Mr. Dye delivered that quote to the press during the first playing of the TPC at Sawgrass, in 1982. Some of the players were comparing the course to Augusta [unfavorably] and Pete was just pointing out that Augusta was not his ideal.
Pete's take was that it was his role to design the course [which is what he got paid for], and the players' responsibility to figure out how to shoot their lowest score [which is what they get paid for]. Commissioner Beman was entirely on board with that; it was as much his idea as Pete's to make the course difficult and testing, to illustrate how GOOD the players were.
[NOTE that most designers cannot take the same view. The TPC Sawgrass is home to The Players Championship; it's an important event so all the players are going to play there, and they've got to deal with its vagaries whether they like it or not. If I do the same thing in Houston, a lot of players just skip it. Today's PGA TOUR execs and officials leverage that power by suggesting to the tournament sponsor and host course that any potentially controversial design feature will cause players to stay home and the tournament to draw fewer spectators.]
The TPC at Sawgrass was not about length at all; it was kind of short by the standards of the day. The way Pete used angles actually makes it difficult to maintain a good angle to the green the longer you hit it off the tee, which is one reason his courses hold up so well. Howard Twitty said that week the course was too short, and that was one of the only comments that Pete took seriously. When we did the plan for the Stadium Course at PGA West, it was 300 yards longer - which is once again short by the standards of today.