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Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Be the right club. Be the right club today.
Yes!
That's better than most.
How about him? That is better than most.
Better than most! Expect anything different?
ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the nolanga podcast my name is dj uh this is it's our sunday episode technically but it's gonna be a lot different than our normal sunday episode that's because we're off filming a season of our travel series tourist sauce and so what you're gonna get tonight is actually part two of our deep dot our deep deep deep dive on architect extraordinaire pete dye if you've not listened to part one
That should be the previous one in the feed. Go check that out. Me, Neil, and Charlie Van Kirk having a lengthy chat about Pete's bio. The first couple courses that we wanted to cover, we're doing this as kind of a history of Pete Dye and 10 golf courses. So we covered the first three. In episode one, we're going to cover the rest of them here in episode two. Lots of fun.
Excited to get into the remainder of our research today on this episode. Before we get started, I want to give a shout out, as always, to our friends at Titleist, presenting sponsor of this here podcast. Like I mentioned, we are off shooting our travel series of Tourist Sauce right now.
I'm probably standing somewhere in Scotland right now with a GTS2 driver in my hand, maybe even feeling whiffs of confidence off the tee for the first time in quite a while. I got fit for the GTS driver.
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Chapter 2: How does the team describe Pete Dye's design philosophy?
Yeah, let's do it. Let's get right into it. If you missed the last episode, go back and listen to it. But if you refuse to do so, we talked a lot of biography. of the great man, Pete die. We talked about the first of the first three of 10 golf courses that we're going to get into in detail. We talked about cricket stick.
We talked about the golf club up in Ohio, not to be confused with the country club, Neil. And we talked about Harbor town and the heritage and the Jack Nicholas of it all. And a spice push, a lot of good stuff in, in part one. In part two here, like I said, we're going to focus on the last seven golf courses.
We're going to get into some heavy hitters that people know, that people have watched on TV. It's a really fun lineup. We've got a lot more firsthand audio, a lot of good photos. It's going to be great. Can I just, before we... Go any farther. Can I tell you what I couldn't stop thinking about in the dark while I was feeding my son Wes about 45 minutes ago?
That Pete Dye gambled away his GI Bill money? Did he pay that? Was that a tall tale? Did he literally just leave college, throw the clubs in the creek and leave? My impression was that it was not the entire GI Bill, but maybe like that month's allotment or that week's allotment or something. He wasn't very specific about it in the book, that part of it.
But the story itself was so specific, him leaving his bride to be in the lurch on a playoff hole that I figure it has to be at least somewhat true.
yeah i mean yeah just that one i was just thinking i was like man that's a that's a big miss there like i know it all worked out for him but that was really stupid a lot of uh a lot of these stories don't really hold up to uh to kind of that first order of of poking holes you know so it's better to just kind of take him at face value and uh and i mean we talked about a lot but i was like man let me just double click right on that one in like the first 30 minutes did that was that what i heard okay
Again, if you missed part one, go back and listen to it if you're not going to do that. We're doing the Pete Dye and 10 golf courses. We've been trying to give Neil some song comps. I think we missed on Harbortown. I didn't really have a good one. Charlie, did you have a good one for Harbortown? My prompt was, let me read my prompt.
It was the single that really launched the career a little more refined and less bombastic than his later works. Possibly a prominent feature, prominent collab with Mr. Nicholas. I don't have a good answer for it, but I'm sure someone does. I mean, I'm going to first go to the Beatles. You know that. I think something like Something. You know, a little softer.
Like, oh, this George guy, he can really do it. But he's kind of in partnership with the rest of the squad. That comes to mind. I was thinking, nah, this isn't going to hold up in court. But Sting and the police. Maybe it's the police and then he goes off and becomes Sting on his own. I'm not familiar enough with the police to know where it's going to fall in the discography. Or who did, like...
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Pete Dye face while designing Teeth of the Dog?
And I think they had to, you had to have some requisite knowledge of the game in order to kind of figure out what he was talking about. He just didn't necessarily want it to be like, Oh, do it exactly like this golf course. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. He had his own vernacular. He called it Urbana ease that required sophisticated translations from some of his more trusted lieutenants.
So there's yeah, there's some some funny stories about him grumbling about something. And then his lieutenant would go to the crew and said, OK, Mr. Dye has no idea what he wants. He doesn't like what we've done, but we're going to go out and try some more things until he does like.
what ends up happening that's a great spot he's just gonna know it when he sees it exactly don't worry exactly it's it's really threading that needle between I'm making it all up as I go uh but I do kind of know what I want uh so if you could just meet me halfway it's uh yeah it's really really fun stuff but it's not the most affordable way to build a golf course as it turns out it's true not efficient
All right. The first golf course we're going to talk about today of the seven that we have left to get to is a course that Neil and I have been to. We went there earlier this year down in the Dominican Republic. We are, of course, talking about teeth of the dog song comp here, you know, history, rock and roll and 10 songs. This was Charlie's prompt.
Some of the strongest raw songwriting in the catalog, showy and wild recorded with simple tools.
analog record no heavy machinery lots of hand tools crazy manual labor i mean what what struck out to me is just again we're talking mainstream stuff here it's it's led zeppelin it's it's a whole lot of frog rock you know but maybe too much synth and and effects and progress it feels like bonham yeah it's just thunderous you know charlie is that you can you get down with that
Fully down with Bonham. Yes. Give me a lot of love. You could argue for me is a power trio. You could talk me into Rush. Of course. Of course. Working man. I know how you feel about that one. Well, let's get down to it. Charlie, how did Pete actually get linked up with the folks in the Dominican Republic to begin with? Because he ends up doing a ton of work down there.
Pete was friends with the CEO of Gulf and Western, which was the sugar conglomerate who will hear more about them momentarily, who developed this site and ran a sugar mill still run, I believe. Well, it's new ownership now, but they ran the sugar mill there at the time. Pete was friends with Charles Bloodhorn, the CEO. Pete doesn't talk about...
b-l-u-d uh horn but yeah just epic epic stuff i think they own columbia pictures too i think they were i think really gulf and western was like maybe i'm getting that wrong but i feel like gulf and western like when you say conglomerate was doing a little bit of everything yeah i think they had their fingers in a lot of stuff Well, in 1969, Pete is driving around the Dominican Republic.
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Chapter 4: How did Pete Dye's personal experiences influence his designs?
Couldn't get a dozer in there? What are we talking about? Yeah, there are some questions to be asked. I do agree with that. I mean, but just think about the – with no infrastructure around, like you got to build the whole – like the roads, the – I don't know. It's not just – you're not just building the golf course here. Totally.
You're kind of building like the way that you see neighborhoods get built. You got to build those cul-de-sacs first to get – I guess if you're not using heavy machinery, maybe not as much. So that's probably some of it too. No, but I mean, if you're building for, you know, infrastructure, people getting in and out and all that stuff is. Yeah, I agree. All that stuff.
I mean, on that on that note, there's you were there, Neil. It's it's very rocky. There's there's boulders everywhere. So there were boulders lying in all over these like.
proposed fairways so to Charlie's point like the this team of 300 people would just have to get all these rocks out of the fairway like huge rocks get them loaded on the canes on sugar cane carts and get them pulled away and then they would stack them into these like really high walls that you can see those big stone walls that you see in Casa de Campo and
When they were finished, that wall ended up being like nearly two miles long, contained more than 20,000 tons of rock, which is all, again, like moved by hand. I mean, it's so much work to get that done.
So flashing back to our, you know, our, our peak contains multitudes, pizza man of contradictions, uh, discussion from, from part one, Pete and the team came up with this idea of using, I think it's Casa. Is that how you, is that how you say it? 100% sure. which is a byproduct of sugar cane as kind of the chief ingredient of the topsoil.
You've got to imagine there's a lot of this hanging around with our 330,000 tons of sugar being processed per year. But it's like this organic material. It's kind of like peat moss. And so they would mix it with the sand and the red dirt to create the topsoil that they needed. And then peat, again, we talked about it. tons of different grasses, variety of grasses.
You can see that when you're down there, even though they just kind of redid the fairways and the teas and stuff, but you can still see like all the different texture and stuff that's, that's going down at a place like this. So originally it was Bermuda in the fairways. I think it's Bahia and Guinea grass in the rough tiff dwarf on the teas and greens.
And on many holes, the fairways were painstakingly planted sprig by sprig blade by blade by workers using a little point stick. Would love to know more on that. Pointless artwork. Yeah, truly. Pete's very proud of this when it's done. He's very proud of the setting and the golf holes. He's got some strong words for this.
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Chapter 5: What are the key design philosophies of Pete Dye?
This might be my platform going in the next 20 years. It's like, let's slow these greens down. What are we doing? Slow down the tempo. I stand with Pete on this. Bring back slope. Exactly right. So it kind of scaled these down a little bit compared to some of the other designs, which I think probably speaks, this is my reading of it, but I mean...
probably speaks to why the course is like 97% the same as it was when it opened, right? I mean, this wasn't one that they've had to tinker with quite as much. Yeah. Another thing that I will join Pete on is going back to this more rustic, rugged look, if you will. The bones of the course are 97% the same, I think was a quote from Bob Patton, the director of golf there now.
But when the course first went up, similar to Sawgrass, it was so natural and alive looking. And to be fair, there was no housing initially.
Chapter 6: How did Pete Dye's designs adapt over time?
And so the housing that surrounds it now changes the overall tapestry of what you're looking at. But it's become a much more perfectly manicured style of golf course, along with this like I don't want to say paint too broad of a brush that everybody's chasing Augusta, but there's an element of that that a lot of people have talked to me about.
And, you know, some people have different feelings about, like, should we, yeah, should we, like, rough up the edges a little bit? It's just like Pete Beckman Urbana. He wants it to look green. That's right.
Exactly.
Much like Alice Dye, a micro version here, if we're going to mention Long Cove, we need to talk about LaHunta Stovall, I think. Charlie, who is LaHunta Stovall? LaHunta Stovall, by all accounts, was a menace. She was the woman who hit the first tee shot on number 10. It's one of the early members at Long Cove.
And I've got some tape from Bob Patton, the director of golf there, talking about LaHunta.
And Alice was out here every day. I mean, Alice was another one who really deserves some credit for this golf course. She would come out at the end of the day and look at something that Pete had done. And she'd say, now, how are the ladies going to play this? Or how are the high end? You know, I mean, she would make points that hit home with Pete.
To that point, can you tell me who LaHunta Stovall was? LaHunta Stovall, exactly. So two of our first members were Louie and Lahana Stovall. In fact, they built the first house in Long Cove. And Lahana was a good player. She had an interesting background. She was a ball of fire. She had kind of a gruff voice.
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Chapter 7: Who was LaHunta Stovall and why is she significant?
She had one of those kind of, but she loved golf. She was a golf nut. I mean, she was a single digit handicapper, I think, in those early years. And of course, Alice was a very good player, an accomplished player. And Alice and Lahana kind of hit it off.
And when they were out reviewing Pete's work at the end of the day or whatever, Alice would say, you know, Pete, how is Lahana going to play this hole? And that was kind of where that came from. We actually have a tournament at the club every year named after Lahana Stovall.
Just circling back to our first episode, I think, of just, you know, good players, but learn to have the average player in mind at all turns. I love it. I also need to do a deeper dive on Lujano Stovall based on some of the maybe off-the-record stories that were in there. I think moving on, this is another one, you know, we're landing the plane here on Long Cove, but...
I'm not going to set it up. I think just just play the Bob Patton story about the top 100 rankings and the committee and and what happens when the committee gets involved.
we had a kind of a funny situation where we were top 100 golf course for years. And at some point we fell out of the top golf digest, top 100, you know, course rankings are a source of frustration. It's, you know, it's an interesting thing and it's, but some people take it way too seriously.
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Chapter 8: What challenges did Pete Dye face during course construction?
And we dropped out of the top 100 at some point. And, and of course, like a lot of clubs do, you know, when you have a problem, what do you do? You form a committee, right? Because we have a lot of experts here, of course, on these things. And we formed a committee. And there were a couple of type A strong personalities on the committee.
And they created a list of things that they felt like we needed to do in order to get ourselves back into the top 100. We need to put a bunker on the left side of the first fairway. It's wide open over there. And there's no need to be straight. Just different things that they came up with. And I kept saying, you know, guys, you know, this is fine.
You can do this, but you got to remember it's Pete's golf course. It's not yours. So we're not doing anything without Pete's blessing. So they create this list and then they asked me to get Pete. So I had to call Pete and he happened to be, it was sometime soon after that, he happened to be in the area and he said, okay, I'll come by and
That morning, I went and picked him up at the hotel, and I said, Pete, okay, we're going to meet with this group of guys, and they're going to want to tell you that they want to do this or they want to do that. And he goes, okay, that's fine. That's fine. No problem.
And we were going to meet him out on the putting ground right by the first tee, and we got out there, and he says, go to the first tee. Don't go to them. He says, I want them to come to me. I'm not going to them. So we go to the first tee and they walk over as five or six guys.
And the first thing out of his mouth as they come up was, guys, I've seen more great golf courses screwed up by committees than you can shake a stick at. Now, what do you want to talk to me about?
I mean, he set the tone immediately and to his credit, you know, he then said, you know, he basically took the list and he kind of explained to him why he didn't think you would want to bunker down the left side of the first hole, because, you know, he had his rationale and he explained it and he was, he was good. You know, he, he,
He just wanted them to know right off the bat that he was the architect and he was not going to let somebody fool with his design.
Just an all-time kind of alpha stuff in there. I think it speaks to a couple different things, as we've mentioned, the push and pull between the living document and the let's leave the good stuff alone. I think that's an important editing knife. right. To, to have that eye and have that, that sharp kind of vision to, you know, Bob Patton was great. There's a bunch more stories.
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