Pete Dye Interview Part 2

Click here for part 1.

JAY FLEMMA:  Why do most playing professionals, Ben Crenshaw aside, why do most professionals design courses that don’t really resonate well with ardent golfers?

PETE DYE:  Well, most of the golf courses are built by people in the golf course design business.  With the pros, it’s a side line.  And the quality of the golf course is decided by whoever’s working for them.  And some have good organizations and some have trouble.  I don’t think there’s many out there that are into it for real.  Jack is more interested into it now, because he’s older and retired, he’s more into it.  But somebody young as a player they have no idea what’s going on, or any understanding.  See, today even more so then just a few years back, is all the restrictions and governmental restrictions.  And I’m sure that Tiger Woods is not aware of them.  He’s not worried about some mitigational floor plan, nor is anybody or any player like that who’s gotten into the business.

I like Bill Coore.  He spends his life on the golf course.  He graduated from Wake Forest as a…he was supposed to be some kind of a teacher…some strange language, I don’t know what it was.  But he was always a golfer, and he got into it, and he dug ditches, and then worked on the golf course maintenance, and he was superintendent for a while.  So he’s got all that background, so when Crenshaw and Coore got together, and Bill’s a good friend of mine, I’ve talked to Ben about “get with this guy” and don’t diminish it, make a partnership, and they did.  He doesn’t overshadow him telling him “do this or do that.”  He knows Coore knows how to get the thing done.

When you’re building a golf course, we’ve got to work with in winter, rain, hitting rocks, everything wrong I could think of and I still think I told the guys it would probably get built for X number of dollars.  So everything you can think of can go wrong, but if the weather’s good, they might still get it done.  But anyhow, you get somebody who’s got that much experience, it’s bound to be good.

JAY FLEMMA:  Some architects say that you have to compromise and make trade offs pretty much at every course.  Can you recall some moments that you had to make some trade offs that you were concerned about initially that actually might have worked, just specific examples from some courses that you built?

PETE DYE:  Well yes, The Ocean Course, it was a big plot of land right in the middle of things.  We had nine holes on one side and nine on the other, and there was a plot the government wouldn’t let me touch.  It drove me crazy.  We could’ve put the whole thing together.  Environmentally, in my opinion, there was no difference.  But they didn’t let us.  And then what else have I done that’s just been driving me nuts? 

JAY FLEMMA:  How about perhaps not environmentally, but perhaps from the plot of land itself?  Maybe at Bulle Rock or at the Fort or at the PGA Dye course?

PETE DYE:  Every piece of land I’ve ever worked at it been like Sawgrass, just trying to get it dry, and get Harbour Town dry, it was a big challenge, sometimes at PGA Village, it’s hard to get it dry.  See you walk there, and you looked at it, it’s not raised at all. 

JAY FLEMMA:  When you say keep it dry you mean?

PETE DYE:  Well if it’s a low piece of ground you want to make it look like a low piece of ground, because you don’t want to raise it up and run it off the side.  Just look at the trees and the fairways and make sure everything is a constant elevation.  I can’t think of anything outside of Kiawah where the government wouldn’t give me the land I wanted.  But I think it was Ohio where we had a tornado go through the darn thing.

JAY FLEMMA:  Which course?

PETE DYE:  TRW.

JAY FLEMMA:  Oh, Fowlers Mill.

PETE DYE:  Fowlers Mill, yeah.

JAY FLEMMA:  You had a tornado go through there?

PETE DYE:  Right in the middle of building the thing.  In ’70 or ’71.  It took down a lot of trees that we were really counting on.  I’m trying to think what we changed because of that, but I can’t remember.

JAY FLEMMA:  Twenty-five years ago Jack Nicklaus lobbied to turn the pro tour from medal play events to a city based league with teams.  With the Fed/Ex cup ending in September, do you think it might create a boost in interest in golf during football season to have the pros divided up into teams by city and have a team series of events instead of your typical season stuff?

PETE DYE:  Huh, never heard of that, but do you know they had that thing in Orlando where the two clubs play each year? 

JAY FLEMMA:  There is a growth of such amateur team events, but at the pro level, do you think it might boost interest in the game among, not only casual fans but your ardent fans?

PETE DYE:  I think that it would be a boost if it would get the financials. 

JAY FLEMMA:  What did you mean get the financials?

PETE DYE:  Here’s what’s happening, I think, in golf.  The golf clubs, the big heads and the lighter shaft help the higher handicap players.  That’s fine.  That doesn’t hurt anything.  The aerodynamics of the golf balls are such that they help the better player percentage wise more then the higher handicap player.  Lower handicappers can spin the ball better then the higher handicappers.  Well what they’ve done, they’ve figured out the aerodynamics, if you get a club that’s 115 to 120 they do, hit that ball and the ball goes through the air like a bullet, it doesn’t spin, it does not spin.  The air, the dimple configuration shoots that thing through the air so they get all this distance.  So, say for example, a lady that swings at 50 miles an hour and hits one of these balls, compared to a ball twenty years ago?  She might get two percent more, or one percent more, so instead of hitting it 120 yards, two percent of that, so you’re getting a couple more yards.  That’s it.  Then the guy that’s swinging sixty or seventy or eighty miles an hour and who’s lucky if he’s getting 200 yards?  He might be getting three or four percent.  That brings it up to 208.  But then the guy swinging the clubs like Hogan and Nelson and hit 118, to 119, to 120 miles an hour, they hit the ball 260-270.  But now, because of that speed, they’re picking up ten to fifteen percent.  So that dog gone ball’s going thirty yards farther.  I don’t care what anybody says.  Now there’s no question the big head and new clubs help John Q. Public, no question about it.  That’s okay.  But why in the world are they letting this other thirty yards get by on these other players? 

Now, I don’t care what they shoot, I don’t care if they hit the ball 330 yards, but look at Purdue University.  They ask me to build a golf course.  I charge them a dollar.  I went out and I raised the mind to build a golf course because they had the Big Ten tournament coming.  Just four or five years ago when I built it, I put the bunkers out 300 yards out, and nobody carried them, never.  Then last year, they had a field last year where twenty-one guys carried those bunkers.  So now, with the Intercollegiates coming in 2008, here I did it, I raised the money, paid the guy that did the work, charged them a dollar, and now I know all the long hitters are going to be able to carry the bunkers.  So, I have to go back, and the University’s don’t give you money to do this, it’s just me.  And I’m sitting there trying to change it because of those guys, just six or seven years after the thing’s built.  You’re spending money to try to contain those hits.  And I guarantee you, those kids who play in 2008, are not any longer or stronger than those kids who played in 2003.  I don’t care what anybody tells me.  There were just as many strong guys in 2003 as there’s going to be in 2008. 

JAY FLEMMA:  But how do you think it’s the tour’s fault for that?

PETE DYE:  Well nobody comes out and fights the golf balls.  And then the pros get used to hitting it 320 and 330 yards, they don’t want to go back.  They changed the whole game.  I don’t mind, I can stand them changing the game, I’m yelling about the cost.  It’s escalating cost, always goes back to the people trying to pay $50, and $75 instead of $100, or $200.  And just like everything they do, it escalates that cost.  So now, it’ll be me, or it’ll be the next guy coming to the golf course trying to add length to it.  At TPC we added a few more yards, but it trickles down all the way to the Municipal Golf Course of Timbucktu.  So mentally they think their course is too short, so they put another tee in the back.  Then they have to cut the tee, then the ground, then the irrigation, and everything else.

JAY FLEMMA:  And they have to buy more land to expand the golf course.

PETE DYE:  And the next thing you know, it’s the greens.  We’ve got to get them down faster, so they cut them, and it takes more chemicals, more fertilizer, more this, more sand, everything more.  So sooner or later, John Q.  Public is not going to be able to afford to play the game, that’s the truth.  And then of course, if it’s bad enough, they have to pay $500 for a golf club.  That’s bad enough, but that’s a one time event, hopefully. 

Now, when you come out there and a guy is trying to maintain the golf course, that’s a good thing.  But if you take the way they cut fairways on a lot of golf courses; that was almost like the greens 30 years ago!  So it escalated as well and it goes on and goes on.  Now I’m building a golf course, for a resort in southern Indiana, but the deal is they had the PGA Championship there in 1926.  Now they’re hopefully going to try to get some kind of event there for the pros.  Well this is 2007 and they said it’d be at least six or seven years down the road.  What in the world is the game gonna look like then?  They keep telling me the aerodynamics is not going to change the golf course, just put another twenty yards on this end.  There is not one soul out there fighting that has any chance of stopping it. 

JAY FLEMMA:  Is that also because the equipment manufacturers are the ones spending so much money on the advertising out on the tours?

PETE DYE:  It’s all controlled by the manufacturers, sure.  Sure it is.

JAY FLEMMA:  So what can we do?

PETE DYE:  Nothing.  We’re on the rocket sled to hell.  That’s where we are, because Jack may come out a little bit, Arnold maybe.  But if you don’t get Tiger and those people, to come out and say this is getting to be ridiculous…

JAY FLEMMA:  But why would Tiger support it?  He’s famous for his 400 yard drives.

PETE DYE:  You see, I remember when they came out with the Ping Irons.  I said it looked like a shovel.  And then Alice said -  and she’s smarter then I am – she said, “Phil Mickelson’s never seen anything but a Ping.  Well you look at the Hogan blades I have and play with today, it’s the worst looking thing you’d ever seen.  So it’s moved on, and it’s not going to move backwards, I don’t think.  So the only thing I can do is try to build a dog gone golf course that will contain those people.

JAY FLEMMA:  How do you contain those people?

PETE DYE:  Well, I think the only way is you go out to 330 yards, and just put a chasm out there so they can’t hit any farther.  So the guy that hits it 330 yards has to lay back to 300.

JAY FLEMMA:  Which I assume probably would not too dictatorial for your average player, because your average player can still hit driver and not have to worry about driving it into the chasm.

PETE DYE:  Right, that’s what you have to do.

JAY FLEMMA:  Let’s talk about the worst scourge in all of sports, steroids, human growth hormones, and performance enhancing drugs.  Do you think that we need to do something now on the PGA tour, to set a good example?

PETE DYE:  I’m glad they’re doing what they’re doing to clean up sports and I support the government getting involved.  I see no reason not to have testing, because if a guy is clean, then what does he have to worry about?  No testing?  That’s crazy.

JAY FLEMMA:  ESPN said that we have been deeply preconditioned to find steroids “sinister,” and human growth hormones and performance enhancers “sinister.”  But are you more convinced that the health risks, that have been proven – and that’s why these drugs are illegal – outweigh the monetary benefit of more ticket sales?

PETE DYE:  Well sure, no question.  It shouldn’t even have needed the government to step in and do anything.  Not only golf, we should make everybody take drug tests as far as I’m concerned.

JAY FLEMMA:  Would you agree with a two year ban for any player caught the first time, just like the Olympics?

PETE DYE:  Two or forever.

JAY FLEMMA:  Forever?

PETE DYE:  Forever.  There’s no use foolin around, you know.  That’ll teach people.