By Travis Puterbaugh, Curator
Pete Dye, the renowned golf course architect whose course designs have confounded and challenged the best golfers in the world, passed away today at the age of 94.
A designer of more than 100 courses, Dye will perhaps always be most associated with the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, the famed “Island Hole” that is prominently highlighted every year during THE PLAYERS Championship. The hole, which was co-designed by Pete’s late wife Alice, has been referred to by the Dyes as a “design accident.” Dye planned to put sand around the green, but Alice suggested that he put water all the way around it instead. “If there was no water around it, people would hit the green every time,” she said.
Dye, whose real name was Paul Dye, Jr. – the abbreviated P.D. eventually led to the name Pete – was born in Urbana, Ohio in 1925. His father Paul, an avid golfer, built a course on family land in Urbana because the nearest golf course was 13 miles away in Springfield. Pete grew up playing on this course, and when he reached a suitable age, maintained the course as well when out of school and during summer vacations.
After almost a decade of selling insurance, Dye designed his first golf course in 1959, the El Dorado Country Club in Indianapolis. A pilgrimage to Scotland in 1963 inspired Dye to incorporate many of the classic elements of the old-world courses into his own designs. Anyone who has ever played a Dye-designed course can attest to the strategic placement of all varieties of bunkers, unmanicured roughs, diabolical angels and water hazards.
Although his designs were often cursed by the professionals tasked with taming them, Greg Norman recognized the expertise that went into Dye’s designs.
“Pete is a genius with the environment,” Norman said. “He’s a genius the way he protects the environment, and he’s a genius the way he creates the irrigation and creates drainage. And beyond all that, Pete has the wisdom to be able to picture golf shots in his mind that are going to test the best players in the world.”
In life, Dye exhibited a classic Midwesterner’s humility, never taking himself too seriously or overanalyzing his place in the history of the game.
“I never considered myself a Hall of Famer,” Dye said, “and to be taken in, all the great players and people who are in there, it’s kind of funny to be sticking a dirt digger in there along with them.”
He once said that “a good golf course is built by people who love golf.” Dye, who designed great courses and clearly loved the game of golf, will be missed by those who knew him, occasionally cursed from the tee box on the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, but remembered always as one of history’s greatest golf course architects.
