and one more humorous moment:

Jay Flemma: What else should we be looking out for at Whistling Straits and what did you enjoy the most about the tournament last time?

Pete Dye: Well, people would sit on those mounds and just look out at the lake, check out the ambience of the golf course. There are so many knobs and crags where you can sit down and watch golf, but people like to sit out on 12 and look out onto the lake. Also, when we had the 2004 PGA, people were singing songs back and forth. They also did it at 18, I think maybe it was a football song, but they were singing and swaying back and forth. Lemme ask Allie…

(Calling into the other room…)

Allie? Remember all those people at Whistling singing and swaying? What was all that and the waving back and forth?

Alice Dye: They were doing “The Wave.”

Pete Dye: Well I’d never seen that. It looked to me like they were having some good clean Midwestern fun…there were just thousands of people all packed in there doing that, it was fantastic. You know, those Wisconsinites have the second largest golfing population per capita of any state in the nation.

Jay Flemma: Would the first one be Minnesota?

Pete Dye: You’re right. You see? I didn’t even have to tell you!

(Laughter…)

Well anyway, all those knowledgeable people come out there to watch and to celebrate, and to love golf. It’s really something. It’s different from Phoenix where every kid in town comes out to drink and yell. So it’s great to watch them and, and to meet all the ardent golfers. They were great people that came out to the Straits Course last time, and that really makes the tournament great.

[Jud_T]

Good work Jay!  The changes to 18 don't sound like an uptick in playability for John Q. public IMHO....

What other "name" GCA does this sound like?:

Tiger Woods likes to say he likes to "see it all," see everything from the tee.

[RJ_Daley]

Jay, it just dawned on me what old Pete was talking about when he observed all those people in the stands swaying back and forth.  It was not the wave, it was them singing "Varsity" the long standing alma mater ritual one sees at all home Wisconsin sporting events win loose or draw  (football, basketball, hockey).  It is done in concert, with the alum singing:

Varsity! Varsity!
U-rah-rah! Wisconsin,
Praise to thee we sing!
Praise to thee, our Alma Mater,
U-rah-rah! Wisconsin!

When they get to the last, U-rah-rah Wi-i- is-scon- on- sin, they start with their right hand pointing up to left, and wave and sway right and left on each note;  but being the UW Madison, people's republic, must finish on the left.     Kinda cheezy,  huh? We are known for that...

[Tony Ristola]

PD: All the drives, from the tee. Tiger Woods likes to say he likes to "see it all," see everything from the tee. But what I do to a pro is let you see some of the fairway, but not all of the fairway. Now once you've played the course, you know how wide it is and what's out there. But even so, what you can't see creates something in the back of your mind like doubt or fear. The mere fact that you know the fairway is there isn't enough. When you can't see all the landing area, you get scared or nervous or uncertain.

I've always found such shots the most irritating; it's worse than having a totally blind shot because you simply pick a line and commit.

Never tire of hearing from Pete Dye. Nice job.

[RJ_Daley]

I'm not sure anyone has ever gotten a better series of interviews out of Pete Dye than Jay has.  Certainly, Pete's comments on the Whistling Straits course in this latest interview by Jay has explained WS in it's making, design ideas, and PGA set-up approach better than any other article I have read. 

The construction technique of cutting/terracing and filling for feature and hole corridor work, the 70 ft elevated - flat bluffs over the lake in its pre-construction state, and the comments of how it is wrong to say they trucked in massive earth for shaping purposes, was the best myth buster right from the horse's mouth.  I still look back as a pretty significant GCA moment when I met Pete and Alice at 17tee as they observed the first ever group outing of play at WS in 1998.  Just before the photo, Pete was nice enough to give me about a 5 minute explanation of what they did there to that flat bluff, with his enthusiasm running high and his gesticulations showing the imaginary cut and fill process sculpting it out in the air, behind us.  After the mini construction technique lesson, I got to play my favorite hole, 17, right there in front of the master himself.  The result of the play of that hole was just about the most thrilling, anticipatory, hopeful, and comically disappointing, I've ever had. 



With Mr. Dye in unusually talkative form in Jay's interview, I guess I would not have been able to resist asking him one sensitive question I have always had, and probably will never know the answer to:  Given the laughable quote by Mr. Kohler on WS cost to construct, saying of Mr. Kohler's directive to Pete:   "I gave him and unlimitted budget, and he exceeded it", I will always wonder to what extent, if any, they received fed superfund clean-up or other fed grant money to clean up the reportedly several toxic mini areas left over from the gunnery targetting military site?  But, with the rapport that Jay had established with Mr. Dye in this series of forthcoming interviews, that might be a bit of a skunk showing up at a picnic. 

I would love to be a fly on the wall and have heard all the conversations between Mr. Kohler and Mr. Dye over the years, and particularly the multiple reworks of 18.  I wonder if lately, Pete couldn't resist the temptation of saying, dagnabit - I told you that is the way we should have left it years ago! 

BTW, Jay read much of the interview back to me over the phone, and I swear he does a fabulous impression of Pete hisownself, judging from the times I've heard Pete speak.  Very funny stuff! 

[Jay Flemma]

Thank you, Zdick, Jud, and everybody else who IMd me.  Yes, talking to Pete is a lot of fun.  He's a nice man, and I love the whole iinterplay between he, Ally, and 60 the dog.

I like the part where he said get the greens no faster than 11.  Anything else is too much.

[Mike Nuzzo]

I like your pic RJ
Here's mine 2000ish:

[Jay Flemma]

Nice pix, both of you .

[Matt Kardash]

Mike,
Pete looks like he has a bionic right arm in that pic. Badass 

[RJ_Daley]

Actually, that time I met Pete on the WS course, I had last seen him in person maybe 8 years earlier in Las Vegas.  I was a little taken back that he actually didn't look well at WS.  I think he was in a period where he lost too much weight or something.  But, Mike and Jay's photos actually have Pete looking great. 

[Jay Flemma]

Well his bionic arm sure looks cooler than my wrist wrapped up like King Tut:)

We're going to do a video clip with Pete from the media tent during the week.  So if you have qs you'd like me to ask, shout 'em out.

Next interview...Tom Fazio!

[Kevin Lynch]

Great Interview, Jay.  I love getting such insight from Pete.

The quote I loved the most was this:

"And I don't understand the rough being high. I wanna see guys hit shots. I wanna see a guy in the rough have a tough shot, but have a shot."

Amen! Allelujah!  I wish every Grounds Committee in the world took this to heart.  I've always felt that "lost ball" rough (essentially OB within the confines of the course) should be reserved for only the worst shots.  I'm happy to see that the even the guy who relishes torturing PGA Players has some concept of limits.

Jay, can you clarify if Pete was referring to the Native Areas or the first cut of rough?  Regarding Native Areas, when I played Whistling several years ago, even when I hit some big pulls, I never lost a ball and always had a chance to get a club on it.  They were difficult shots, but I always had some options.  Or was Pete referring to the first cut, and the practice of leaving "gouge it out" as the only option?

I suppose the logic is still the same - leave some risk/reward on the recoveryoptions rather than doling out the same universal penalty.

[Matt Kardash]

Jay,

I'd like to know how Pete feels about the center-line pot bunker on the 6th hole now being in the left rough since they removed the left hand of the fairway before the 2004 PGA. I beleive the same can be said about the 10th hole.

Id also love to know why he didn't build a blind green. Pete always loved hiding a hole behind a huge mound (you can argue the 6th is semi blind depending where you drive it). This seemed like a much more fitting project to create such a hole, rather than say, Old Marsh or Long Cove.