Here's a little more light on the subject, also culled from the introduction to my book on Pete and his courses. From what I've gleaned from family members, without asking too many questions, Alice's family, the O'Neals, were quite well-to-do, probably from the insurance business, which both Pete and Alice eventually entered.
The interesting thing is that the Dyes themselves were in the insurance business also, in Pete's hometown of Urbana, Ohio. (Alice is from Indy, where they settled) In fact, the firm in Urbana still exists today, called Dye & Doss, and is run by Andy Doss, whose grandfather is Pink Dye--Pete's dad, and obviously also the grandfather of Pete's boys Perry and P.B.
Pete Dye met his future wife at Rollins College in 1946. Alice O’Neal was a fine player then, and became a great player in the ensuing decades. Her trophy case includes nine Indiana Women’s Amateur titles, eleven Indianapolis City Championships, the Women’s Eastern, the North and South, and a pair of USGA Senior Amateur Championships, among many other significant titles, both individual and team. Though Alice became instrumental in her husband’s architectural career, Pete did not mind getting the lion’s share of the credit. “Hell no,” he once told a reporter, only half-jokingly. “I played second fiddle to Alice for so many years in Indianapolis, it’s finally my turn!”
It was 1955, five years into their marriage, when Pete first got entertained the idea of getting into golf course design. Timing-wise, it was a curious decision. From the early 1930s until the mid 1950s, course closures outnumbered openings by a ratio of three-to-one. The stock market crash, the ensuing Depression, bank foreclosures, World War II, and the seizure of golf properties to make way for the burgeoning interstate highway system all contributed to the marked attrition of courses nationwide. Pete was a successful insurance agent in Indianapolis at the time, having followed Alice into the field. The Dyes had parlayed their local golf prominence into a thriving insurance business. But despite his membership in the million-dollar roundtable, it was his membership at the Country Club of Indianapolis that veered him into an entirely different direction.
Pete began using the club grounds as a living laboratory. There were serious maintenance issues at the club, and as an enthusiastic greens committee chairman, he dove into the job full force. He transplanted saplings after disease killed off the elm trees. He tinkered with bunkers and added curvature to fairway mowing patterns. His interest piqued, he started commuting to classes at the Purdue University School of Agronomy, where he learned about grasses, turf, pesticides, and fungicides. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Pete managed to kill what little grass there was on some of his club’s fairways. He built a “lifetime” bridge that collapsed in the first spring rain. To his surprise, he was never kicked out of the club, or even removed as head of the committee, and with the encouragement of his wife, he remained undaunted as he attempted to forge a new career.
El Dorado in Indianapolis was Pete and Alice’s first official design, which was a real mom-and-pop shop. They had to hand-mix the soil, sand, and peat mixture for the USGA-specified greens in a local barn. They grew bent grass in their yard, bought a sod-cutter, and transported sections to the course in the trunk of their Oldsmobile. The nine-hole course, which is now known as Dye’s Walk, opened in 1961. Pete’s penchant for making a golfer sweat was evident right from the beginning. Richard Tufts, friend to the Dyes and a former USGA president, wrote them with some helpful advice. “I certainly enjoyed looking at your routing, but don’t you think crossing the creek thirteen times in nine holes is a bit much?”
The Dyes built their first 18-hole course a year later in Indianapolis. It was named Heather Hills and eventually renamed Maple Creek. More work followed, most of it on a local level. The architect wondered whether his amateur status as a golfer would be affected by his new profession, but it was a moot point. As his design career flourished, the seven-days-a-week, in-the-trenches regimen made his brief foray into big-time amateur golf only a fond memory.