...but Pete had Alice

[Ted Sturges]

MacDonald had Raynor, MacKenzie had Maxwell, Ross had McGovern, Langford had Moreau, Thomas had Bell, Coore had Crenshaw, Weiskopf had Morrish...    ...but Pete had Alice.


With Mrs. Dye's recent passing, it got me thinking about her contributions to golf and her influence on the design work of Pete (and Alice) Dye.  Before the design team of Pete and Alice Dye, was there ever a team which benefited as much from the insights of a female golfer to the finished product?  Though Pete and Alice were both champion golfers, Alice was the more accomplished player.  She understood strategic design as well as anyone in the history of golf architecture, and we'll likely never know how many of the Dye's best design ideas came from her (the iconic 17th green at TPC Sawgrass is one we do know was her idea). Beyond her countless contributions to Pete's design style, she may have been the first golf course architect to obsess over the placement of forward tees as a crucial design element.  Many of the courses built in the golden age ignored this design component completely, and Mrs. Dye's attention to this important detail changed golf.  Making sure women and young golfers who did not hit the golf ball as far as the game's best male players meant designing golf holes that were strategic and fun from a broad range of competitive distances.  Though it would grossly understate her role in the design work of the Dye firm to only credit her with this design innovation, this contribution was immensely important to the game of golf, as to ignore it would have the potential to discourage new players to the game.  Mrs. Dye designed in a way that invited new players to the game. For this the game of golf owes Alice Dye a huge thanks.


Of all the great golf course design teams in history, the Pete and Alice Dye tandem was one of the greatest of all time.


TS 

[Thomas Dai]

Didnt Tom Simpson and Molly Gourlay work together on some projects? Also MacKenzie and Hollins?
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

Hi Ted! 


Yes, absolutely.  This is what I posted on the thread about Mrs. Dye's passing:

Aside from that, as I’ve written here before, I don’t think many have understood how much Alice contributed to Pete’s success.  I was only on the job at Long Cove for a week or two when I heard one of the crew (PB’s roommate Steve Lucciola) say, “Nothing is finished until Miss Allie says it’s okay.”  There were lots of people on site who could express an opinion, but Alice’s opinion always meant the most to Pete.  She was his sounding board over whether to make it harder or gentler or whether he had it right. 

There would be a lot more great architects if only they had someone they could rely on for that thumbs-up, instead of the people they listen to now.

You did a good job of putting several other partnerships into the discussion, for comparison.  I'm not sure "Ross had McGovern" rises to the level of the others.  MacKenzie had Maxwell, but he also had Hunter, or Alex Russell, in other places; I think Ross had to have others like that, too, as many projects as he was doing.


"Flynn had Toomey" probably should have been included, too.


But I don't know how many of those partnerships were really like Pete and Alice's, where the second person was a trusted opinion on the DESIGN of the course, rather than just the person in charge of getting it built.  Certainly, Ben Crenshaw has the same role with Bill Coore, but I don't think Raynor or McGovern or Moreau or Toomey or even Billy Bell had much influence on their partner's design decisions.




My bias is to think that if the second-in-charge never went on to build great courses of their own, then they weren't really so important to the design process, but Mrs. Dye proves that's not true.  Pete was the creative one, who came up with most of the ideas to try, but Alice helped him decide if those ideas were going to work.




P.S.  I think it does Mrs. Dye a disservice for everyone to comment on her influence regarding the placement of forward tees.  Yes, she had a huge leading role in that change, and that should always be acknowledged.  But it comes across like she was focused on designing for women, which is not the case.  She was concerned about the playability of the course for everyone.

[Ken Moum]

Many here have more interactions with Pete than I do, but when he was given an award by GCSAA I got to spend a few minutes wth him. He was adamant that Alice was VERY influential.


There's a reason that my wife, mother and aunt all love his Red Mountain Ranch CC in Mesa, while lots of very good male players hate it.


Golf lost a gem when she died.


K