Are Pete & Alice Dye the greatest GCA duo in history?

[Jason Way]

I really enjoyed the Architects Week II segments on Pete & Alice Dye at a number of levels.  Here are the links if you missed them:

Pete & Alice Dye – http://www.golfchannel.com/media/pete-and-alice-dyes-love-each-other-and-golf/
Pete & Alice Dye – http://www.golfchannel.com/media/pete-and-alice-dyes-professional-partnership/
Pete & Alice Dye – http://www.golfchannel.com/media/pete-and-alice-dyes-design-legacy/

(the rest of the links are at tinyurl.com/GCAvideo and will also be up on my thread tomorrow night after Tom's segment airs)

Watching the segments, and the panel discussions, got me to thinking about this question.  Notice that I am NOT asking about the greatest "design team" in history.  That is a different question.

The Dyes have obviously had a tremendous partnership, with lasting influence:
* They were highly influential in bringing GCA out of its dark age, and created a new architectural style in the process.
* They have a high profile list of courses to their credit, that they built (as opposed to just designed), including TPC Sawgrass, The Ocean Course, Whistling Straights, PGA West Stadium, Crooked Stick, and others, out of a total 200+.
* They have quite an impressive GCA tree, which includes Jack Nicklaus, Tom Doak, Bill Coore, Jim Urbina, Rod Whitman and others.

If there is an argument to be made for a bigger, more lasting footprint in the game, let 'er rip.

[Nigel Islam]

Charles MacDonald and Seth Raynor. Raynor actually had an influence on Pete. Dye certainly like the cape hole......

[Peter Pallotta]

I had reason to think the other day that we probably can't properly understand Mr. Dye unless we remember the generation he was part of and the era in which he came of age.  He has, I think, much more in common with Joe Lee and RTJ than he does with Jack Nicklaus or Tom D. Not a key design consideration, perhaps, but for example when he was getting started a top architect was probably in the same economic 'class' as a top touring pro, and both had experienced the same global depression and the same 2nd world war. That background tends to keep gca in healthy perspective, and that shared background tends to keep the architect-tour pro relationship in proper balance -- which are two of the reasons I think Mr. Dye could be such an irreverant sh-- disturber. Also, while I've in the past been very interested in the 'Dye-Design-Tree' and his influence on our generation of architects like Tom D and Bill Coore (and I've seen how fondly and respectfully Tom writes about Mr. Dye), I have come to believe that he didn't teach Tom so much about DESIGNING a course (said with a posh English accent) as he did about BUILDIN' 'EM (said while chomping a cigar). Similarly, I have come to believe that folks like Mr. Dye and Tom D are not CREATIVE in the same way I am, i.e. that what makes their courses work is not INTUITION and IMAGINATION but CALCULATIONS and INFORMATION.

Peter

[Matt Kardash]

Pete Dye has not built over 200 courses. That is not true. I have heard him say recently that his number is below 100.

[Tom_Doak]

Pete Dye has not built over 200 courses. That is not true. I have heard him say recently that his number is below 100.

Correct.  His name gets put on a lot of stuff where he is making a cameo appearance on someone else's behalf, whether it's for his sons, or Tim Liddy, or another former protege.  From Pete, a cameo may result in many modifications and ideas and much influence on the final product, even in a day or two, but off the record, he would be the first to tell you that's not nearly the same as building the golf course.  And he does have dozens and dozens of courses where he HAS built the golf course.

[Jason Way]

Pete Dye has not built over 200 courses. That is not true. I have heard him say recently that his number is below 100.

You are right Matt.  From his WGHoF Bio:

"(Pete Dye) Has designed more than 100 courses in North America, the Dominican Republic, Israel, and Switzerland."

My bad on the number. 

Question still stands though...

[Tom_Doak]

Also, while I've in the past been very interested in the 'Dye-Design-Tree' and his influence on our generation of architects like Tom D and Bill Coore (and I've seen how fondly and respectfully Tom writes about Mr. Dye), I have come to believe that he didn't teach Tom so much about DESIGNING a course (said with a posh English accent) as he did about BUILDIN' 'EM (said while chomping a cigar). Similarly, I have come to believe that folks like Mr. Dye and Tom D are not CREATIVE in the same way I am, i.e. that what makes their courses work is not INTUITION and IMAGINATION but CALCULATIONS and INFORMATION.

Yep, that's pretty much spot on.

Mr. Dye did not need much help from any of us in designing golf holes.  He needed help building them, so he taught us how to help with that.  Most anything we absorbed about design was on our own time.  Luckily, I had been doing all of that on a parallel track, with my travels, and in hindsight I think it was a great benefit that I was able to learn both parts over the same years, so that one does not dominate the other in my thought process.

Mr. Dye is the best seat-of-the-pants engineer I have ever met, with perhaps one exception [a real civil engineer].  When I saw him in November at Kiawah Island, he was going on and on about sump pumps, and how they made places like Kiawah and the TPC at Sawgrass and other projects possible to build.  That was always what dominated his conversations, not what to design but how to build it.  The design part he could do in his sleep, and mostly, it was not all that complex ... that's why his designs are so familiar.

I would not go so far to say that his creativity was all about calculation and information.  The key to his success is that he was never afraid to tinker around and follow his intuition, and he was convinced that tinkering around would make the finished product better.  Which it certainly does.  Pete has a great imagination -- way more than I do -- but I never had the sense he had the finished golf hole all visualized in his head.  He just knew what direction he was going and how it needed to work.  I've tried to do the same.

[Jason Way]

Thanks for sharing Tom.  Love it.  Maybe it's just the sickness I suffer from, but it sounds like it would be great fun to be out in the field with someone like Mr. Dye.