Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Be Dratty, our friends over at B Dratty. It's a new decade and they want you to look good in the new decade. So why not go through your closet check out those polos. I know I have a ton I need to get rid of that are you know those five year old, four year old, three year old polos, maybe even just one year old?
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monogram so you can add your initials to it. And uh, if you like the limpolo and you like the fried egg, you could get a fried egg polo on the pro shot. So check it out the Limpolo at braddy dot com. Hey guys, sad news in the golf course design world with the passing of Pete Dye. So Garrett and I wanted to do a little bit of a Pete Die tribute podcast. And what we did was, you know, Pete Die obviously had a profound influence on golf course architecture, uh,
and he's been talked about a on this podcast. So what what I did was I kind of pulled together all of the different clips and architects talking about Pete Die over the years of this podcast, and we kind of built an episode around these clips, and we figured it'd be a great way to remember one of the most influential architects of in the history of golf. So here is Garrett and I's episode on Pete Die with the excerpts from many of today's greatest architects.
I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.
Ball in a brid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Frida Egg Egg Frida egg Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
All right. So basically what we're doing with this episode is we are collecting a few clips from the podcast going back even a couple of years, where we have had various people, mostly architects, talking about Pete Dye and Pete Dye's influence. And I think that we were both surprised Andy, when we were going through these clips how rich they were and how much Pete Dye meant to How many different people would you agree with that?
Yeah, I think you obviously hear it with everybody talking about how influential he was, but then listening to people like Bill Corr, Tom Doak talk about it, Jim or Bina talk about directly working with them, and the profound effect and impact that he had actually all the different stories and just getting it from the state of architecture before Pete Die to after is just unbelievable. And I think that's uh, I always, you always I remember those clips.
I didn't remember Bill Corr's clip being so I mean, it's crazy because you know, you do the interview and I kept I remember him talking about Pete and I kept pulling on the thread, but I didn't remember all the stuff he said and really listening to it, it was it was pretty crazy, you know.
Yeah, yeah it is. It's a great clip. And and so this is basically how this episode is going to go. Where we're going to We basically have a batch of clips, and we're going to introduce them, play them for you, and discuss them a little bit. We thought that this would be a good way to reflect on Pete Die's legacy, his impact on golf architecture. So the very first clip we have is Bill cor discussing, among other things, how he got into working with Pete Dye, how Pete Dye changed architecture.
How I mean, how he even wanted how he wanted to become a golf architect.
Right, yeah, I mean it's amazing. So yeah, so here's here's the clip Bill Corr from episode fifty nine.
But no, it was actually after I had graduated from Wake Forest and I was about to go to a graduate school of Duke and Uncle Sam decided that I should make a bit of a detour. And so I had spent two years in the Army and as I was about to get out, I saw a golf course near my home in North Carolina. Was in a town call high Point, North Carolina, and many Pete and I was designing a course there. And the course was it
was called Oak Hall Public Health Course. And I had never heard of Pete guy, and I knew nothing about this golf course. And somebody said, oh, they're building a golf course not so far away. And I remember when I was, you know, I had a weekend away there from the from the Army, and I'd gone home and I went out to look at it. And it's when Pete was doing things very much like Harbortale, shorter courses, finesse, yeah, railroad sleepers, the whole thing people think about. And it
was just fascinating to me. This was a course in the era of Robert trent Yale Senior. And when I saw this golf course, I thought, okay, that's kind of that's very interesting. And I think more than anything Andy that's when out there that day walking around the course wasn't open yet, but it wasn't too far away from open, and I just remember thinking, I wonder how you do this? I love golf. I think I know a good course when I see one, But how does this happen? What's
the process? And you know, having been away from school for over two years, it's that decision back do I go to graduate school? And then I'm thinking, well, I'm single, I don't I don't need much money or anything I could. I might like to see how this is done. So I remember the guy who was out there watering. It was a little Sunday after the guy was at their water and of course asked him who did it. He said, I some man named Die. And again it didn't mean
anything to me at the time. This was in nineteen seventy one, and I said, do you know how to get in touch with you? He said, oh, I'm sure. His names and the superintendent's rolodex, and here he drove me back to the mainting the shop. We walked in there and he takes the old fashioned rollodecks where you turning around with it, you know, cards, flip cards with wooden names and dressing and phone numbers, and sure enough
he finds it, finds Pete giving me his number. I began calling Pete, said badger him to say if I could get a job, just to see how this was deaf. So that was the moment.
How long did it take together?
Job?
Quite a while? Actually, I mean I called Pete. He I remember, I blatantly made up a story that I was going to be in Florida, which I really didn't any reason to be in Florida, but as soon as I was going to get get my discharge from the military, and he said, well, if you're ever down here, you know calling, So I just I made my way down to Florida after I was discharged in the military, and I called him and he uh he interesting enough. It was another of all things on a Sunday afternoon. And
and Pete he was a huge Miami Dolphins man. And this is in the time when the Dolphins were dominant, you know, the year actually I think that they went undefeated. She dodge you, larrysarka barber, these guys there. You know, it's just Pete was such a huge fan.
Dophins, Yeah, I think so.
I think so. So. I remember calling and Pete. You know, she had no interest whatsoever what I wanted to talk about. But I do remember. He said, where are you? I said, well, I'm at the whatever it is, I can't remember, some little hotel, hotel there beach and he said, sure, I can talk to you. He said, I'll be over here. But what he's gonna come over here? He wanted to watch the football game. He had a bunch of folks in his house. He came over there. I didn't know who.
I didn't know what to look for. I didn't know I didn't know what he looked like or anything. I'm just asking people to walk in the door. Upe done. They all look him. No. Well then anyway, he walks in and he says, so you want to talk about Golfer? I said yes. He said, all right, let's go to your room. What and so here we go up to my room. He clops down in the bed and gets the TV face turns the football game. That's all he wanted to do was watch the football game, so he
sort of absent minded. They talked to me while he watched the football game. So that was And then he said, well, we're eventually we're going to be doing a golf course up near all in North Carolina. Turned out to be the Cardinal Club in Greensboro. He said, you can come out there and maybe they will find something for you to do. It was another year over after that that they actually started a car whenever. He didn't remember me from anybody.
I mean, you know, hey, you were I was persistent and he served in immedia media.
You you fixed his problem.
You want to watch the Dolphins, and you're probably a great excuse for him to get out.
Of exactly he was able to sit there and watch the entire game. The game was over gone, you know, and so but it was. It was just one of those sort of odd things that happens.
What you know, everybody talks about the railroad ties and then you know people remembering for the TPC courses he built, like you know, a regular fan, but like, what would you say is the most underappreciated aspect of Pete dies work as an architect.
He changed the direction of golf architecture twice. Yeah, that's no one else has ever done on that. I mean he started, you know, he first changed it with courses like Harbortown when Robert trip Jones Senior was doing the exact opposite doing, you know, par seventy two seven thousand yard championship golf courses. That was the thing, that was the motto, that was the selling point, and Pete went to the exact opposite direction. Shorter Fronest course was quirky.
He had seen Ian Alice, had seen the railroad ties when they had played a lot in Scotland and thought, well that could work, we can do something of that. And it was just something that people in this country, unless they had traveled to Scotland or Ireland, they just weren't used to. So the fact that Harbor Town was so well received, I think the first tournament there was
in nineteen seventy and called Arno potter Wood. Yeah, and so the fact that was so well received instantly put him, you know, in the public eye as far as the golf course architect and pretty soon everything you saw started going in that direction. Well then when the TPC Jacksonville came in, which is many years later, but he changed
it again completely there. So I know, I know no one else who's who's done that, who's actually changed And once Pete did Harbortown in the finesse course type type situation, and then when he changed to the more challenging, longer whatever you want to how you want to describe it, TPC type course, the next thing is almost everyone was
doing the same. It was just he he literally changes, not just the direct but if you watch the progression, you saw many courses appear like like Pete's early course at Harbortown, But then after TPC you saw many many courses appear that suddenly looked like that.
Yeah, the architecture industry, your time has changed so many times.
It's it's different.
It's kind of crazy about for one man to do the life.
Yeah, I know, I'm no one else done.
So A lot of people say that he died of penal architect versus a strategic one. What would what would you consider.
Being well andy? I think certainly I'm a bit partial to Pete's Harbor Town so speak phase or Finesse was a little more at the were stone on the golf course. And they think then they were extraordinarily strategic, playing to certain positions to get to other to get to angles and things. I think is Pete saw the game changing, meaning players eating involve farther and farther and farther, and the the I think is he then changed to try to challenge those those players at the TBC courses. They
were still strategic. They were certainly strategic for you know, the best players. They still wanted to play to certain positions, usually right next to some very visible hazard. And you would always give you something to look at. There was always something in your eye as a player, and more often than not that you could play close to that
you had an advantage in some way. But I think Pete and Alison in the work that they've done through the years is this is some absolutely fascinating, fascinating courses and and yet you do hear about was very penal. I think a lot of that depends on what team you you play from. I think a lot of it the situation is there's more the impression that comes from the tp C course type, famous of their of their architecture. So I see it as a strategic and penal book.
Yeah, I agree. I I think I follow the strategic size because and I grew up playing.
The Dia Corse in Florida like.
All everyday family vacation, and you know, I still want to go there. It's all angles, and you know, you do have to see a little bit better at the player, but the strategy is so good and all that stuff.
Yeah, it's again Pete Dallas were amazing with that and the thing they were able to do too, I think Andy's they could do some really unusual type country and whether you want to call it the mounds or even the you know, the railroad ties along the water, and then the certain types of greens, shapes and angles and but it's really abrupt things that people were necessarily used
to seeing and and yet they work. Yeah, it's very, very seldom l ever see a Pete Die golf course, even a whole on the Pea Die golf course that
doesn't function from a playing standpoint. And the other people who then said, oh, that's what's selling now, that's what I'm going to produce, never I don't oftentimes didn't have the same insights as to how you truly played golf within the confines of the golf course, and so you would see some knockoff models, shall we say them, TPC courses that that probably were far too people because of that, there was just probably not that bit of insight as
to how would this actually play, how this actually it looks like exactly visually, because they might have mounds and pot bunkers and or water down the side or certain angles and things always not the same. But when it came down to the ability to move your golf ball through the golf course and be successful, a lot of times, you know, other people just didn't have the same insight that Pete work.
So Andy, what was something when you listen back to that clip, What was something that struck you that you didn't really remember that well from the interview itself.
So I when I when I listened back to that clip, the thing that I forgot, you know, I always said, I always remembered him earlier in that same episode talking about Perry Maxwell and the impact that Maxwell had on
his career. But I forgot that he said he wouldn't have gotten into architecture had it not been for seeing that golf course in high Point, North Carolina, which happens to be Oakallow a public golf course there, and and That's the thing I think that sticks out to me was something about what Die was doing made Core say to himself, well, I really want to be a part of this, when he probably had thought about it before that point, right, And and something about a different way
that Die was doing the work, or the way the golf course presented itself differently, is what kind of made him have this light bulb moment that said I want to maybe look and see if I can do this for a career. And that's the thing that, you know, beyond anything else. And I think we have later clips that shed more light on different aspects of the things
that Korr was talking about. But that's the thing that stands out to me is that Die's work in a way was inspirational and stood out amongst all the other work that was going on in that era, which was, you know, the most golf course construction work that we've ever seen.
It's a very common story, in fact, where one of these architects that we're talking to goes and sees a Pete Die golf course and says, hey, there's something different here, there's something interesting here. I should look into this further, or I should go work for this guy, or I should design my golf courses differently. It's remarkable how often that comes up, just the act of somebody going and seeing a peate Die golf course in the sixties, seventies,
eighties era. They were just different. There was there was something about them that struck people, took them aback and made them reassess.
Yeah, you often hear there's that idea of there's something more to it. And I think personally, I grew up.
We would go see my grandparents every vacation growing up and they lived on a peat Die course in Florida, And whether I knew it or not, from the age of you know, six, when I would go out and hit plastic golf balls on the golf course like till twenties, I think I was learning about golf architecture without knowing I was learning, because you know, when I think about this golf course now, it's full of really interesting strategy
and angles and there's plenty of space. And if you're in the wrong spot, you're in you know you're in the wrong spot because you're looking over the shot saying I really really don't want to hit this shot. And if you play the you know, if you find that line of charm, and I think that's a lot of with golf architecture. You just know there's something different about certain places. And that's the way I felt growing up is I always like going there, and I didn't. It
took me a long time to conceptualize why. And I think that's with so many architects. What happens is there's just a place that's a little bit different than your status quo. This course on Floord was a lot different than the municipal golf course that I grew up playing on, and I knew that.
And so the experience you're describing is the experience that a lot of different architects have had, a lot of different golfers worldwide have had. In this next batch of clips, we'll hear from Tom Doak, Brian Silva, and Jeff Mingey about their own kind of die related awakenings. So that's what you'll hear right now. Tom Doak from episode one of the Yolk with Doug.
One of the very first courses I saw was Harbor Town when it was brand new, And the thing that got to be hooked on golf course architecture was this little booklet that Charles Price, the golf writer had done. It was like hole by hole diagrams. It's kind of like you for a yardage book today, except without yardages because it was nineteen seventy and people didn't play by.
Yardage so much.
But it had like a diagram of the whole and three really simple sentences about how to play it, like, you know, this is a short par five and if you're going for the green in two, you need to drive it left near that bunker, otherwise there's going to be a tree in your way for the second shot, you know. And it was something a ten year old could read and understand, and golf course architecture really isn't much more complicated than that.
And now a clip from episode twenty six with Andy Johnson interviewing Jeff Mingay.
If you were going to say, you know, what's the one thing that you would take away from Pete Die as an architect that you know, really kind of like that you admire the most, what would it be?
Well, I would say the guts and the strength to be bold with your work. You know, the I deal with a lot of client clubs and I just find golfers and I say this to my committees and memberships that I work with. Golfers are soft these days. You know, they want the golf course to cater to them. You know, you do something bold, whether it be a deep bunker or a big contour or a green or something, and they're they're most of them are upset all the time.
You know, they don't want golf to be golf. And you know, Pete, you know, and we all know, he actually gets a bad rap. I think because you know he got he got this reputation. At all he did was build hard golf courses. I don't believe that to be true at all. I find a lot of his golf courses to be really fun. But there's always bold features out there, you know, that that excite you to play. And I just get this sense all the time when I'm working at clubs and people want to tone it
down because they don't want to. I mean, it sounds simplistic, but I often say they don't want to play golf. I mean when you go when you go to Scotland, you go to Ireland, you know, you you see stuff that is like bold and hard, and you know I got to I I talked to the Pete I one time at the uh I think it was two thousand and eight PGA Championship at Oakland Hills. I just happened to run into him and we were talking about things, and you know, he said, let me tell you something.
I was all excited. He asked, you know, why do you think people play golf? And I thought I was going to get some philosophical answer, and he said, simply because it's hard. You know. Part part of the reason you play is because you always think you could do better next time, you know, and you know, and again, I really give him a lot of credit. I think he built his reputation on not being afraid to be bold.
And that doesn't mean make every hole bold or every course bold, but you need you need some stuff that's going to excite people, want people to come back to play and come back to try and yeah thrills and try to try to conquer some things that are that are seemingly difficult, you know, or are difficult, and it's it's it's challenging these days, you know, I mean, especially for a guy like me. You know, I'm I'm still
in the midst of building my career. I'm not a dog or a core or even a Hants or anything like that yet. But you know, when you're working at a club and you see an opportunity to do something bold, you know, your first thought is, okay, how you know, how is this going to be received?
You know, am I going to be?
Am I going to get fired here? Because I want to do something that's got some real character. But you know, and I follow through because I do think you guys like like Pete die and and other architecture, but you need those type of features and need those types of holes out there. But it is it's you know, it's it's a you're always thinking about the potential threat when you're when you're about to build something that you know
is going to be controversial. But as you know, I mean, all the great holes in the world are are polarizing.
You know, you either love them or hate them.
If they're if they just shot in the middle, maybe no good.
And here is Brian Silva from episode forty.
Early on in my life, when I was teaching at Lake City and See during the summer when there were no classes, my job was to drive around the southeast and visit courses where my students were working on their summer on the job training thing, and I started to you know, Harbor Town and Well and even Seminole, which Pete didn't design but he was a member of. I started to think that his courses were a little bit different than other people's courses. And it wasn't just it.
It was decidedly not the railroad ties or or pot bunkers or strip bunkers. There was something going on there, and and that kind of planted a little thing in my mind. I wish I had been bright enough to fully understand it. And then when I became a USJA agronomist up in the Northeast, I saw lots of golf courses, but I started to really like these McDonald and Rainer
golf courses. There was something going on there. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I knew they were different and they were fun to play, but they were still challenging. But I still was so stupid, I couldn't really boil it down to its fundamentals. And I'm going to tell you a story I never tell in public. But we used to close the office the first week in December, back when we had an office, and we'd
go out to Lakitta, California. I had friends who worked for Landmark and we would play like Ryder Cup matches against them for a week. There had be four of us against four of them, and we would play Lakitita Mountain, Lakita Citrus, we'd play PGA West, we'd play the old Dinah Shore, we'd play the New Dinah Shore. It was a Pete Dye extravaganza. And again I felt there was something about his courses. And this is the truth, and
I'm a little embarrassed about this. One night after dinner, I walked over to Lakinto Hotel and this was in December, about two weeks after they'd had the Skins game at PGA West, and I sat next to the fireplace, and in a little wicker basket next to the fireplace there were the program books that they sold during the Skins game. And I are you taping me? Andy?
Oh?
Yeah, okay, all right, then I won't use great expletives. In this wicker basket was a program and I opened it up and the centerfold. You know, only a guy interested in design can go nuts about a centerfold, which is an aerial photograph of PGA West. And when you look down on it from the sky. Immediately I said, oh,
holy crap, it's all about angles. I could see the angles that Pete had put in, how a green might point down the point at the hook side of the fairway, and how there was one of his bite off strip bunkers that went down the right side, and the more you bid off, the more you aligned with the green. And I said, honest to God, I said, oh, you stupid, sob you were on the edge of this, but it didn't with the different little points didn't all go together to make you realize it. And that day what I
thought about golf course design completely changed. So it was really Pete's angles hit me. I didn't fully form it in my mind or verbalize it. And then Raynard McDonald I saw more of that. And then when I saw this picture, it completely changed the way I thought. I knew my carter's for play had to be much wider. I knew we had to cut down trees to give people the width that allows alternate routes. It was really
it was a interesting for me awakening. For if you said to me, Brian, what would you do different in your life? I would say to you, well, I would have gone to see all the golf courses I did when I was working at the college, when I was growing up, going to my dad's jobs, when I was
a USG green section agronomous. But I would have gone and visited even more, and I would have stopped looking at the turf, looked at what I call the skeleton, the tops of the t's, the top of the fairway and the top of the green, and I would look at what angles are presented by that, because I think that that is ninety nine point nine percent of what allows a golf course to be strategic, but also what allows a golf course to be played by the average
and less than average player, but what allows a golf course to still be mentally stimulating for an excellent player. To me, it's all it's angles and almost nothing else. And so this age of the Internet, Google Earth is my favorite site because when I get called, hey, this is so and so from such and such country club, I'm on Google Earth doing my homework before I get out there. And the funny thing is, you know, they'll they'll say to me when I'm walking, of course, so
what do you think of conditions? And I say, look, I'll tell you what I think of the conditions, because I kind of you know, I have a turf degree, I have a master's training and plant in soil science as I was a USC at Grontos. But I said, I'm really not here to tell you about your turf. I'm interested in, if you'll forgive me, I think you should be interested in the design character of your golf course. Does it present angles, does it present alternate routes of play?
And so on and so forth. So those are my influences in a long answer.
Andy, So, Andy, I was telling you earlier that I actually remember listening to the Brian Silva podcast when it first came out. This is before I worked for you, obviously, and I remembered that particular story about seeing the photographs that I guess those aerial photographs of PGA West and having an awakening related to angles and about the logic
of how certain greens encourage certain lines of play. And it was just so memorable because it was so clear that this was a really important moment for Silva and kind of a paradigm shifting moment for him.
Yeah, this clip is one of my favorites, maybe my favorite in the history of the podcast for two reasons. One because he in the middle of breaking this down said, and this was, you know, thirty forty minutes into the podcast, wanted to make sure that I was recording him right.
Or was worried that you were that he would curse while you're recording him. It's like, yeah, okay, that's what we're doing here right where this is. This is a podcast.
But then secondly, the content and just the overall message behind what he was saying. It was really powerful moment. And you know, this was before I had interviewed Bill krr And this this moment kind of ties really well in with what Core talked about and the influence of Die in the in the sense of how he he shifted and changed architecture twice, you know, and how you know he had he started to realize that work, you know, other people's work looked just like dies, but there was
you know, there was a little bit different. There wasn't the full substance behind the work that the full substance that Die had. Because these people saw what Die was doing, they realized on the surface. A lot of times not I'm not saying for Silva. You know, some some people completely got it. But a lot of architects realized at the surface what Die was doing, but you know, they and it moved architecture in these directions and improved architecture,
you know. But Die was still the best because he was the one that knew every layer of why he was doing this and that and this. And I think with Silva, it's a perfect example of an architect that had a great career going before this moment and then upon seeing this and realizing it and as he said, you know, you stupid, sob.
Of course this is what it's about, right, It was kind of his idea that, of course, I mean, why didn't I see this before?
It was a moment where you know, Silva planted his foot and his courses in architectural portfolio changed forever from that moment. And you see, you know, there are a lot of very very good Brian Silva independent designs now that happened. And it's profoundly, you know, as he put it, from seeing this aerial fully conceptualizing the brilliance of Die
because he saw it for once from the sky. And I think that Silva wasn't alone in this generation of arc attacks that had similar moments upon seeing that and then you know from the dope clips, you know just it got. It inspired people to get into design too.
Yeah, and there are a number of ways that it could do that. Brian Silva was looking at his course, his PGA West course from the air. What jeff man Gay was describing was looking at his courses from the ground, I guess really is That's how you can see the boldness of Die's features. And that's another way in which Dies were kind of liberated people. It was so bold
and at times just strange. Yes, there were bizarre man made features sometimes on his golf courses, and that had to be liberating coming out of an era when and I don't want to generalize too much here, but in era really when things were a little smoother, when the approach to golf architecture and specifically to shape being was to kind of smooth things out and make things kind of calm looking. Die was very different. He was He was willing to disrupt your emotions as you were walking
through the golf course. He was willing to make people step back and say that's weird, right', what's that doing there.
I think a lot of it had to do with where Dye grew up too, because growing up in Central Indiana, he was exposed to, you know, one of my favorite architects, William Langford and Theodore Moreau Langford Moreau and they their work there. Some of those the courses around where Die grew up are some you'll see some of the boldest
features you could find on a golf course. And I think that was a very important like Die in a way, I think the Great Depression in the World War what happened with architecture is there there was this stop, the evolution of architects had an abrupt halt, and we got this new crop. It was almost like architecture was starting over again. But Die his influences came from this Golden Age architecture what he grew up on, and you can see it early in his work. You know, his early
work is very lay of the land. But then he would have these bold features, like bold greens, built up greens, and it would be very similar to that you see of Lankford Moreau in Indiana, whether it's max Entucky or Culver or Harrison Hills, all that Central Illinois or Central Indiana work. It just it mirrors a lot and I you know, I think Die with today's generation gets a bad rap because people think TPC sawgrass in that style.
But there's a whole different genre of Die. The early Die is is really so much different than the later Die. And you know where the lay of the land stuff like Raderick Hills, the course up in ann Arbor is incredible golf course, like it's really fun. You know that. That's the thing with Die is the different genres of Die. And I think with any architect that lasts a long time, they go through evolution as an architect.
Yeah. And one of the things also about Die is that while there are these identifiable phases of his career you were talking about early Die, there's a kind of middle period Die with the TPC courses, and then there's late period Die where you have some really bizarre stuff. But a lot of people have affection for early Die for obvious reasons. You know, you have the golf club, you have Harbor Town, and these are are wonderful courses and in quite a bit more subtle than a lot
of his later work. And I think people have come to appreciate that now. But another thing that I notice about Die is that there is diversity within each phase of his work, right, he was he produced a different golf course each time. He produced golf courses with individual stamps each time. And again this was in an era when golf course production was becoming increasingly mechanized and corporate. Well,
Die was really resisting that. And that's what we'll hear in this next clip from Mike Lee, who is the director of grounds at Whistling Straits or at the.
The Coler properties. He's the headmen, but he's been there since nineteen ninety three, so very early. He saw black Wolf Run when it was in construction on independently. He wasn't a part of the resort yet, but he you know, oversaw construction of both straights courses and started working on black Wolf Run when he first got his job there and was in a lot of meetings with you know, Pete and and her Cohler and the Coler corporate team.
So this was this interview has not aired yet, it is it is going to air in the future, but we had to pull this clip because it was it was really interesting inside look at Di's work and especially dies work with a client.
Yes, okay, great, So here it is Mike Lee from a yet to be released episode of our Superintendent series.
It's funny you say I haven't been around a lot of other designers, because that's exactly right. I just don't know any other way. I just in the other places I worked, we just made almost no changes. I have no concept of the way other people do things, and only the die way, and I kind of like that in many regards. But you know, the way Pete handles things is completely the opposite of the way Cooler manages things.
As a company, they could they couldn't be more different, and that sparks a lot, a lot of conflict because on one hand, and I'm in the middle of this right on the one hand, I've got people telling me all the time how much things cost, when is it going to be done, who's going to do it, Whole schedules of events, on what day we're going to.
Finish this, all those analytics and.
Things you'd expect from a manufacturing company, which was really important to manufacturing, and Pete couldn't be the more opposite. I mean, we would go out and start looking at things. I'm thinking of Straight's eighteen, and I would bring my clipboard and my notepad because I start writing things down because this is my list. I gotta get these things done before you get back. And he would, you know, we'd get maybe a third of the way through and he said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm
writing this stuff down. He said, we're not doing any of this. I said, what do you mean, because we're just talking here. We haven't figured this out yet.
Put that away. You know.
That was my small version of learning what they learned early on at Black Wolf.
As you showed up a meeting with Pete and.
You had paper with you or any plans under your arm, even of just the layout of the land. You weren't invited to the meeting you were, he asked you to leave. It's all in his head, and anyone with any kind of you know that it's going to interfere with his ability to not keep it in his head by putting it on paper.
You're out.
I'd never thought about it that much, that much as the the juxtaposition of you know, golf course architects like they're artists. You know, they're in their small shops, they you know, they do their craft and everybody's got their
own unique way. And then a major corporation that manages the property, and there is so regiment of the world, a corporate world where you have your procedures, your policies, your steps and everything, and and golf architecture in general is just the complete opposite.
It is.
It makes for some interesting meetings because I would spend the whole day with Pete, and as you know, when you spend time with Pete, it's really a listening exercise and you try to figure out the end of the day what you're actually supposed to do. And then I would get back to put numbers to this, which is my primary role as managing projects, and then putting the numbers together just for management to look at to see
if we're going to do with this project. And then I get grill list to what Pete wants to do, and I really don't know, so I don't I don't know because I don't have notes, and Pete really doesn't want me to know because he wants to do it himself. He doesn't want to share that because he hasn't worked
it out on his head yet. He probably is as he's flying back home or to the next job, and you know, all he's got to do is get it done by his next visit, and so then I was sitting in the meetings and basically have to make up what I think Pete's going to do. And of course it worked out completely different than I thought, and in almost all cases better than I thought.
So it's got a good and happy ending. But getting there is pretty rough.
Talk about the construction of Whistling Straits, and I think everybody is pretty aware. You know that it was a you know, bluff with you know, relatively flat land, and you can see it driving in and out, and then you know, you get into you turn into the entrance of Whistling Straits, it's like you're entering a whole different world, and you know, could you ever imagine what you started with and what you ended up with?
So it'd be nice to sit here and chat and say, we had this great vision and we're all with this great team in place, and we all had the vision, and the leader was in front of us and all briefed us and what it was going to do and how great it was going to turn out, and we all fell in line and we're all on the same page.
It wasn't any of that at all. It was exciting to be a part of Whistling Streets even before the land was purchased, because we were all looking at other pieces of property, even before they ended up with a property that Whistling Straates is on. Now, we went up to that piece of property because it was a blank slate and it was continuous. We had at least five hundred acres and with one landowner rather than having to
deal with maybe twelve or fourteen landowners. And in the relationship between Pete and her was influenced by how they worked together at Blackwell Front. They did some amazing stuff here, but as you read in the stories and stuff, they really came to a lot of disagreements, and of course all of us operational they were caught in between that. So they got a lot of that worked out at
Blackwref Front and when they started Whistling Straight. So they had a really strong understanding and respect for each other. And that really helped things because it gave Pete full authority and autonomy to do what he wanted without really anybody telling them how to do it.
From Color Company's perspective.
So we ran the project as a company. All the people in all the equipment were all fell on under Color Company. As the general contractor and paid Pete as the designer, and Pete had free rein as to what he wanted to do, and nobody us operationally really knew what was going on out there. We knew where there was a route, and we knew where the front nine was,
in the back nine was. We could generally get a feeling for where the lab with hole was where we were standing because we could align ourselves with the bluff and the creek and stuff.
Otherwise we had no idea.
And we would look out there and there were be you know, you know, four trucks and three excavators, you know, working on a bluff area for six weeks straight and nothing changed, and we'd be like, what is this?
Where's this goffle? How come is it showing? Yet?
It was all locked up in Peacehead and his lead shaper or construction superintendent. They're the only ones who knew how things were going to turn out. The rest of us just waiting for it to happen.
What was that?
Were those moments when you're seeing trucks of dirt coming in and is that? Where is that a moment where you had the most doubt about what this is going to actually, you know.
And I remember some of those conversations standing on the on these huge clay burms out there with our civil engineers and other people, and you know, at that time the talk was to charge two hundred and fifty dollars around and we laughed at it quite frankly.
We said, we're just this is money just being buried in the ground.
And if you know the you know, we know all the rest of the story now, and it's just the opposite is financially extremely successful business.
What would you say is most overlooked about? You know, Pete Die is our architect.
I never thought about that before.
The most overlooked or what what do you think that not necessarily the most what did you maybe overlook.
I think maybe for your listeners standpoint, they may not realize what an amazing salesperson Pete Die is. I think the people that know Pete's background, he got into this business late, but he stayed till you was what ninety or eighty eight or whatever is still to some degree, I guess, or just recently retired to the health issues. But he's an amazing salesperson when he has to be. And so I was fortunate to be a part of some of those conversations. When Pete really wanted to do something,
he was trying to convince Herb to do it. I would sometimes be the fly in the wall or sometimes be you know, around close enough to hear Pete go into sales mode.
And it was phenomenal at it.
It's a I mean, all the most prolific architects are all great sales people. You know, that's you see that across the board. But in terms of you talked a little bit about where Herb Cohler and Pete Dye wood Butt has is it was there one specific was there one spot or difference that consistently came up uh with you know, in terms of owner and architect obviously you know there's there's a little bit different viewpoints from each
side of it. And I'm just curious if there if there was a specific, you know, kind of consistent one spot where they.
But that one spot are trees all the way through from from the construction of block or front to whistling straits. Uh, Pete had to fight for every tree that one author None of them came easy and and uh to his at being a salesperson, he sold the idea to Herb, and Herb finally let him cut down the trees where he did. There's a few out there that are he never got.
And he still remembers some of them.
So a bit of a story on that is we we regrassed the Blackwolf Front in two thousand and nine twenty ten. Before we went to all that work, we thought we'd better just make sure if there's anything that mister Cole and Pete want to change on the design, we do that before we regress everything. So Herb asked Pete to go out on the golf course and say, why don't you look at some things and make some recommendations and I'll look at them. And Pete picked up
off exactly where he left off during the construction. Everything that he didn't get his way on. He remembered everything, and he put it in a listen and he sent it to Herb, and Herb just smiled and laughed, and he remembered everything that he got on his list, and he didn't change a thing. So those guys went back and forth all the time on things like trees for the most part. The other thing I would say would
be the location of hazards, but much lesser extent. Mister Cohler typically didn't get involved with major issues like routing and things like that. It was what land are you going to use a mine? Placing hazards from a few? You know, mister Coulder just had some opinions on the depth of bunkers, and usually he wanted it much harder than Pete is the way that went down, and then then trees for sure.
So hazard's deeper hazards than Pete wanted, so more more challenging, really.
Two feet above your head instead of chest high.
Okay, yeah, okay, so that's interesting. So from mister Coler's standpoint, you know, Whistling Straits was always going to be a championship course.
Absolutely without a doubt.
Okay. And so I think I think something that comes out of that clip is how Diye's approach was sort of naturally ill fitted to a corporate structure. And one of the reasons it was like that, I think, and I'd be curious to get your take on this, is that he was a design build person. And we've heard this a lot and the days since he died that one of his huge areas of influence was on the
process of golf architecture. Where he insisted on being on site more than many other architects were at the time, and he insisted on having his team building features in the field and personally crafting things. And I think that that approach came up against the Colar approach, but it sounds like they eventually found a decent middle ground. But is that sort of what you were getting from your discussion.
With Mike, Yeah, totally. I think it's the constant battle of mass production, where you develop your specs, you draw your plans out, and then you meant and you know, this is what Cohler's business is. You know, they designed their sink, they draw it to spec, and then they build that sink and they mass produce the sink out
exactly how you know it was designed. And you hear, especially, you know, with every single golf architect that that does the practices design build now is like, well, you gotta you can, I can draw your plans. You hear so many of them say this, I could draw your plans, but it might not look like this when it's done, because I might be in the field and realize that something over here works way better than what I thought. In so many decisions and iterations and improvisations of a
plan happen in the field. And this was Die and Pete, Die and Alice Dye to tea like you heard when Alicetye passed, Like all the stories of Alice Dye coming over and saying like now Pete, like, don't you think that's a little you know, a little harsh on players, or saying, you know, maybe we should do this that, you know, like with the Island Green and seventeen at Sawgrass.
Or maybe we should actually think about where we're putting the forward tees exactly.
So you think about that style and you think about I think any sort of it. It was this idea. Die was this idea of artistic nature in golf design that it wasn't It had swung to the engineering mold of build the spec plan. And I think that's much like golf, where golf has an artistic side and a scientific side and analytical side. Architecture has this too, where you have the building the construction is very you know, there's a lot of science that goes into golf architecture,
but then there's this artistic side. And Die was really the craftsman, the artistic craftsman changing an era full of guys that were kind of paint by the lines color withinside the lines.
Yeah, and that craftsmanship was really important and a feature of Die's work throughout his career and something that he insisted on repeatedly. You even hear people like Davis Love saying, you know, his peak Die anecdote is that I told him that you're not really an architect unless you get
on a bulldozer. So it seemed like that was his consistent message, both publicly and within his design projects, that you had to go out and do it yourself, otherwise you'd turn out work that didn't really have much of an identity. And obviously we see that influence in the architecture that's being done today. And so the next batch of clips that we have here are from Tom Doak and Jim Orbina, who are two architects who studied with Pete Die early on in their careers, and here they
are talking about Die's influence on them. Tom Doak from episode six of The Yoke with Doak.
You know when I when I got when I started in college seriously trying to pursue this, and I didn't know anything in the golf business, so I just wrote letters to people in the golf business give me advice, which I do. Who should I work for? This is so, this is nineteen eighty. Every single person in a golf business said, work for Pete Dide. I mean there wasn't any Oh you should work for Trent Jones. Oh you should work for Mike Hurtzen, Oh you should work for whoever.
Every single person. You gotta go work for this guy, partly because he was so hands on and partly because he was so passionate about what he did. But so I can't even you know, like, after I got back from my scholarship to spend a year in the UK, I mister Jones, Trent Jones Senior, who'd gone to Cornell at thirty sixty fifty years before I did, gotten too.
He had been up at Cornell and they told him they had this student overseas, and he was like, I'll have him get in touch with me when he gets back. And he would have offered me a job to go work in his office in Europe. And fortunately I had already worked for mister Dye for one summer of construction, and I was hooked on the idea that it was about construction and it wasn't about drawing plans, so you know, so I so that didn't appeal to me at all.
And if I hadn't had that one summer of construction experience, it might have been different. Even though, just like these guys have talked about, one of the most appealing things to me about this business and about golf in general, is spending your time outdoors. You know, sitting in an office drawing plans of this stuff does not interest me at all. I want to be out there doing it.
I think it The work benefits from that. So if I'd work for anybody else at the time, I mean at the time, Pete Die was the only guy who was out there building stuff himself and hiring young guys that were interested in golf to help him build stuff. Now there's a lot because we all learned from Pete or you know, Billkore and I learned from Pete, and then a lot of other guys have learned from us. So there's a lot of people taking this approach now.
But it was really rare that I can't imagine doing it any other way.
And here we have another Tom Dope clip, this one from episode sixteen.
You know, a lot of people are very critical of mister Dye, which to me is crazy. I mean, nobody that's ever spent any time with the guy would criticize the man at all. I mean, he's He's given a lot to a lot of people. He's always been very open about the game and what he thinks is right about it and what he thinks is wrong about it. He had me ghostwriting articles about how the golf equipment was getting out of hand thirty years ago. That more
than thirty years ago. He's still sort of a role model to me, especially in the way he went about the work, how involved he was in it personally, and that you know, he made this visions out in the field and he changed it. He changed his mind on the fly to make something better. He wasn't afraid to, you know, do that. And you know, even if even if the client was nervous about it, and he's like, it's gonna be fine, I'm here, I'll get it sort
of out. And you know, people see our work as being completely different because my golf courses don't look like his golf courses, but the way that they're built, and you know, and even a lot of the philosophy behind him. I mean, I'm building golf courses that are challenging to people. I just put the challenge in different places. And I don't make it all about length, because I'm not building golf courses for the tour.
And now Jim Orbina from episode sixty.
Eight, I've never played golf. I didn't understand golf. I was like Seth Rayner, you know the famous that McDonald talked about Seth Rayner. He didn't know a tennis ball from a golf ball. That was me. And I'm very thankful to Pete Dye, who I got my career started with. He embraced the work that I was doing for him, the creativity that he allowed me to do as a shaper. I started as a shaper. I knew how to draw because I was a high school drafting trade teacher by trade.
But I started as a shaper, and I didn't think I wanted to be in this golf business. But the more and more Pete Dye sent me around looking at his golf courses, Old Marsh and PGA West, all these golf courses he had done, the golf club on and on and on, the more I started to understanding the beauty of it, and his son Perry died, sending me around to other golf courses, allowing me to go to Cyprus, point the Dye sending me to Saint Andrews of Scotland.
They hooked me, man, They hooked me time, and they hooked me because they showed me a different way to build a golf course, not that I knew any other way than just hands on. I realized that the only way to do it right, as Pete Dye told me, was to do it yourself. And because they taught me from the ground up, I understood it and I appreciated how these things were built. And to go on to work at Pasa Tempo and learn from McKenzie and the
Raider courses yamens Hall. I did work at mid Ocean, San Francisco Golf Club, Garden City, the Bobelin Club, on and on. Recently sank it he had in Nantucket, Emerson Armstrong one off design. I started to realize all of these guys had the same passion, and it's addictive, and it's it's all encompassing, and it's funny when I send times, I send emails or text out at two in the morning because I'm thinking about golf. I'm all wrapped up in it, and you want you say, well, why are
you wrapped up in it? You didn't grow up in the game. Well, because the way Pete and his son Perry shared their experiences with me, they allowed me to travel. They allowed me to see new and and and and beautiful places Cypress Point when I was a punk, the National Golf Links before I was uh, before I was thirty, before it was fashionable to travel and look at architecture,
and it just became all encompassing. And because I like working with my hands, I like building things, it was a perfect scenario for me and for them to allow me to draw, do grading maps, work in the office, do drainage plans. It was all just a big uh foundation that I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing the best I could do because that's what my mom and dad taught me in the little town I grew up in. Whatever you do, do it well, work hard at it, and uh the benefits
will will reap and they have. And I've had the chance to meet some wonderful people, and all because Pete allowed me to seek out and look at different golf courses, and he embraced me, he trusted me, and he let me build and be creative. And who doesn't want to be creative? And who doesn't want to build something cool that they could stand and say I built that? And who doesn't want to be out in the open air and the open space and to travel and to see
beautiful places. I mean, who doesn't want to do that? Well? I didn't think I did. And thirty seven, thirty eight years later, I'm still doing it and I still have that passion. And the day that it burns out is the day I'm done. But whether it's an interview a couple of days ago, or I'm working with Mike Kayser on some projects, working with new designs, working with restorations, it's the passion. And when that passion's gone, you know, I'll
probably be done. But maybe sometimes it's too much passion. I can't sleep at all. That's how I got started.
I end up doing the same thing I am.
I like, you.
Get you get crazed, but you get crazed the A lot of people say that we're in this second Golden Age, and something that seems to be to me. A common theme is Pete Dye with Yeah, I mean, and I feel like he doesn't get enough credit for what he did.
Well. I think Pete Die was People always ask me about the Mount Rushmore of golf course architects, and Pete Dye should be up there, and you know you're going to say, wow, that's just because you work for him. Well, Pete Dye taught me about detail and taught me about being hands on. And look at how many people he spun off. Look how many people work for him, Lee Schmidt, Brian Curly, Bill cooor Uh. The list goes on and
on and on. And I think about all of the people who got that chance to work for Pete and I think, wow, we all had that same attachment. Pete putting his hand on your shoulder saying, you know, this is what we're gonna do here, and trust in you. Tom Doak working for Pete Dye pretty cool, Pretty cool that we all had a chance to work for the man.
Andy, is there anything that you'd like to pull out from that clip from Jim Urbina.
Yeah.
I think Urbina's experience with Die where he was somebody that didn't know anything about golf. He went there and started working as he would say therect you know, just digging hole. That's what he was doing. And he became, you know now where he's a independent golf architect that's building like a pretty impressive resume. Die could take guys that didn't know anything about golf and teach him golf. A similar situation is what how coren Crenshaw approached their shapers.
Keith Rebb would be one that falls under this bucket. He he got on a core Crenshaw job, but he was he was a he would build highways, you know, before he became a golf architect. And it's this this sideways where core Crenshaw talk about how they don't have any bad habits. And I think that's the thing with with Die is not only was he great in his own right, but he also had an incredible eye for talent.
And you have to consider him a great manager where he empowered his employees to do things and knowing having the you know, ability to put the ego aside and say a lot of times, hey, this person might do this better than I do is one of the key traits to great managers. And I think that is something where you look at the success of people that you know worked under Pete Dye, and Pete Die was clearly
attempting to create great architects. You know, I think I don't know this for sure, but I'm sure that he was very pro them going out and working for other for themselves and wanted that growth and regression from the guys that work for them.
Yeah, there's a generosity there. That's a feature, as you say, of good managers, good bosses, but also of great teachers. You know, he seemed to teach in a kind and subtle way, and he honored the artistic integrity, the artistic potential of the people who are working under him. So, you know, just shifting more broadly, as you've gone through all these clips, I mean you went back and listened
to these podcasts again and pulled out these clips. What is one thing that you've been thinking about more than anything else in these past couple of days, about the effect that Day had on this discipline?
Just in general. I think about him as an innovator. I think he was the guy. You know, you look at all the history of innovation in different industries and there's always one company or one innovation that bridges so many other you know, is a bridge to the you know greatness, and if you look at like the Apple computer for example, it you know, it led to kind of Microsoft taking dominance for a while before Apple came back. Right.
But like there's a bridge there right with the computers and a lot of people like to bang on die some and I think it's very it's understanding that Pete Dye was pushing architecture in a different direction. And at the end of the day, he was working for developers who were all of the old guard, and you know, he was proposing ideas that were extraordinarily different than everybody
else in the field and profession at the time. And he was proposing these ideas to the same developers that were listening to ten other architects come in and tell
them this was the way. So you'd have to understand there was some give and take, and Pete Dye was the guy that got us to wear to the spot that Billkore, Tom dok could really thrive as golf architects and Gil Hants and you know this era today where you know, we have craftsmanship, we have you know, gold modern architecture that adheres to you know, these strategic principles and this design build craftsmanship that is really in vogue today is because of the groundwork that Pete Die laid
and getting it to here. You know, a perfect example would be, you know, Dick Young's cap who was who is the founder of sand Hills. His first golf course project was Firethorn and Lincoln, Nebraska, and it was with Pete Dye. Pete Dye was there on site like he had learned. And that project doesn't go well, sand Hills doesn't happen. And if sand Hills doesn't happen, it's very unlikely that Mike Kaiser, who was a member of sand Hills builds band and dunes and who knows where we
are today without that. So you start to think about it at a very minutial level beyond just you know, the architectural tree of dok and core working for Pete Dye, But you think about just that, you know, not having the client, to pushing the client the client. The thing is a big aspect of it is that he also pushed clients outside their comfort zone. Beyond inspiring younger architects, he pushed clients, you know, in a.
Direction absolutely, Yeah, I think that we actually, I don't know, I guess I haven't asked you about this. There are certainly Pete Die golf courses that I've played that I didn't particularly enjoy, that I didn't really think were very good golf courses. I've also played some Pete Die golf courses that I thought were great. But there's some variety
in my response to Die golf courses. But a lot of that makes sense when you consider, as you're saying, the clients that he was working for, the purpose toward which his golf courses were put, and when you think about it in that context, the fact that he was doing interesting work, that he was doing craft driven work within that business model of the residential golf course or of the what was then considered the modern golf course.
It is pretty remarkable what he did. And if you want to understand the transition from golf architecture as it was practiced in the seventies, eighties, and for much of the nineties to golf architecture as it's practiced now, there are a number of things that you would look at right There are a number of different influences that drove change in golf architecture, but a huge part of that story is always going to be Pete Dye and his design firm and his collaboration with Alice Dye and his
mentorship of these architects who were in his company.
Yeah, I think you could look at it from like look at rock and roll now, Like would Led Zeppelin have been like widely appreciated and loved if they had came out in the early sixties. Probably not.
They have existed in the in the early sixties, everything built, But where would all the influence has.
Been exactly and everything built, like you know, the the movement from you know, say the fifties style of music to seventies rock and roll. There was a lot of bands that came and went that pushed it a little bit further. And that's the way I always think about Die is that Die. He He's never going to be acclaimed as the greatest, like if you had one golf course to build like the greatest, But in terms of influence and importance, he's one that you could say would
be on Mount Rushmore. I wouldn't put him on like my personal route Mount Rushmore. For like golf courses I want to play. But if you said, who were the most important and influential golf course architects. He would most definitely be on Mount Rushmore.
And you you heard Bill Course say it toward the beginning of this podcast that Pete Dye changed the direction of golf architecture not once but twice. And how many golf architects can claim to have done that even once?
Yeah, And I think Jeff Minge's comments about his boldness and is unapologetic about his architecture and even even to standing up to PGA tour pros, which we see is still an ongoing problem. Is you know, we need more Pete Dies in golf architecture that say screw them, like we see just this week with Trinity Forrest getting pulled from the schedule because you know, it's it's different and golf and golfers don't want to go. You know, great
architecture is just like great art. Anything that evokes a reaction is good. You don't want it to evoke nothing. You know, whether the thing about Die's work was it evoked reaction, whether good or bad, and you have to say that's a plus. That means he's doing something that's different and unique, and that in itself is important.
I'm always happy to see a Pete Die or on television on tour. I always look forward to that. I might not be the hugest fan of TPC Sawgrass in the world, but I look forward to seeing that golf course on television. And yeah, and that's that's a tribute to his boldness and and something we didn't really even talk about that much, though I hope it came through in the clips, is that Pete Dye's personality had an
effect on a lot of people. And that was really important to the impact that he had, you know, just the way as you were referring to earlier, just the way that he was that he dealt with complaints from PGA tour pros. I mean a lot of the pros were actively hostile towards his work, right. You go back and look at some of these quotes from you know, the Peter Jacobson's of the World. I think Paul Asinger was in there too, calling him out. Oh yeah, okay, you know from.
I don't know, maybe not sorry, I'm sorry, Paul.
And Corey Pavin. Corey Haven was particularly severe.
Yeah, he won that week too.
You know, there was this was the case from TPC Sawgrass forward. I think the pros generally liked Harbor Town, though there was maybe a little bit of grumbling about that. But once Pete Dye entered that phase of his more difficult golf courses, his stadium golf courses, the pros really resisted. And you know, whatever you think of legitimacy of the pro's complaints, you have to have a regard for how Pete Dye reacted to them. Basically, he said, it's what
I was going for. That's what you know. He wasn't defensive about it. He had a sense of humor. He just took it and he held his ground.
And this is where it's so important to remember who he was building courses for. These were he was hired by the PGA Tour to build tournament championship golf courses. These golf courses that so often you hear that the retail golfer complain about, there are golf courses that were built to host tournaments, built to to test the pros. You know, these weren't golf courses built by Mike Kaiser to be for the retail golfer, as he likes to
call it is the sole purpose of them. What Pete Die was going was to challenge PGA Tour players, and that's an important thing to remember with golf courses. And Tom Doak said it like, I rarely build golf courses for championship golf and tournament When Pete Die was built, every golf course that Pete Die built was for tournament golf with the intention of hosting championship golf. And that's
an important thing. How Die's kind of career shifted wasn't I don't think necessarily he you know, what he wanted to build shifted. It was what he was building for shifted.
Right.
His early work was you know, you're getting the jobs you can, and most of those jobs are focused on clubs like these are golf courses built for members, not for PGA Tour players. The later when you got pop, when he got popular, and we've seen some similar thing with Gil Hants, where Gil Hans is now the guy to go higher for a championship golf course. You know, if you want to, you know, refresh your championship golf course. It seems like everybody's hiring Gil Hans. That wasn't what
Gil's original career was. He made his name by restoring some great classic golf courses that have no intention of hosting major championship golf.
Yeah, I mean, is Pete Die building a stadium golf course for just a membership? No, I mean, the idea is ridiculous. Obviously, he wouldn't build a stadium golf course unless there is, you know, a presumed crowd to fill the stadium. And he executed that idea in TPC Sawgrass. And I don't know if you've talked to people who have been to the Players Championship, but apparently it's the most fun thing pretty much that you can do.
Oh, it's an incredible it's incredible viewing experience, like you can see, Yeah, you can see all kinds. It is comparatively to other you know, you go to a different US Open course every every year, and the the way the viewer experienced as a fan, the way you can see shots at Sawgrass is unlike anything I've seen at a at a US Open venue or really, for that matter, many other tournament venues.
And that that was the intention, and he really pulled it off. And so there's so much to dig into in Pete Dye's career, Pete Die's work. I'm sure that we'll continue talking about it in the coming months, but in the meantime it was It was good to hear from some of these architects who have worked for him and to whom Pete Dye meant a lot. It was really cool to reflect on these clips.
Yeah, it was fun to ta