Perspective

[Ira Fishman]

Mr. Dye was born before CPC and ANGC were built, and he passed well after Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes were built. I do not think that he designed courses in either of those styles. I am curious what he would think about the ODGs and the still alive Minimalists.


Ira

[Tom_Doak]

Mr. Dye was born before CPC and ANGC were built, and he passed well after Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes were built. I do not think that he designed courses in either of those styles. I am curious what he would think about the ODGs and the still alive Minimalists.

Pete revered many of the ODG’s as you call them.  The original Crooked Stick had holes or greens that were specific homages to Macdonald, MacKenzie, Ross, and Perry Maxwell.


However Pete was not a proponent of restoration at all (except for sending me to help The Camacho Club in 1984).  He felt the game had changed too much from the 1920’s to put those courses back to what they were.


He did not go play any of my courses, being in his 70s before they started gaining traction, but I always thought of The Golf Club as minimalist and I don’t think Pete would have argued with that style.  Most of his projects called for a different approach.

[Matt Kardash]

Mr. Dye was born before CPC and ANGC were built, and he passed well after Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes were built. I do not think that he designed courses in either of those styles. I am curious what he would think about the ODGs and the still alive Minimalists.

He did not go play any of my courses, being in his 70s before they started gaining traction

That's got to kind of hurt a touch. Like a dad who never went to his son's soccer games.

[Tom_Doak]

Matt:


 Pete and Alice were great mentors, but I didn’t work for them long enough to develop the kind of relationship you describe.


As for my real parents, my mom only got to see my first course, and my dad’s health was too far gone to get him out to Pacific Dunes before he passed.  But they knew I was thriving and happy, and that’s what was important to them.  And I think Pete and Alice were kind of the same.

[Peter Pallotta]

From what I've read over the years: he came of age during the Depression, but from a family well off enough to build their own golf course; he enlisted in the military as soon as he was old enough, but served out the last part of WWII at a States-side army camp playing #2 and getting to know Donald Ross; he made an early fortune selling life insurance, but risked his future earnings by moving onto golf course architecture; he was a good enough golfer to win many a junior tournament and to qualify for the US Open, but his wife Alice joined him in his design business and brought a women's-game perspective to their life long association; he travelled to GB&I to study and learn, but had the kind of creative freedom and independence to envision railway ties instead of revetted/sod walls, and to re-fashion the ancient links courses there into a Kiawah here; he had the old fashioned business sense to serve his clients well and take on big expensive projects on Tour-sponsored courses, but the modern-day moxie to then unapologetically design a course that drove the Tour pros crazy; and he seemed a man who treated all others respectfully and with good manners and charm but who at the same time didn't give a hoot about his public image or what anyone else thought of him.

In short: he was an individual as unique and multi-faceted as the golf courses he built. His perspective was that of a true Original -- but the least self-conscious or puffed-up or ego-driven Original I can think of.