PETE DYE’S
LASTING IMPACT ON THE PLAYERS
A LOOK BACK ON THE LIFE OF PETE DYE, THE GOLF ARCHITECT BEHIND THE TPC SAWGRASS COURSE, AND HIS CONNECTION TO JACKSONVILLE f you’ve ever admired the beauty or cursed the difficulty of the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, you’ve got Pete Dye to thank for that. If you would have brought up the difficulty of the course, especially the 17th hole island green, Dye might laugh and have said two things: his late wife, Alice Dye, should get the credit for designing the 17th hole of Stadium Course and golf was never supposed to be fair.
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The man who designed over one hundred golf courses and put Jacksonville’s golf scene on the map died January 9, 2020 in the Dominican Republic. He was 94 years old. Pete Dye was born in Ohio in 1925 and grew up with golf. His father, Paul Dye, designed and built a golf course on the family farm that Pete grew up working
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and playing on. Dye was a good golfer and won championships in high school, but World War II lead him to join the Army before he graduated. After his service, Dye enrolled in Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, became a member of the golf team, and met the love of his life, Alice.
the course, it is Alice who was the inspiration to make the 17th hole an island green. Pete was always quick to credit Alice with the hole that has been the thorn in the side of many golfers for decades. Its sister course, Dye’s Valley, opened at TPC Sawgrass in 1987.
After college the Dyes moved to Indiana and ran a successful insurance business, but the love of golf was still in their hearts. In 1955 Pete told Alice he wanted to get out of the office and design golf courses and they were collaborators ever since.
In 2008 he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Regarded by some, most notably Hall of Fame golfer Greg Norman, as the “Picasso of golf architecture” and others as “dye-abolical” for his course designs, Pete Dye has certainly left a mark on the golfing community and Jacksonville.
In 1982 Pete and Alice to headed Ponte Vedra to design the nowfamous TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course. What was once swampland was transformed by the Dye’s into one of the most iconic golf courses. Although it is Pete’s name that is so closely associated with
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Pete is preceded in death by his wife of 68 years, Alice and is survived by his two sons, Perry and P.B. Dye. In his last years of his life Pete was battling Alzheimer’s. -Elena Curtis ◊
