Pete Dye's Greatest Contribution to architecture?

[Matthew Petersen]

Tom,
All true and very good. But those are things that are important to those in the business and to GCA geeks like us. And perhaps that's where this thread was intented to go. I really believe architects in the long run are going to be remembered for their finished products (by most people), not as much by their methods. Anyone can go out and see the golf course, few of us get to see how they are built. From your own writings, it seemed like you picked up good practices from a large number of sources, not just Pete Dye. For most of us, its tough to distinguish between a MacDonald course and a Raynor course. There's no such difficulty with you and Pete Dye.

I think you'll all be remembered for quality work. I'm not denying the link you mentioned, but I don't think it defines any of your careers. The golf courses do that. And its pretty clear those methods are more effective than the mass production method that produced a lot of mediocre courses.

Andy,

I think the point is that the quality of the finished work is the result of the method, the limited number of jobs, the being there working in the dirt with the best people you have all on site. Tom Doak and Bill Coore and others' courses don't have to look like Pete's, they don't have to share GCA ideas in the obvious way, say, Raynor and MacDonald do ... but the influence is there nonetheless. There's a palpable difference between the way Dye/Doak/Coore/etc work and the way Nicklaus/Palmer/etc work. You can feel that in the ground as well.

[Niall C]

Jay

Sorry, haven't read your article but hopefully you can help me put the Pete Dye and drainage quote into context. Did Dye explain why he thought drainage was his biggest contribution eg was he suggesting he came up with new methods or what ?

Niall

[Jay Flemma]

From the interview:

JF: How do you feel your architectural principles have been beneficial to golf and to golf architecture?

PD: Drainage. I was the first in the U.S. to put sump pumps in and drain like they do near basins. There are so few places with 50 feet of sand to build a course on: Northern Michigan and Vermont, and Long Island and Pinehurst. That’s great for them, but I built in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana…even in California and I didn’t get sand. I never got sand like you find in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Even their inland courses are on sand! But we don’t have that natural drainage.

But when I went to Old Marsh and the Medalist, which I built for Norman, and at the PGA course I built…

JF: You mean the one in Port St. Lucie? The public one at PGA Village?

PD: Yes. I like that one a lot.

JF: I like that one a lot too.

PD: That’s a fun course. But there and everywhere else I mentioned, I moved a lot of dirt and was able to drain it. The reason is like in your basement you have sump pump and it gets out the water. So we did the same thing for our golf courses. So when it rains real hard, you don’t have to put a sign up saying “We’re closed.” At Old Marsh when it rains, it opens up before the all the rest of the courses, it’s at sea level! And then I built Sawgrass at below sea level and that drains well too. And we raised that finishing stretch of 16-18 out of the water.


I love how laconic Pete is! "We don't have to put up a sign saying "We're closed."  Great stuff!

[Nigel Islam]

Jay i found it interesting that your mentioning of Sawgrass as his biggest contribution paralells that of him suggesting it was drainage. Without his drainage techniques there would be no course there.

[Jay Flemma]

Hey Nigel:)  My love of Sawgrass goes waaaaaay back to 1999 when I started taking post New Years vaca in Fla and playing it a lot.  I know it's modern and utterly man-made, so it's far from minimalist, but there is a lot of strategy that gets overshadowed.  And you;re right - he mentioned Sawgrass as one of his greatest architectural achievements.  My love of th epace precedes my learning about GCA principles by a few years, but my fondness for it goes deep.

[Nigel Islam]

Jay i just meant that you and Dye seemed to be on the same page on the issue. That was a great interview. Pete Dye is amazing. His contributions to golf exceed his architectural abilities. Without him and the influences he had on those that worked for him I am just not sure diversity would exist today with modern golf courses.

[Ted Sturges]

But, look at how we work.  We work by putting together a good crew and going out and building the golf courses we put our names on, and doing a small number of projects at any one time.  Where do you think we learned to do that?  That is Mr. Dye's legacy ... getting golf course design out of the office and off of the plans, and back out in the dirt where it belongs.

Golf is better because of this.

TS

[Jeff_Brauer]

Sean probably came closest to my answer, as I believe Pete is one of the few gca's who really transformed architecture or created a "paradigm shift" in design.  The only one bigger was from geometric to zig-zag and naturalistic in the Golden Age, and that one may have been bigger in the sense of adapting the game to the new world rather than simply copying old courses.  It's bigger than minimalism, too.

[Matt Kardash]

Jeff, I agree.
In some ways Dye can probably be viewed as the most original architect. Just as Monet invented impressionism, Dye can be credited with creating a type of golf course that had never been seen before.

[Carl Nichols]

From the interview:

. . . . There are so few places with 50 feet of sand to build a course on: Northern Michigan and Vermont, and Long Island and Pinehurst.

I had no idea about Vermont -- where is the sandy area?

[Garland Bayley]

Pete's greatest contribution is to expose tour players as cry babies.

[Jay Flemma]

From the interview:

. . . . There are so few places with 50 feet of sand to build a course on: Northern Michigan and Vermont, and Long Island and Pinehurst.

I had no idea about Vermont -- where is the sandy area?

That's a good question.  Is it possible it's Ekwanok?

[Niall C]

Jay

Thanks for posting that excerpt. If only all the inland courses in Scotland were built on sand............

Niall