Free-form Pete Dye Discussion

[Tim Gavrich]

Some of the best threads on this site are very well-focused and directed.  But some of my favorites have just been loosely-associated too--generally "Post pictures of your favorite ______ on a golf course."  This is meant to be of the latter form.

The PLAYERS Championship is this coming weekend, at TPC Sawgrass, so what better time to talk about Pete Dye and his courses?

I have played about half a dozen Pete Dye courses and have enjoyed every single one at least good deal.  I have noticed that there is a great deal of aesthetic difference among his golf courses.  There are some, like the Dye Club at Barefoot Resort up in North Myrtle Beach, that seem to be highly sculptured with a lot of abrupt shaping, visible pot bunkers galore, big greens with big slopes, etc.  Then there are others, like Debordieu about 60 miles south of Barefoot, which I played yesterday.  I was kind of blown away by the muteness and subtlety going on at Debordieu.  The greens were nightmarishly difficult to read, and almost all of them were glued to the ground such that it was exceedingly and beguilingly difficult to make out where exactly a pin was on a green, or how much room there was on the periphery of certain shots.  I thought that was really cool in a different way.  There was still a little bit of sculpting and bulbousness and sharp sloping, but it was almost all below ground level.  Really cool.

By no means does this thread have to be about what I just said, but if you want to respond, go for it.  If not, post a picture of a Pete Dye course, tell a story (I'm sure a bunch of people have 'em!) about meeting or working with the man, anything.  Gentlemanly criticism is certainly welcome, too.

If this thread goes well, maybe we can do similar-style threads on other architects.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tim,

Just played the Honors Course and felt it was among his best, even with a few flaws and even if hard as usual.  But not as many water hazards.

I actually tend to play Dye courses pretty well for me, using a strategy of bailing out well away from the hazards and accepting bogey as a good score.   I cannot think of too many of his courses I didn't like pretty well, and I have played all his Texas ventures, TPC and PGA West, The Golf Club, Disney (the worst Dye I played) etc.

I played Prestwick with Pete in 1995, and he told me some of those straight line ditch's were his inspiration for his long fw bunkers, along with a strong desire to do everything differently than RTJ.  I also have many fond moments with Pete and Alice at ASGCA, including them asking me to dinner on the eve of me becoming President.  Always willing to take time with nearly anyone.  BTW, last time I talked with them, they still fly coach!  Real last generation values.

This year at ASGCA, we got a nice presentation from Perry about growing up with them as a Dye.  Gave more insight to how they became what they became.

[Jason Topp]

I'm not sure how many Pete Dye courses I have played but I have hit many of the big names - Casa de Campo, TPC Sawgrass, PGA West, Harbourtown, Kiawah as well as a number of lesser known courses.  It is always a bit difficult to generalize but, - things I like:

Likes:
sound strategic designs, draw/fade holes, generally terrific par fives, generally wide fairways, varied fairway width, usually a nice variety of par threes

Things that I usually dislike:
Harsh slopes - many of his courses use slopes as a hazard that are artificial and brutal.  I think a big reason for Fazio's appeal is that he went the opposite direction and softened the feeling of a golf course.

Artificial angles - While I like the way his 22-1/2 degree angles play, I do not like the fact that they look so artificial

His courses often seem like templates to me.  Even at Teeth of the Dog, the inland holes seemed familiar.

[Matthew Rose]

I enjoy the visual tricks, the "looks impossible but really isn't" aesthetic. Angles, balance and distribution of left and right bending shots.

I like to get down to Castle Rock and play Plum Creek once in awhile.... they tend to have some ridiculous specials there.

[Carl Rogers]

Was it 2 years ago or 3 that Honors Course had the NCAA that Augusta State won?  Anyway I saw that event and thought that the course was really tough and as Jeff B says, play from the length you can comfortably play and accept the safe bail out shot.

Perhaps to broach a sensitive subject .... how do his lesser known courses rate???
I have played 2,
- Kingsmill River Course, Williamsburg, VA past site of PGA & LPGA events.  I think that the Women are going back this year.  As I got to play it once for free, I really liked it .... but not for $200 plus a round.
- Pete Dye's River Course at Virginia Tech, Radford VA, on the banks of the New River.  Re-do of Ault-Clark start.  Something tells me that PD left nothing of the original course.  Stunning views.  Figure 8 routing front and back side around a bend in the river.  Very very mean course, fairly cheap, access not hard on a weekday in the off football season.    7700 for the tips.  I think VA Tech was and is trying to go big time golf and this a whopper of a challenge.

... I forgot VB National in Virginia Beach, VA,  I need to play it some more.

[Jay Flemma]

Pete's always been a favorite of mine as a designer, but since I've gotten to know him through now four interviews, I've just had as much of a great time chatting with him over iced tea or golf or wherever we've been.  We watched the 72d hole and the playoff of the 2010 PGA together and then he and I and Herb Kohler marched out to the bunker where Dustin hit the ball after the tournament was over and he said "It's a bunker. I know it's a bunker because I built it."  He also said "Don't hit the ball seventy yards right on the 72d hole. Nothing good happens to you when you do that."

[Matthew Petersen]

With Dye I think of a couple things, first and foremost:

The first is visual intimidation. This is the key that links his courses, from the highly manufactured look, to the highly manufactured but natural-looking look, to the mostly natural look. He presents hazards that look (and oftentimes are) very frightening, but successfully challenging that will be justly rewarded, and the penalty for playing away from the intimidating feature may ultimately be just as difficult as taking it on.

The second thing I think of is of course angles. I understand the complaints some people have about how so many of his courses can begin to look similar as he has perfected the angular hole, but for the typical golfer who isn't going to see 10+ Dye courses in his life, this is a really refreshing way of playing the game. There are rarely straight holes on a Dye course. There may be a hole that sits in an essentially straight corridor, but the alignment of tees, fairway, and hazards will generally make the hole play like a dogleg. That's far more interesting than what a lot of other designers present.

[Mike Tanner]

One of the things I like best about all Pete Dye courses is that they're built on the ground by the man himself. There are other design/build guys of course, but Pete's been doing it forever. With input from Alice, too. Who else does that?

My exposure to his CV is limited I'm afraid. I've played Kiawah's Ocean Course twice, Kingsmill's River course about a dozen times, Virginia Beach National (former TPC course) 20–30 times and the River Course at VA Tech once.

I appreciate the way he uses angles and asks players to shape shots both ways. I've also learned that he uses visual intimidation to challenge players and that selecting the right set of tees can make the difference between a painful round and a pleasurable one.

The one criticism I have has been mentioned before. There is a sense of sameness on some of his holes, especially par-4s. It's especially noticeable at VB National, where a couple of them bend around lateral water hazards with only minor changes in the angle of approach to the greens.

I'd like to see more of his work. He certainly has an extensive catalog to explore.

[Mac Plumart]

When I hear Pete or Alice Dye's name, I immediately think of people who LOVE golf and people who live for the game.

I started a thread on them awhile back...

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,45699.msg1003724.html#msg1003724

I think in that I've said all I can say...but I did want to post on this thread because I just love them so much.

[Troy Fink]

I'm lucky enough to have met Mr. Dye a couple of times.  He is a charming and humorous gentleman.  One night I was tagging along on a site visit when he and Tim Liddy were re-doing the River Course at Kingsmill.  I was only the resort's Woods Course Superintendent at the time, so I just listened and soaked everything in.  That night Mr. Dye said he had something for me.  I anxiously ran over to see what it was.  He handed me an empty drink bottle.  Yep, I was gulliable.  Fortunately I was able to return the favor when he asked if there was a restroom he could use.  I gave the drink bottle back to him.

When I played the Ocean Course, I admired how some tees were exposed to the wind and others were not, and then the green complexes followed this suit as well.  The mixture of feeling strong winds, then not feeling the wind was a pretty good mentle challange, because the wind was always there, but Mr. Dye does his best to fool you.  Just like he fooled me with the drink bottle.

Bury Me in a Pot Bunker is a fun read and if i could only play Pete Dye courses the rest of my life, I would feel like I won the lottery.  Over the years I think he has changed his styles.  An 80's Dye course seems to have a different style than a 2000 Dye course.  Mostly in bunker styles and somewhat in green sizes.  The philosphy in angles seems to always be in play. 

I'm so glad this thread was started.  I look forward to reading what others think, too.

[Tom_Doak]

One of the fly-on-the-wall highlights of my career was going to the first tournament played at the TPC of Sawgrass in 1982, and spending the last three days glued to Pete Dye just as much as I could be while he watched the pros play the course and listened to all the criticisms of the golf course.  It was an amazing week where golf course architecture took center stage -- probably more than any tournament since the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills in 1951 -- and I had a pretty good seat for it.  It was a different kind of spring break, but a very memorable one.

Pete probably sat at each hole for a half hour each day and watched a handful of groups go through and what happened to each shot.  Eventually, someone would make birdie and he would chuckle and say "The hole's playable" and move on to the next hole.  And he pegged the winning score dead on -- eight under par -- even though everyone was saying the course was unplayable and nobody would break par.  [His reasoning:  the par-5 holes were all 4 1/2 pars for the pros, so they ought to make 8 birdies there, and somebody would play the rest of the holes even.]  Of course, Jerry Pate had to birdie the last three holes to get there [and win by five, I think].

I have said it many times, but can't say it enough -- without Mr. and Mrs. Dye I would never have gotten anywhere near where I am today.  I'd have been lucky to get to design a course on my own at all.  But there is nothing like learning how to do it from the ground up.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Mike T, the content of your first paragraph calls to mind a passage in Adam Schupak's book on Deane Beman where Dye's coerced into coming up with a set of plans for TPC Sawgrass at the last minute. Beman needs them to close on the loan to finance the course. Dye apparently gets Alice to draw them.

A little while later, Beman's man, Vernon Kelly, and Dye head out to the site. They get out of the truck when Kelly realizes he's left the plans in the truck and runs back to get them. Dye sees the rolled up plans under Kelly's arm and asks what they are. Kelly tells him and Dye says put 'em back, he doesn't ever want to see them again!

Great book. Another great Sawgrass provenance story from the book comes when Dye visits Glen Abbey in a sleet storm at Beman's behest. Beman wanted Dye to see what stadium golf was all about. Dye spends no more than 15 minutes on the course, comes back into the clubhouse where Alice is waiting. She's startled to see him so soon and he just says something like, "I've seen enough. I can do better."

Great stuff!

[Tom_Doak]

Mike T, the content of your first paragraph calls to mind a passage in Adam Schupak's book on Deane Beman where Dye's coerced into coming up with a set of plans for TPC Sawgrass at the last minute. Beman needs them to close on the loan to finance the course. Dye apparently gets Alice to draw them.

A little while later, Beman's man, Vernon Kelly, and Dye head out to the site. They get out of the truck when Kelly realizes he's left the plans in the truck and runs back to get them. Dye sees the rolled up plans under Kelly's arm and asks what they are. Kelly tells him and Dye says put 'em back, he doesn't ever want to see them again!

Mark:

I've heard that same story -- except I heard it about Oak Tree Golf Club, from the developer of Oak Tree, Joe Walser, when we were working on the plans for PGA West in 1984.  I can't imagine that Mr. Walser stole it from something that had just recently happened at the TPC.

I also saw those plans for the TPC at Sawgrass once.  They were in Bobby Weed's office when he was the superintendent there.  If I recall correctly, they were drawn by a sometime-associate of Pete's named David Pfaff, whose name I'd never heard before.

[Kevin Lynch]

My exposure to Pete Dye is mostly from playing all the Kohler courses, as well as a visit to Pete Dye Golf Club.  Like others have mentioned earlier, the use of angles is one of the biggest elements you notice.  But where I was most influenced was the utilization of these angles on Par 5s.

My first Kohler visit was when I fully appreciated the amount of thinking required on Dye's par 5s.  Rarely does Dye give you a simple second shot.  If you are 270-300 away after your drive, so many courses simply allow you to just "bang away" and get as close as you can.  However, Dye's designs usually require you to pick a specific line and also control your distance (i.e. you could often lay-up "too far" thanks to angles).  Obviously, those angles lead to numerous options and strategic considerations (and not just on par 5s), which never gets old.  The River Course at Blackwolf Run could be played so many ways - truly a shotmaking test from beginning to end.

The other thing that strikes me is Dye's versatility among so many terrains.  In Kohler alone, he moves between waterside dunes, windswept prairie land, and river/trees.  I hope to see more of his works in the coming years.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Mike T, the content of your first paragraph calls to mind a passage in Adam Schupak's book on Deane Beman where Dye's coerced into coming up with a set of plans for TPC Sawgrass at the last minute. Beman needs them to close on the loan to finance the course. Dye apparently gets Alice to draw them.

A little while later, Beman's man, Vernon Kelly, and Dye head out to the site. They get out of the truck when Kelly realizes he's left the plans in the truck and runs back to get them. Dye sees the rolled up plans under Kelly's arm and asks what they are. Kelly tells him and Dye says put 'em back, he doesn't ever want to see them again!

Mark:

I've heard that same story -- except I heard it about Oak Tree Golf Club, from the developer of Oak Tree, Joe Walser, when we were working on the plans for PGA West in 1984.  I can't imagine that Mr. Walser stole it from something that had just recently happened at the TPC.

I also saw those plans for the TPC at Sawgrass once.  They were in Bobby Weed's office when he was the superintendent there.  If I recall correctly, they were drawn by a sometime-associate of Pete's named David Pfaff, whose name I'd never heard before.

Tom, sounds like Dye figured out the power of the anecdote to keep the money men off his back.

In the case of TPC Sawgrass, though, it sounds like design-without-plan wasn't just marketing hokum. Kelly and Beman both are quoted as saying the design proceeded from the location of sand, which did not appear in seams but rather in irregular pockets. The sand was dug out, creating lakes, around which the holes then were designed. Pretty amazing if true.

It does make me think about Dye's quote about design being 90 percent drainage: how many other designers could have done as much with that site, either on the 90 percent or the 10 percent?

[William_G]

From a neophytes perspective...it sure seems that that Pete Dye could "build"/"design" a course almost anywhere and make it challenging and a test.

With greens that are so intrically defended, I don't think one looks at "playing" a Dye course, but "testing" his game at a Dye course.

For instance at Sawgrass, while playing there, there is little sense of North or South, just one great hole after another in some Florida flat area near the Atlantic Ocean. The TPC course has no homes on it, except those on the adjacent course far out of view.

He layed it on a paper napkin that is in the clubhouse at the course.

Other courses that I'm familiar with are more fit within the framwork of a development, like Firethorn, PGA West, Carmel Valley Ranch or Oak Tree.

Then you have Straits, which is totally created with no development, got to love it!

Thanks

[Sean_A]

I have only played one Dye, Kiawah, and I was surprised at how good it is especially given the site is rather swampy and loaded with water.  Writing of the water, it is everywhere, but Dye doesn't often doesn't highlight it.  I thought the up and down nature of tees and greens which adds or subtracts wind is cleverly done.  There is great diversity in the 3s and 5s.  What did surprise me though was the lack of a great set of 4s.  I would have thought that coming from an era of the long and tough par 4 dominating the thinking of championship golf that Dye would have created something a bit more special.  There is definitely a feeling of been there done that with the angles.  That said, there are still a few very good two-shotters and none better than than #3.
 

On the other hand, this hole is all the more impressive knowing that Kiawah was built to be a monster. 

I kind of like what I see in Dye courses, but I can't really point to one or two that I really want to play.  Does anybody else get this sense about Dye's body of work?

Ciao

[Mike Sweeney]

I kind of like what I see in Dye courses, but I can't really point to one or two that I really want to play.  Does anybody else get this sense about Dye's body of work?

Ciao

I would like to play Kiawah and The Golf Club on the Dye list. No real interest in the Kohler resort courses. I probably should play more of his courses, but I think he will be viewed down the road as taking golf architecture in a new path from the 1950's and 60's courses that were kind of boring as a day to day "hard par, easy bogey" style of golf.

However, I feel he veered too far towards high difficulty, high maintenance courses:



All of his pupils seemed to have veered aggressively away from his style. I think he makes a very interesting course for tour pros to play, but is really not much fun for average golfers, day to day. See TPC Sawgrass this week. Other than the water holes down the stretch, I can't remember more than one or two holes on the rest of the course.

[Tom_Doak]

In the case of TPC Sawgrass, though, it sounds like design-without-plan wasn't just marketing hokum. Kelly and Beman both are quoted as saying the design proceeded from the location of sand, which did not appear in seams but rather in irregular pockets. The sand was dug out, creating lakes, around which the holes then were designed. Pretty amazing if true.

It does make me think about Dye's quote about design being 90 percent drainage: how many other designers could have done as much with that site, either on the 90 percent or the 10 percent?

Mark:

I don't know if any other designer could have built anything like the TPC at Sawgrass.  According to Pete it took them more than a week to even get a piece of equipment onto the property, it was so low and wet.  Ultimately, what Pete did was to dig a moat around the entire golf course, and put in a big pump to control the level of the water table.  That way they were able to save a lot of the trees around the holes, even though the ground is only a couple of feet above sea level, and leave the fairways fairly close to natural grade.

Most similar projects in Florida take the cut from the lakes and raise up the fairways [and everything else they want grass on].  Pete put all of the dirt from the lakes into the spectator mounds so that the fairways wouldn't be above the trees.

[David_Elvins]

I have said it many times, but can't say it enough -- without Mr. and Mrs. Dye I would never have gotten anywhere near where I am today.  I'd have been lucky to get to design a course on my own at all.  But there is nothing like learning how to do it from the ground up.

Tom,

What are some of the design elements that you have used that have been influenced by Mr. Dye?

I noticed at PGA West that on several holes, the preferred side of the fairway was dictated by a view of the green vs a blind approach. (12th hole pictured below from left and right of fairway.)  This is also a feature that you seem to use regularly in your courses - st Andrews Beach in particular).  Would it be fair to conclude that this is a Dye influence in your work?  Are there a few other influences in your work that you picked up from Dye?

12th hole at PGA West - approach from left centre and right centre of the fairway

[Tim Gavrich]

One thing that struck me on my second trip 'round Debordieu yesterday was the sense of whimsy plainly inherent in a few spots.  The 12th hole is a prime example.  It's the shortest par 4 on the course at 363 from the tips, and where almost every hole's main in-play features stay pretty close to the ground, this one has a pretty narrow fairway with huge mounds on either side.  The mounds on the left obscure the green completely, so what should be a wedge shot you're feeling good about becomes a little more complicated.  Actually, it's very like a shorter version of the 3rd at Yale, now that I think of it.

I believe Dye has built other short 4s like that, requiring a kind of up-and-over blind pitch or wedge.  There's one at Long Cove, right?  Are there a few others?  Is it a Dye template?

[Tom_Doak]

I have said it many times, but can't say it enough -- without Mr. and Mrs. Dye I would never have gotten anywhere near where I am today.  I'd have been lucky to get to design a course on my own at all.  But there is nothing like learning how to do it from the ground up.

Tom,

What are some of the design elements that you have used that have been influenced by Mr. Dye?

I noticed at PGA West that on several holes, the preferred side of the fairway was dictated by a view of the green vs a blind approach. (12th hole pictured below from left and right of fairway.)  This is also a feature that you seem to use regularly in your courses - st Andrews Beach in particular).  Would it be fair to conclude that this is a Dye influence in your work?  Are there a few other influences in your work that you picked up from Dye?

12th hole at PGA West - approach from left centre and right centre of the fairway

David:

I actually worked on the planning of PGA West, and one of my assignments from Pete was to think about the short par-4's and the par-5's and think up ways to drive the pros crazy.  In those days, before they carried four wedges, the half wedge approach gave many players fits, so Mr. Dye wanted to make the area around the 100-yard mark an unappealing spot to lay up and force the players to lay further back or to go outside their comfort zone.  Leaving them a blind shot from 100 yards was one of our tricks.  [Leaving them a downhill lie or a very bad angle or just putting a cross bunker at 115 yards were others.]  I don't ALWAYS try to do these things to people, but I still remember the bag of tricks, and I got pretty good at designing short par-4's as a result.

The other thing I got from Pete from the planning of PGA West was to emphasize certain lengths of holes.  Pete said that it was getting to the point that a medium par-4 (400 yards) was still short for a pro and really pretty long for a 15-handicap, so he tended to concentrate more of his holes between 300-360 yards on one end and 450-490 yards on the other.  When I thought about it, I realized that MacKenzie had done that, too, so I've generally tried to do the same thing.


Tim:

Yes, the hole you describe from Debordieu was a Dye template, which Pete came up with in the early 1980's -- a short par-4 with a blind pitch shot.  I believe he was going to make the 12th hole at the TPC the first of them, but the Commissioner didn't like the idea of a totally blind shot, so he built that hole more like the PGA West hole that David pictured.  But at Long Cove, the job right after TPC [and where I first worked], the hole was really blind unless you could hit a tiny little spot on the left side of the fairway, or drive right up to the peak of the mounds.  He built similar holes throughout the 1980's, at Old Marsh, Firethorn, the Dinah Shore course at Mission Hills, and several others I can't remember right now.

[Scott Sander]

I must have started and erased a reply to this it 5 times now; the problem is that I have played a wider range and number of Pete Dye golf holes than most will ever see, so I feel some obligation to write something profound.

I was raised and, after some time away, again reside not far from Pete Dye.  I grew up playing his earliest works and now live on a hole of one of his most recent.  

After really noodling on it for far too long, here's the one thing I'd say:
If exposure to his most noted courses and quotes from the man himself leave one with the overriding takeaway that Pete Dye is all about punishment for punisment's sake, then that's a shame.

Pete Dye clearly likes to embrace, even celebrate, the notion that his courses are not considered fair.  And as Tom Doak's recollections make clear, Pete Dye has more than a bit of rascal in him, especially when the project calls for such.

But spend 10 days in Central Indiana.  Play all of his courses here, both the headliners and those you might sniff away as lesser because of conditioning or age or location.  Play Eagle Creek. The Fort.  Sahm. The Brickyard.  Woodland CC.  Maple Creek.  Crooked Stick.  The Bridgewater.  Kampen.  And make sure you play them from the tees that match your abilities.

I'll wager that after your tour, you'll walk away convinced that Pete Dye loves golf and golfers, and that the courses he has built here are very fair when attacked fairly.  (Which is to say that I don't think it's fair for a 12 to play tournament tees then wail and moan when he does not get unencumbered views, level lies, or preferred turf at all points.)

His legacy here will likely be very different than it is elsewhere.  Outside of Crooked Stick and possibly The Brickyard, I don't know that any of his courses here were built with the notion that pros would play them.  They were built for pleasure, and they deliver in spades.  Most feature very wide corridors and large greens that welcome shots hit to areas but reject shots hit poorly to 'spots'.

There is great variety here:

At the higher-profile courses rich with the more characteristic Dye feist (Cooked Stick, Brickyard), you'll indeed see a lot of the bulkheading, terrain-wrestling and odd land forms that are so polarizing.

But at what are now decades old munis, you'll find early signs of genius (#10 green & all of #12 at Sahm, the way the creek comes into play at what's now called "Dye's Walk", the enthusiastic exploitation of the land at Eagle Creek).  

And at the country club commissions of his later career (Woodland, Bridgewater), you'll see he's more than capable of delivering courses that make members want to walk off 18 and make a beeline for #1.  

Make no mistake - I'm not saying for a moment that it's all peaches and cream.  If I see another Dye par 3 that has a lake front and right and bunkers hard left of an apostrophe-shaped green, I believe I'll go TP his house after the round.  And for the life of me, I don't understand the volcano bunkers at all.

But in general, I wish the folks who don't like Pete Dye courses could play 'my' Pete Dye courses.  
Rather than drive me and others like me away from the game way back when (a heartbreaking theory offered in a recent SI roundtable about some of his tougher courses), Pete Dye built places that made me want to play again and again, offering measurable rewards to any strides forward my game had taken and appropriate punishment for lapses in care or caution.

I'm a fan.  Thanks for the invitation to prattle on.

[Matt Kardash]

Mike T, the content of your first paragraph calls to mind a passage in Adam Schupak's book on Deane Beman where Dye's coerced into coming up with a set of plans for TPC Sawgrass at the last minute. Beman needs them to close on the loan to finance the course. Dye apparently gets Alice to draw them.

A little while later, Beman's man, Vernon Kelly, and Dye head out to the site. They get out of the truck when Kelly realizes he's left the plans in the truck and runs back to get them. Dye sees the rolled up plans under Kelly's arm and asks what they are. Kelly tells him and Dye says put 'em back, he doesn't ever want to see them again!

Mark:

I've heard that same story -- except I heard it about Oak Tree Golf Club, from the developer of Oak Tree, Joe Walser, when we were working on the plans for PGA West in 1984.  I can't imagine that Mr. Walser stole it from something that had just recently happened at the TPC.

I also saw those plans for the TPC at Sawgrass once.  They were in Bobby Weed's office when he was the superintendent there.  If I recall correctly, they were drawn by a sometime-associate of Pete's named David Pfaff, whose name I'd never heard before.

Tom,
Are you sure about this? Didn't Glen Abbey and Oak Tree open roughly at the same time? How could Pete Dye have gone to visit Glen Abbey before the construction of Oak Tree if both courses opened in 1976 (according to wikipedia)?

[Matthew Sander]

Here is another prime example of the obscured view/preferred line short par 4. These pics are from a photo tour I posted of Brickyard Crossing.



With the right side of the fairway protected by a bunker, one could play safer down the left side. However, this will be the resulting view of the approach...



Playing down the right side of the fairway will leave this view...