1967-1983 era in Pete Dye's design career

[Ted Sturges]

Pete Dye has 6 courses currently recognized among the top 100 in the US by Golf Magazine.  They are; The Golf Club (1967); Harbour Town (1969); TPC Sawgrass (1981); The Honors Course (1983); The Ocean Course at Kiawah (1991); and Whistling Straits (1998).  His other most highly acclaimed course, which is on the World Top 100 list is Teeth of the Dog (1971).  Those 7 courses represent the list of Mr. Dye's work that have garnered the most recognition.  It is interesting to note that 5 of those 7 courses were designed during a 16 year period (1967-1983). That is kind of surprising to me, since Mr. Dye's design career spanned 6 decades.


What does this suggest to us?  Why weren't his courses post 1983 as highly acclaimed?  Do golf architects (especially uber creative ones like Pete Dye) run out of ideas over time?  Did Mr. Dye change his design style?  It's also worth noting that no courses designed by Mr. Dye after 1998 have made either of these recognition lists.


TS 

[Tom_Doak]

Well, it was exactly in 1983 that Pete started trying to farm out business to his sons, and he and Alice stopped living on the job and only working on one or two projects at a time.  They did that for a handful of projects afterward (including Kiawah), but not for the majority.


It’s also true that as his style became more and more familiar, and was copied by others, it no longer seemed as original.


Or maybe it’s because I came back from GB & I in 1983 and started working for them full time 

[Ben Hollerbach]

Ted,
Interesting topic, but on the 2021 list I only see 4 Dye courses listed in the top 100 (Ocean Course, Teeth of the Dog, Whistling Straits, Golf Club).
In total he's had 10 courses appear on the top 100, 8 of them were built between 1967 and 1986.

• Sawgrass (1981) was last ranked in 2019
• Harbour Town (1967) was last ranked in 2015
• Honors (1983) was last ranked in 2003
• Long Cove (1981) was last ranked in 1997
• Oak Tree (1976) was last ranked in 1995
• PGA West (1986) was last ranked in 1989

Comparing Dye to other notable architects:

• Donald Ross: 5 currently ranked, 10 total ranked, 10 built in a 22 year period
• Tillinghast: 7 currently ranked, 8 total ranked, 8 built in a 18 year period
• Mackenzie: 6 currently ranked, 9 total ranked, 9 built in a 5 year period
• RTJ: 1 currently ranked, 10 total ranked, 9 built in a 18 year period

Pete's 20 year sweet spot of "good" design does not appear to be unique to just him, rather a trend among many well accomplished architects. What would also be interesting to look at is the number of projects they undertook during this 2 decade period vs. the previous and following decades.

[Tom_Doak]

Ben:


That’s a very interesting analysis.


It looks to me like the phenomenon is less about the architect’s artistic output, and more about the economy (which provides opportunities).


Also I wonder what part of it is about familiarity.  To look at your numbers, every architect got 9-10 courses ranked and hit the glass ceiling where there has to be room for others’ courses.  (I’d guess they only had 7-8 courses on the list at once and then started knocking off their own.)  Of course, only Dye and Jones were doing that in real time - the others passed away before rankings were a thing - and yet the same quotas seem to apply to them!


So could it be more about the raters than the work?

[Ben Hollerbach]

Tom,
I believe you are correct across multiple fronts.

The more the architect had a chance to word during a certain period, the more opportunities they had for a project to be ranked in the top 100. Both from familiarity and from their style being in vogue during that period. Keeping in mind these are subjective rankings and the whim of the raters plays a large part of this.

It would make sense that internally these rankings don't want to over-saturate an architect and when they hit a particular threshold they begin to rate that architects work against themselves. In 1979 the only Dye course ranked was Harbour Town, over the next 10 years his participation in the rankings grew to include 8 courses. When the Ocean Course was added in 1991, PGA West was dropped, keeping his course total to 8. When Whistling Straits was added in 1999, Long Cove was dropped, at that point Dye was holding at 6 courses in the top 100.

Interesting point for RTJ. He never had a new course added to the list. his newest course to be ranked was Valderama, built in 1975. The only two architects to have courses built prior to 1979, and after 1979, in the rankings are Nicklaus (2) and Dye (5).

Of the "modern" architects in the Rankings:

• C&C: 4 currently ranked, 7 total ranked, 7 built in a 20 year period
• Hanse: 4 currently ranked, 4 total ranked, 4 built in a 22 year period
• Doak: 7 currently ranked, 8 total ranked, 8 built in a 20 year period
• Fazio: 0 currently ranked, 9 total ranked, 8 built in a 17 year period

All of Fazio's designs have been dropped from the top 100 and half of C&C's ranked designs have been dropped. So it will be interesting to see what happens next. Will C&C continue to add courses to the list, replace current courses, or begin to slip farther away?

[Tom_Doak]

Ben, if you’re using the GOLF Magazine ranking, you should really start with 1983 or 85 - before that it was only 50 courses, and the system wasn’t very well designed.


I think The Golf Club and Teeth of the Dog would have been easily ranked back then by the current method.

[Tim_Weiman]

Pete Dye has 6 courses currently recognized among the top 100 in the US by Golf Magazine.  They are; The Golf Club (1967); Harbour Town (1969); TPC Sawgrass (1981); The Honors Course (1983); The Ocean Course at Kiawah (1991); and Whistling Straits (1998).  His other most highly acclaimed course, which is on the World Top 100 list is Teeth of the Dog (1971).  Those 7 courses represent the list of Mr. Dye's work that have garnered the most recognition.  It is interesting to note that 5 of those 7 courses were designed during a 16 year period (1967-1983). That is kind of surprising to me, since Mr. Dye's design career spanned 6 decades.


What does this suggest to us?  Why weren't his courses post 1983 as highly acclaimed?  Do golf architects (especially uber creative ones like Pete Dye) run out of ideas over time?  Did Mr. Dye change his design style?  It's also worth noting that no courses designed by Mr. Dye after 1998 have made either of these recognition lists.


TS

Ted,


I don’t know what to think. Blackwolf Run is my favorite Pete Dye course.

[Matt Kardash]

I think it is fair to say Dye was pumping out quality designs until the mid 90s. Maybe not always his best, but still very good courses.Blackwolf Run, Old Marsh, Kiawah, Pete Dye Golf Club are all very fine courses (a couple might even be 8's). Then obviously Whistling Straits in the late 90's. I have always heard Colleton River, built in the early 2000s, is actually quite good.I think PGA West was the turning point in his career where suddenly he started to repeat himself.

I think it is safe to say that his quality dropped pretty hard after 2000. But you have to consider in 2000 he was already 75, and probably not as into living on his sites as when he was younger.

[Tom_Doak]

I think it is fair to say Dye was pumping out quality designs until the mid 90s. Maybe not always his best, but still very good courses.Blackwolf Run, Old Marsh, Kiawah, Pete Dye Golf Club are all very fine courses (a couple might even be 8's). Then obviously Whistling Straits in the late 90's. I have always heard Colleton River, built in the early 2000s, is actually quite good.I think PGA West was the turning point in his career where suddenly he started to repeat himself.

Matt:


Yes, but PGA West was built in 1984-85. (I worked on the plans.) 


The reason it came out less original is because Pete was being asked to do the same thing (create an ideal tournament course) from the same starting point (a blank canvas), and his ideals hadn’t changed much.  Also, he was working for a longtime client, and they envied them attention that the TPC at Sawgrass had gotten, and pushed him to repeat certain elements.  Pete would have said no to a lot of clients on that, but not to Ernie Vossler and Joe Walser.

[Michael Whitaker]

In South Carolina we have 12 courses attributed to Pete Dye created between 1970 and 2004. Many of these course are in relatively close proximity to each other, especially the Hilton Head / Bluffton area courses.


If you were to play these courses in chronological order you would observe that as each new course was built they became more extreme/dramatic in their “visuals” and shaping. It seemed that each new course had to visually “outdo” the one before.


I remember playing Dye’s Colleton River course and seeing the “volcano” bunkers for the first time and thinking WTF!!!


I think his early work is very UK inspired, but as he became popular and was offered more and more jobs he started repeating himself, and many of his creations took on abstract features that were a bit bizarre.

[jeffwarne]

Amazed Long Cove is unranked, but then some great courses have been built in the last 25 years.
Colleton River Dye course was built in 1998-I really liked it, and OT,I also liked the Nicklaus course built there earlier.
Now it's called The Jack Nicklaus Golf Experience-ugh....


I loved Mr. Dye's use of texture in that area, usually with centipede, which was systematically removed at Long Cove due to not handling cart or foot traffic in cart exit/entrance areas.

[Tim Liddy]

My mistake.

[Ronald Montesano]

I don't understand Tim Liddy's post. Can Tim Liddy rephrase or clarify?




If you haven't played Pete Dye GC in WV, you should. I'd return in a heartbeat.

[Ted Sturges]

Ted,
Interesting topic, but on the 2021 list I only see 4 Dye courses listed in the top 100 (Ocean Course, Teeth of the Dog, Whistling Straits, Golf Club).
In total he's had 10 courses appear on the top 100, 8 of them were built between 1967 and 1986.

• Sawgrass (1981) was last ranked in 2019
• Harbour Town (1967) was last ranked in 2015
• Honors (1983) was last ranked in 2003
• Long Cove (1981) was last ranked in 1997
• Oak Tree (1976) was last ranked in 1995
• PGA West (1986) was last ranked in 1989

Comparing Dye to other notable architects:

• Donald Ross: 5 currently ranked, 10 total ranked, 10 built in a 22 year period
• Tillinghast: 7 currently ranked, 8 total ranked, 8 built in a 18 year period
• Mackenzie: 6 currently ranked, 9 total ranked, 9 built in a 5 year period
• RTJ: 1 currently ranked, 10 total ranked, 9 built in a 18 year period

Pete's 20 year sweet spot of "good" design does not appear to be unique to just him, rather a trend among many well accomplished architects. What would also be interesting to look at is the number of projects they undertook during this 2 decade period vs. the previous and following decades.

Ben,  Please reread my original post.  I distinguished between Pete's courses recognized among the Top 100 in the US as well as the ones on the World Top 100 list.  I think you missed that.


Appreciate all this feedback.  Thank you!


TS