Architect Bio: Pete Dye

AVONDALE

Pete Dye has never had any qualms about taking risks, infusing new ideas into classical design concepts, or building some of the most startling, intriguing and difficult golf courses in modern design. Because of this adventurous spirit, Dye is considered in many circles to be the most influential course architect in the last 50 years.

Dye, whose ideas have been tempered by sound strategic guidance from his wife, Alice, an accomplished amateur player, enjoyed a successful insurance practice in central Indiana before finding his true calling as a course designer.

Seldom working from set plans or elaborate blueprints, Dye sculpted his visions with a hands-on approach that has increasingly come into vogue in recent years. Especially in the early design days, Dye was not averse to hopping on a bulldozer to attain the kinds of features he sought for his courses.

Though viewed as a maverick with a penchant for stirring controversy - the byword for his work is "Dye-abolical" - Dye's philosophies are grounded in the old-style concepts. A month-long trip to Scotland, golf's home country, in 1963 influenced his work significantly. There Pete and Alice discovered railroad ties shoring up bunkers, smallish greens with bold movement, tiny pot bunkers, sandy waste areas, and angular, rolling fairways guarded by strategically placed hazards.

Of course, practically all these features can be found on many of his courses, including his most recent design, the Tournament Players Club of Louisiana. The man who designed the flagship layout for the PGA TOUR - the TPC at Sawgrass - has been called upon again to turn a site with limited topography into a beautiful and compelling test of golf.

Dye built relatively flat and small greens -- no more than 5,000 square feet. Because of the modest green complexes, bunkers were set off from the putting surfaces with chipping areas between.

In addition, Dye installed numerous waste bunkers. Some 20 acres of the 80-plus acres of playing area are covered in sand. The water hazards that exist have been created.

The course offers four sets of tees, and even though the championship course stretches to 7,300 yards from the championship tees, Dye is pleased about a collection of short but challenging par-4 holes that mesh nicely with some of the longer ones.

"We've got some pretty nice, short par 4s that are really going to be the heart of the golf course," he said.