Has Pete Dye had great property to work with?

[Anthony Gray]

  Teeth stands out but look what he had at The Ocean Course or Sawgrass. Has he done the most with the least?

  Anthony

[Bart Bradley]

Blackwolf is pretty good land and the Honors property is lovely.

Bart

[Phil McDade]

Blackwolf is pretty good land...

...with poor execution by Dye.

[Joey Chase]

The location of Whistling Straits isn't too bad.  The land may have been a bit of a disaster though.  Domaine Imperial is in a beautiful location right on Lac Leman.

[Mac Plumart]

The Golf Club is at least good.  I'd need an architect and/or construction guru to say if it was great.

[Tom_Doak]

My three favorite Pete Dye courses [not necessarily his best three] are Teeth of the Dog, The Golf Club and Long Cove.  Not coincidentally, those may also have been the three best pieces of land he's worked on.  I guess Blackwolf Run and Kiawah and Colleton River [the last of which I have never seen] also belong in the discussion.

[John Kirk]

I've only played three of his courses.  All in the Coachella Valley.

The Mission Hills course is in the valley sandlands, which one might suggest is great land in the right hands, as long as you had the right piece of ground.  That course has a few Dye templates, plus a handful of fun originals.

I played PGA West - Stadium for the first time.  Flat sandy ground.  I got my ass kicked, and had a hard time enjoying the course.  Relentless attack on your sense of fear.  I liked the Nicklaus across the way better.

The best land is La Quinta - Mountain, tucked back into a natural cove, away from the big wind.  But the transition from flat valley to steep, jagged mountains is abrupt, maybe only a couple thousand feet.  That's pretty good ground.  I don't know how much land he was given to work with, but the course is overall very charming, not too tough, with some real nice holes tucked against the mountains.  It's not often you can use the edge of a mountain to defend a second shot into a par five, but here he does it twice.  Good golf course.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom - that's very interesting. In a career as long as Mr. Dye's, there are only 6 sites that you think qualify as really good ones.  That seems more than just bad luck, especially since he had many years in the limelight during which (presumably) he was one of the most sought-after of architects, the first choice with his pick of potential projects. Did Mr. Dye simply not consider a 'great site' all the important? Did he even think in those terms?  Did his coming of age somehow pre-date the recognition of the close relationship between great sites and great courses? (I find that hard to believe).   Or was it just the luck of the draw after all.

Thanks

Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Tom - that's very interesting. In a career as long as Mr. Dye's, there are only 6 sites that you think qualify as really good ones.  That seems more than just bad luck, especially since he had many years in the limelight during which (presumably) he was one of the most sought-after of architects, the first choice with his pick of potential projects. Did Mr. Dye simply not consider a 'great site' all the important? Did he even think in those terms?  Did his coming of age somehow pre-date the recognition of the close relationship between great sites and great courses? (I find that hard to believe).   Or was it just the luck of the draw after all.

Thanks

Peter

Peter:

When I started out in the golf business just after 1980, the prevailing wisdom on how to build a great golf course was to go get an inexpensive piece of land, and then hire Pete Dye to turn it into something.

Seriously, that was it.  Mr. Dye was so successful for a while in turning nothing into something, that most of the sites he got were nothing special.  That's why there is a small part of me that wishes he'd taken the job to build Sand Hills after all.  My guess is he would have appreciated the unique quality of the site, and built a great minimalist course there.  But I could be entirely wrong about that.

It was precisely these facts which led me to start underlining the importance of finding great sites, even before I started looking for work on my own.  You get what you ask for.

[Matt Kardash]

 I find it amazing that in 20 years Tom Doak has worked on at least a half-dozen sites that are better than anything Dye ever worked on.
It would have been interesting if Dye had worked on a few outstanding sites in the dunes. Dye was best known for bringing scottish features to american design but he really never had a chance to work on a links site in the dunes. (At Kiawah and Whistling straits he had to create everything from scratch).

[Niall Hay]

The Golf Club is an awesome golf course.  Was the land really that great?

What he did with Whistling Straits and Kiawah is pretty remarkable. Same could be said for Brickyard Crossing at IMS.

Blackwolf is a pretty nice piece of property.  

How do you define "great property"? There aren't many Cypress Point, Pacific Dunes or even Sand Hills are there?

[Niall Hay]

"That's why there is a small part of me that wishes he'd taken the job to build Sand Hills after all." was Pete offered the Sand Hills job?

[Matt Vandelac]

I agree Mr. Dye can create something from nothing better than most.  The land for Whistling Straits WAS a disaster.  Does it get worse that a paved runway?  
Phil McDade:  I'd love to read your dissertation on the details of the 'poor execution' at Blackwolf.  Be sure to include the owner's objectives and what he started with.  I've played it a number of times and personally find it fascinating, hard, and a wild ride.  I have a feeling you have no clue, but let it fly.

[Matt Kardash]

I agree Mr. Dye can create something from nothing better than most.  The land for Whistling Straits WAS a disaster.  Does it get worse that a paved runway?  
Phil McDade:  I'd love to read your dissertation on the details of the 'poor execution' at Blackwolf.  Be sure to include the owner's objectives and what he started with.  I've played it a number of times and personally find it fascinating, hard, and a wild ride.  I have a feeling you have no clue, but let it fly.

Yeah, I'd hardly call a top 100 course "poorly executed". It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there is no denying it has a lot of character and is full of interesting golf holes.

[Howard Riefs]

I agree Mr. Dye can create something from nothing better than most.  The land for Whistling Straits WAS a disaster.  Does it get worse that a paved runway?  

Yes, much worse.

As USA Today described in a 2004 PGA Championship preview story:

"The land was as flat as a farmer's crew cut. An assortment of 80 or so waste dumps dotted the property, marked by abandoned cars, rusted refrigerators and piles of tires. At three spots, toxic materials left by the Army were found.

"I don't know the chemicals involved, but you don't mess with that kind of stuff," Kohler recalled with a chuckle. "We brought in specialists with suits. You clean it up and do it as quickly as you possibly can."

Kohler called demolition experts, too. A few live mortar shells remained from the 1950s, when this 2-mile stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline was an anti-aircraft training facility called Camp Haven, complete with missile silos and concrete airstrips.

He called the police. A creek that cut through the center of the property was a meeting place for drug dealers from Chicago and northern Wisconsin."


http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/pga/2004-08-11-whistling-straits_x.htm

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tom - that's very interesting. In a career as long as Mr. Dye's, there are only 6 sites that you think qualify as really good ones.  That seems more than just bad luck, especially since he had many years in the limelight during which (presumably) he was one of the most sought-after of architects, the first choice with his pick of potential projects. Did Mr. Dye simply not consider a 'great site' all the important? Did he even think in those terms?  Did his coming of age somehow pre-date the recognition of the close relationship between great sites and great courses? (I find that hard to believe).   Or was it just the luck of the draw after all.

Thanks

Peter

Peter:

When I started out in the golf business just after 1980, the prevailing wisdom on how to build a great golf course was to go get an inexpensive piece of land, and then hire Pete Dye to turn it into something.

Seriously, that was it.  Mr. Dye was so successful for a while in turning nothing into something, that most of the sites he got were nothing special.  That's why there is a small part of me that wishes he'd taken the job to build Sand Hills after all.  My guess is he would have appreciated the unique quality of the site, and built a great minimalist course there.  But I could be entirely wrong about that.

It was precisely these facts which led me to start underlining the importance of finding great sites, even before I started looking for work on my own.  You get what you ask for.

Tom, that is an interesting thought about Sand Hills.  When I played Sand Hills my first thought was, "If Pete Dye had built the course he would incorporated the river into the course."

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom D - thanks much for your post No. 8.  That made it all even more striking: that Mr. Dye (and I recognize that he was building a career in a tough profession) would create an business model/approach in which he'd be the go-to guy for poor sites; that in the 1980s the relationship between great sites and great courses wasn't fully recognized, or at least highly valued; and that, in a sense, the rennaissance involved simply that, i.e. valuing that very relationship (and, secondarily, the minimalist ethos that went with it).

Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Tom D - thanks much for your post No. 8.  That made it all even more striking: that Mr. Dye (and I recognize that he was building a career in a tough profession) would create an business model/approach in which he'd be the go-to guy for poor sites; that in the 1980s the relationship between great sites and great courses wasn't fully recognized, or at least highly valued; and that, in a sense, the rennaissance involved simply that, i.e. valuing that very relationship (and, secondarily, the minimalist ethos that went with it).

Peter

Peter:

I don't think Mr. Dye set out to be the go-to guy for poor sites, not at all.  Some of his early successes were places like The Golf Club, on pretty wooded sites with streams and such.  But, Pete was the first guy to prove what someone could do to transform a flat site, and once he showed it could be done, that's all any developer wanted to do.

I will never forget Joe Walser [the v.p. of Landmark Land Company] explaining to me how he thought that the flat desert site of PGA West was PERFECT for Pete Dye.  He said "If the site had a little hill, or a stream going through it, Pete might have to compromise what he wanted to do.  But with a flat site like this, he can do everything exactly the way he wants to."    I managed to suppress a laugh at that one.  I knew Pete would have preferred to have a more interesting site.

[Greg Tallman]

My three favorite Pete Dye courses [not necessarily his best three] are Teeth of the Dog, The Golf Club and Long Cove.  Not coincidentally, those may also have been the three best pieces of land he's worked on.  I guess Blackwolf Run and Kiawah and Colleton River [the last of which I have never seen] also belong in the discussion.

Curious as to what makes the land at Long Cove a great canvas?

[Tom_Doak]

My three favorite Pete Dye courses [not necessarily his best three] are Teeth of the Dog, The Golf Club and Long Cove.  Not coincidentally, those may also have been the three best pieces of land he's worked on.  I guess Blackwolf Run and Kiawah and Colleton River [the last of which I have never seen] also belong in the discussion.

Curious as to what makes the land at Long Cove a great canvas?

Sandy soil.  Some great trees on a few holes.  Lagoons that had been dug years earlier, so they'd naturalized.  The marshfront on 13 and 14.  And, though Pete and not God made it, that big long dune along #6, 7 and 8 where he could get away from transitioning back to flat ground on both sides of the golf hole.

In other words, great variety for a flat site.

[Anthony Gray]

  has he ever done a links course?

[Greg Tallman]

My three favorite Pete Dye courses [not necessarily his best three] are Teeth of the Dog, The Golf Club and Long Cove.  Not coincidentally, those may also have been the three best pieces of land he's worked on.  I guess Blackwolf Run and Kiawah and Colleton River [the last of which I have never seen] also belong in the discussion.

Curious as to what makes the land at Long Cove a great canvas?

Sandy soil.  Some great trees on a few holes.  Lagoons that had been dug years earlier, so they'd naturalized.  The marshfront on 13 and 14.  And, though Pete and not God made it, that big long dune along #6, 7 and 8 where he could get away from transitioning back to flat ground on both sides of the golf hole.

In other words, great variety for a flat site.

Interesting that the site was sandy. The course has always played slow and wet from my experience and confirmed by a buddy who has won 10 or so club championships there.

The "lagoons" on 3 and 5 were already there when golf construction began?

The "dune" along 6,7 and 8 did not seem dune-like during my last visit which was 4 or 5 years ago.

I really like a handful of holes (3,4,13,15) but do not see all the love that Long Cove gets.

[Emile Bonfiglio]

  has he ever done a links course?

The ocean course might be the closest thing, but I don't think any would consider that links golf.

[Matt MacIver]

For all the real estate on the East Coast there are precious few "links".  George Peper's "True Links" book said Kiawah TOC might be considered a links if it weren't for the bermuda grass.  Regardless it was my first "linksy" experience and I loved it.