Pete Dye was a genius and visionary who will continue to influence golf

Pete Dye, the father of modern golf course architecture, passed away last week. Lucky for us, his masterpieces live on for all of us to enjoy.

Pete Dye was an iconoclast. A wild visionary. A giant among his contemporaries. And an inflection point in the history of designing golf courses.

Whistling Straits, The Ocean Course at Kiawah, TPC Sawgrass, Harbor Town. These are but four masterpieces that, for years to come, will continue to define Major Championships, Ryder Cup drama, PGA Tour Championships, and consistently live on in every Top 100 Courses List for the next century and beyond.

And any of us can play them.

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As much as any modern architect, Pete Dye can be credited with the notion that the course is a living, breathing participant in the competition. Nowhere is this more obvious than the 17th island green at TPC Sawgrass.

There are iconic golf holes – “signature holes” as they are often called – then there is the 17th at Sawgrass. It might be the one hole in the world you can mention to any casual golf fan and they know exactly what you are talking about.

Spectators gather by the thousands to watch that hole. Not because they are following their favorite pro, not because it’s a big party, not because it’s particularly difficult. No, the star of that hole is Pete Dye.

Fans sit there all day. They don’t care who is teeing off. They are there to watch a piece of real estate, masterfully crafted in a swampy pond. Sure, lots of architects dreamed of an island hole. But Pete Dye made one – out of nothing. And credit should also go to his partner and wife Alice, whose idea it was. She is just now getting the credit she deserves as a visionary or equal brilliance.

Much like the great golfers who defined their generations – Vardon, Jones, Snead, Nelson, Hogan, Palmer, Player, Nicklaus, Watson, Woods – Architects have left a similar imprint on the history of the game.

Old Tom Morris, C.B. MacDonald, MacKenzie, Donald Ross, Seth Raynor, A.W. Tillinghast – these men shaped the game in the golden age of golf. Their designs are like ancient monuments to the birth of civilized golf. Most still stand the test of time. Pete Dye studied all these men and their work.

His great gift to golf is that he, along with Robert Trent Jones, served as a bridge from that Golden Age to the modern game.

Jones used subtly to craft some spectacular traditional courses – Baltusrol, Hazeltine, Bellerive, Firestone, Olympic, Congressional, Spyglass, Oak Hill (look at that list!). The influence of his forebearers is clear and obvious. Jones was a magnificent evolution of the prolific designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Pete Dye was a revolution.

Did you know Whistling Straits boasts close to 1,000 bunkers? And most of them are not really in play (don’t mention this to Dustin Johnson), meaning they are simply artistic dabs of taupe and tan along the way. Who does that?

Where Jones designed his masterpieces with the keen eye of a golfer, Dye designed his with the eye of a landscape artist.

You need not know how to hit a golf ball to admire his work. It’s easy to forget that the 18th at Harbour Town didn’t need to finish in the shadow of Hilton Head’s iconic lighthouse. The 17th at Sawgrass didn’t need to be an island. And Whistling Straits? The whole place is jaw-dropping. Every hole is a puzzle to be solved and savored.

Pete Dye is the father of modern golf architecture precisely because he was the black sheep of his generation. He broke the rules, invented new ones, and broke them again.

The 18th at Whistling Straits is my personal favorite Pete Dye hole. As much as any other, it allows the golfer to experience and see the brilliance of Pete Dye.

First, it is equal parts beautiful and treacherous. Off the tee, the player is presented with three options; make the easier and obvious shot down the right for a longer approach and tougher angle to the green on your second.

The other option is to bomb it down the left, over a creek and a field of 30 bunkers, to a spit of fairway that gives the player a shorter second with a better angle.

On the tee box, these look like two independent fairways. That was part of the genius of Pete Dye. He played with the optics of the player. He made them have to trust their game and the course to reward a good shot.

For the recreational golfer, 18 at Whistling Straits can be played about five different ways. The approach from the right makes the pulpit green look like an island abutted by a creek on the left and more devilish bunkers left, right, and behind.

The approach from the left presents a fuller view of the cloverleaf green, making it less stressful visually, but the bunkers fronting the green below beckon to any poorly struck shot.

It all adds up to another Pete Dye signature – the difficult 18th. Before Dye, architects didn’t really give extra attention to an 18th hole other than making sure it framed the clubhouse in the background. Dye did this at Whistling Straits but also created one of the toughest, most gorgeous closing holes on the planet.

Just as we still marvel a hundred years later about the designs of the first great generation of golf course architects, I suspect Pete Dye’s designs will hold their magic for decades to come.

The game is immensely better for visionaries like Pete and Alice Dye. Their contributions will span generations of great golfers and events and connect the past, present, and future of the game in ways we are yet to comprehend.