Mark Fine and I wrote extensively about fairness in our hazards book. I give Mark the bulk of the credit because he believed that so many clubs and golfers needed to hear about this important concept from the viewpoint of the designer.
In writing about TPC No. 17 — which I believe we FAIRLY presented — we related the following:
The story of the TPC at Sawgrass begins with former PGA Commissioner, Dean Beaman. His objective was simple: Build a home course to the pros which could serve as a constant site for a “5th Major.” Beaman also insisted that the course be conceived from the ground up to serve spectators. As inspiration he looked to Muirfield Village, a creation of Desmond Muirhead working with Jack Nicklaus. Beaman and the PGA settled on a site in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida for this undertaking, and Pete Dye was enlisted to bring it to life.
According to Pete Dye in his book, Bury Me in a Pot Bunker, if he and his wife, Alice had not been on the scene to supervise construction, there would never have been such a green at the Stadium Course. The area of the 17th proved to contain the best sand on the site. The Dyes excavated this area clean, developing huge piles of sand which would later serve to cap fairways throughout the project. “The more we dug it out to use on the fairways, the deeper and wider the cavity became,” recalls Dye.
Many years before, Pete and Alice has played the Ponte Vedra Club, a 1932 design by Herbert Strong. “Such a hole was the farthest thing from my mind when we set the marker for...the seventeenth hole,” says Dye. But, with massive amounts of sand gone from the area, the Dyes conspired about the possibility.
With Beaman was on board with the idea, the Dyes went to work figuring out how to completely surround a green with water. Such issues as access, how much bail-out area and how large a lake to construct were all issues. Originally, the 17th was to have only a small lake to the left of the green. According to Dye, the green was about 26 yards deep and 30 yards wide when they were finished with the shape. A small pot bunker was set at the front of the simple shape.
Pete did not feel the hole would be all that difficult, so he intentionally sloped the green slightly away from the golfer toward the back. Alice, however, vetoed this, feeling that it was difficult enough without the fall-away slope. Pete conceded.
At first the 17th was met with critism, as were many parts of the Stadium Course. The spectator mounds themselves were the butt of many jokes. Unless you were there as a spectator the enormous mounds and gallery areas were seen as “blights on the landscape.” But it was difficult for a professional golfer—in fact, any golfer—to find fault with a short iron to a green of a about 6,000 s.f. What could be easier that hitting a wedge or 9-iron to a simple green? Sure, the stroke average for the 17th has approached 4.0 during PGA events, but what’s the beef? Not only is it a short iron, but you are able to tee your ball for a perfect “lie.”
The impact of the 17th is felt even before a golfer arrives at the first tee. For more than three agonizing hours our golfer is kept waiting in the wings. Finally, upon arriving at the edge of the lake, the tiny island must be faced. Among the ingenious aspects at play, including the very fact that the hole falls one from the last, is the ratio of land to water; the wooden bulkheads which so cleanly define land from water; and the edge of the putting surface, which seems dangerously close to the verticle edge.
For our purposes, the 17th is made famous by its history, its intrigue and it purity in terms of diabolical playfulness with the golfer’s mind...The Dyes took the simplest of concepts and brought it to an extreme. There is no namby-pamby bail-out, no slopes on which a ball might possible come to rest, and no hollows to catch a slightly off-line execution. Nothing but a platform of turf, an expanse of still water, and one small bunker for good measure.