I must have started and erased a reply to this it 5 times now; the problem is that I have played a wider range and number of Pete Dye golf holes than most will ever see, so I feel some obligation to write something profound.
I was raised and, after some time away, again reside not far from Pete Dye. I grew up playing his earliest works and now live on a hole of one of his most recent.
After really noodling on it for far too long, here's the one thing I'd say:
If exposure to his most noted courses and quotes from the man himself leave one with the overriding takeaway that Pete Dye is all about punishment for punisment's sake, then that's a shame.
Pete Dye clearly likes to embrace, even celebrate, the notion that his courses are not considered fair. And as Tom Doak's recollections make clear, Pete Dye has more than a bit of rascal in him, especially when the project calls for such.
But spend 10 days in Central Indiana. Play all of his courses here, both the headliners and those you might sniff away as lesser because of conditioning or age or location. Play Eagle Creek. The Fort. Sahm. The Brickyard. Woodland CC. Maple Creek. Crooked Stick. The Bridgewater. Kampen. And make sure you play them from the tees that match your abilities.
I'll wager that after your tour, you'll walk away convinced that Pete Dye loves golf and golfers, and that the courses he has built here are very fair when attacked fairly. (Which is to say that I don't think it's fair for a 12 to play tournament tees then wail and moan when he does not get unencumbered views, level lies, or preferred turf at all points.)
His legacy here will likely be very different than it is elsewhere. Outside of Crooked Stick and possibly The Brickyard, I don't know that any of his courses here were built with the notion that pros would play them. They were built for pleasure, and they deliver in spades. Most feature very wide corridors and large greens that welcome shots hit to areas but reject shots hit poorly to 'spots'.
There is great variety here:
At the higher-profile courses rich with the more characteristic Dye feist (Cooked Stick, Brickyard), you'll indeed see a lot of the bulkheading, terrain-wrestling and odd land forms that are so polarizing.
But at what are now decades old munis, you'll find early signs of genius (#10 green & all of #12 at Sahm, the way the creek comes into play at what's now called "Dye's Walk", the enthusiastic exploitation of the land at Eagle Creek).
And at the country club commissions of his later career (Woodland, Bridgewater), you'll see he's more than capable of delivering courses that make members want to walk off 18 and make a beeline for #1.
Make no mistake - I'm not saying for a moment that it's all peaches and cream. If I see another Dye par 3 that has a lake front and right and bunkers hard left of an apostrophe-shaped green, I believe I'll go TP his house after the round. And for the life of me, I don't understand the volcano bunkers at all.
But in general, I wish the folks who don't like Pete Dye courses could play 'my' Pete Dye courses.
Rather than drive me and others like me away from the game way back when (a heartbreaking theory offered in a recent SI roundtable about some of his tougher courses), Pete Dye built places that made me want to play again and again, offering measurable rewards to any strides forward my game had taken and appropriate punishment for lapses in care or caution.
I'm a fan. Thanks for the invitation to prattle on.