Par 3, 137 yards. A green that’s 78-feet long. In front, a bunker so small, you’ll have to stand on the grass to play a shot from it. For most pros, this should be a wedge in and a solid chance at birdie, but there’s one part I left out about the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass: it’s completely surrounded by water.
The 17th is known as the island green. Technically, it’s a peninsula, but only because a small strip of land had to be preserved to allow players to walk to their balls and compete the hole. It plays effectively like its island namesake, and is easily the most famous hole designed by Pete and Alice Dye. As The Players Championship, the PGA Tour’s flagship event, descends upon Sawgrass for the 39th time this week, it’ll be the first time without Pete and Alice, the architects of the course that year-on-year plays the starring role. Following Alice’s passing last February, and Pete’s passing in January, the golfing world will surely never be the same.
Pete Dye was born and raised in Urbana, Ohio. Alice hailed from Indianapolis. After a brief stint in the Army, Pete moved to Florida, where the two met. After marrying in 1950, they relocated back to Alice’s native Indiana.
Both were accomplished amateur players. Pete won the Indiana Amateur Championship in 1958, and even qualified for the US Open in 1957. Alice did him one better, winning the US Senior Women’s Amateur in 1978 and 1979. Still, their fame would come not from their play on the course, but their ability to torment those who played the courses they designed.
Their first notable endeavor was in Carmel, on a course called Crooked Stick. Crooked Stick hosted the PGA Championship in 1991 and the US Women’s Open in 1993.
Their Next big project was a course called Harbor Town Golf Links, in Hilton Head, SC. Opened in 1969, it has been host to a PGA Tour Event every year since.
Like this it went on for more than half a century. Many Dye designs, like Kiawah Island, and Whistling Straits, amongst others, have hosted Major Championships. And each course has its unique quirks. Whistling Straits has more bunkers than any other course in Championship Golf. Kiawah Island, on the other hand, has none, with each grain of sand being played “through the green.” Yet no course they’ve designed could be mistaken for being done by any other architects.
The style of the Dyes was both simple brilliant, born of two lifetimes spent studying the greats who came before, yet unquestionably of a style all their own. There are some features that are quick to notice. Long fairway bunkers will line many holes. Water will be in play, and will often feature railroad ties as embankment. The terrain will be bumpy, so as to assure that a player will never play from a comfortable lie.
But some features are harder to pick out. Why Whistling Straits needs 967 bunkers is anyone’s guess, until you climb into the mind of Pete Dye. He liked to make you uncomfortable, physically and mentally, and part of that involves making you see things you don’t want to hit the ball towards, even if there’s no way you actually find them.
And it helps that he doesn’t follow a normal design style. Where most designers plan every detail of their courses on paper before laying the course out on the site, Pete Dye liked to have a rough idea of the course he was building, mainly just the tees, greens, and routing, and then build the rest of the course on site, walking it and placing obstacles where his eyes told him to. By visualizing his courses as he built them, he could be sure that the layout would challenge even the best of the best.
And the crown jewel of the Dye Empire is no doubt the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Each and every hole is cut at a strange angle, and there is no one shot or one club a player can rely on to make it around the treacherous track. Capped by a magnificent three-hole stretch, the 16th and 18th holes are quintessential Dye holes. The 16th is a risk-reward Par 5 with a green reachable in two, but water waiting to swallow any shots that veer right. The 18th is a brutal finisher that is flanked along the entire left side with water, with many title hopes being extinguished by a hook that finds the drink.
But again, the signature hole is the island 17th, a design for which Alice Dye deserves the lion’s share of the credit. Originally intended to be a simple hole, digging on its ground revealed a wealth of sand, a necessary building resource for any golf course. As they kept removing the sand, the plot of land developed into a big hole. It was then that Alice suggested that an island be created, and what resulted was one of the most famous holes in all of golf.
The 17th is an example of the Dye’s simple brilliance being combined with the right set of circumstance. It is in this spirit that they built all their golf courses, and as the golf world watches yet another championship on their most famous layout, their memory continues to live in the pieces of art they left behind.
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