55 Pete and Alice Dye gathered with former colleagues and family at the 2017 ASGCA Annual Meeting in Jupiter, Florida. Pictured with Pete and Alice, from left, are Tom Doak, Brian Curley, Scot Sherman, Perry Dye, Bobby Weed, Tim Liddy, Greg Muirhead, Lee Schmidt, Taylor Zimbelman and P.B. Dye Photo: ASGCA sixteenth hole, a par three on which a nearest-the-pin contest was being played. There was a marker sheet about three feet from the hole. Perry strolled over to see whose name was on it and fell about laughing. Written on the sheet were the words ‘Pete Dye’. I tell this anecdote to illustrate that I found Pete quite intimidating. I cannot be the only one: I can only imagine how a young Rod Whitman, on his first Pete job in Austin in the early eighties, felt at finding his boss asleep by the roadside outside the airport, from which he was supposed to have been collected (to see this story in full, read the interview with Whitman in the April 2023 issue of GCA, or search for ‘Rod Whitman’ on our website). Yet for those who worked closely with him, Pete was clearly not as scary as all that. He inspired respect, for sure (the number of his former associates who still refer to ‘Mr Dye’ demonstrates that clearly), but not fear. “He worked harder than anybody else, and he expected his associates to be just as dedicated,” says Tim Liddy, who worked closely with Dye for thirty years, right to the end of the great man’s career. “He absolutely loved his work – it was infectious – and he had a genuinely strong desire to build things that made his clients happy.” Curley, who met Dye on site at PGA West, on his first day working for developer Landmark Land, and built several courses with him, says: “Pete was always very good at explaining his ideas. Whatever he wanted to do, he would explain why, rather than just saying ‘Do it’. If you give a reason why, people understand it the next time.” “I think the success of those that trained under Pete is due to his mode of mentorship, which positioned anybody that went through it for success,” says Bobby Weed, who had a 40-year working relationship with Dye. Spanish architect Marco Martin, who, along with his partner Blake Stirling, primarily worked for Perry Dye, but encountered Pete extensively, agrees. “The first thing when you joined the design team was to study carefully the Pete Dye courses and a simple notebook of general guidelines of design,” he says. “Great memories come to me, like driving Pete and Alice and spending time with them at Palm Springs or in their house in Phoenix, or the best when I received a personal message from Pete saying, “Marco, you were great with my brother Roy, I´ll never forget that.”
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