Bury Me in a Pot Bunker: Golf Through the Eyes of the Game's Most Challenging Course Designer

Sporting News, The, Jan 23, 1995 by Steve Gietschier

Bury Me in a Pot Bunker: Golf through the Eyes of the Game's Most Challenging Course Designer (By Pete Dye with Mark Shaw. 241 pp. Addison-Wesley. $23).

No doubt there are more than a few four-somes of pro golfers who would figure Pete Dye to contract with the devil to help write his autobiography, just as they think he has had demonic assistance in crafting some of his world infamous golf courses. But Dye instead picked Mark Shaw, a golfing lawyer whose last book was about the trial of Mike Tyson, to be his collaborator.

Maybe the result of their work should have been called "Dye for the Defense." For it is a curious autobiography, consisting of 18 chapters or "holes," each of which covers the design and construction of one of Dye's courses. What little biographical information it contains is imparted within this framework.

Dye could probably have retired from the golf course architecture business if he had turned in his bulldozer keys after finishing the Harbor Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island, S.C., in 1969. That public course, home to the PGA's Heritage Classic, was a revolution: a short, narrow, inventive course with small greens whose debut proved a tremendous spur to economic and residential development. Its reputation was made when Arnold Palmer brought a 14-month slump to an end by winning the inaugural Heritage.

But Dye didn't stop there. He went on to give life to Deane Beman's idea for stadium golf at the Stadium Course at TPC and a host of other courses for which designs the pros have barely forgiven him. Nowadays, in the small world of golf course architecture, the words "Dye" and "difficult" and "unfair" are often found in the same, bemoaning sentences.

Dye likes his own work, naturally. He gives his critics some space, but his rebuttal is always the last word. He tells some interesting stories, too, about golfers who have been overmatched by his work, about the owners who have employed him and about the substantial contributions his wife, Alice, has made throughout his career. The book's real shortcoming is that there is not one photograph or drawing anywhere in it. It's awfully hard to do justice to golf course architecture without any artwork whatsoever.