If Tom Doak is still monitoring this thread, I'd like to ask a question about any Pete Dye's specific moment of impact that Tom may be able to recall. What I mean is to ask if Tom can remember any specific day and setting on a golf construction site where Pete and he had a specific interaction of mentor-apprentice, where Pete did or said something, or directed some specific activity, where Tom had some moment of clear vision or could see his future and what he would take away from that moment?
I'd love to hear if any other architects tuning in here, could similarly account for one of those important, mentor-apprentice moments. Aren't such moments what legacy and historical impact are made of?
RJ:
I think I still remember nearly everything Pete Dye ever said while I was within earshot. I must have been paying pretty close attention!
It really wasn't all that much [to Pete], but it meant a lot [to me]. A lot of what I remember was during the construction of Long Cove, where I was the lowest man on the totem pole ... a skinny 20-year-old raking sticks and reading the transit while checking slopes on the greens. I don't know why Pete even bothered to tell me some of the things that he did, because I would not have been voted Most Likely to Succeed on that crew ... by the Dyes, at least. [Some of the guys who watched my slide shows in the evening might have had a different opinion.]
Anyway, I've written about several [most] of those moments in other places, and it's funny how they have become incorporated into the Pete Dye narrative because I happened to mention them somewhere. Pete's story about how he kept driving past Palmetto Dunes on his way to Harbour Town, and ultimately decided he needed to go in a different direction, was something he just said to me in passing one day while I was giving him a ride out to #14 or 15. I'd been on the job two weeks at that point, he certainly wasn't telling me because he thought I would need to find my own direction someday. But, when I had to think about what kind of golf courses I was going to build when I did go out on my own, I remembered that conversation distinctly and thought that Pete would not be offended that I was doing something different than he'd done.
I try to remember to make time for my interns in the same way, but unfortunately, I succeed for some a lot better than for others. I don't know why that is, exactly; it really isn't personal, it's just a matter of who is around at the right time for me to be philosophical. I guess it's just like my posts here, you never know when I'll make a really good one!
