Pete Dye's Final Design

[Tommy Williamsen]

I am not positive but I think this might be a google earth image of the course.
The course on the right might be the old 9 hole course.

[Adam_Messix]

The original 9 hole course was designed by Steve Melnyk.   I played it about six years ago and enjoyed the course.  It was a bit tight in spots with the most notable feature being a cascading waterfall behind the 8th green.

[Tom Allen]

A litle more detail about this course coming out.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/dye-course-white-oak-florida

[Tim Liddy]

Congratulations to White Oak for this honor. Both my preliminary routing as well the grading and drainage drawing are posted on my web site: timliddy.com

[Colin Sheehan]

So is this basically a tribute course?
 
Did Dye have a hand in the routing and if so, what does that mean on a dead flat site?

My question is, should Dye even get attribution for this course?

Some of the recent topics on this site are about new and creative ideas in golf development and architecture and this falls into the category of retro/throw-back trends, like The Lido. This is like recreating a vintage 1970s Dye Lowcountry course.

Nearly 20 years ago, I interviewed Tom Doak and he said when he got started in the business in the early 80s the predominant themes of golf course architecture/development was [paraphrasing/trying to remember exactly] "to hire Pete Dye on a flat site and have him push around a bunch of dirt." I don't recall if he was being specific to the southeast Lowcountry but that's how I remember interpreting it.








 

[Tommy Williamsen]

Congratulations to White Oak for this honor. Both my preliminary routing as well the grading and drainage drawing are posted on my web site: timliddy.com

I played the course in Nov 2021. I loved it. The Paspalum grass makes for some of the best fairways I’ve ever played. It is tight, firm, and yet the ball seems to sit up. The greens have a lot of movement and at 76 years old I could feed the ball into the green. There is a lot of water but it is not intrusive.


Tim, the routing is terrific for the site and is essentially the one you did.


I would not call it a tribute course.

[Nick Schreiber]

Allan MacCurrach is the most recent guest on Derek Duncan's Feed the Ball podcast (see below for link), and they spend a lot of time discussing White Oak and Mr. Dye's involvement, starting with the early plans in 2013 until he was no longer able to participate due to his illness. It sounds as though Mrs. Dye remained active despite her husband's declining health.


Tom Weber is MacCurrach's project manager for us at Old Barnwell, and he mentioned White Oak to me a few weeks back (I had not heard of it until then). I gather that he was Allan's right hand man in the dirt during its construction, and Allan says as much in the podcast. Tom likened their work there to a team of chefs who create the best dish of their culinary career, but one that nobody other than the restaurant owner gets to taste. I hope more folks get the chance to view and play White Oak in the years ahead.


I do wonder why Golf Digest was willing to put its Best New Private Course stamp on a place 99.99999% of its readers will never get to see or play.



https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-82-allan-maccurrach/id1278405987?i=1000596369758

[Tim Gavrich]

The course looks very nicely tied into the Lowcountry-like scenery, which makes it all the more perplexing why this island green par 3 not mentioned in the article and absent from Tim Liddy's posted routing was thrown into the course. It doesn't look like it fits at all. I wonder whether it was the architect, builder or client who determined it should be included.