Hurdzan: Pete and Alice formed the perfect team

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Even at 82, Pete Dye continues to lend his expertise to courses used on the PGA TOUR -- his design at TPC San Antonio will host the Valero Texas Open in 2010.

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Editor's note: Dr. Michael Hurdzan has nearly 300 golf course designs to his credit. An internationally recognized authority on environmental issues, Hurdzan was named Golf World magazine's 1997 Architect of the Year. Pete Dye is a longtime friend, and Hurdzan puts his colleague's career into perspective in the essay below.

Dye

Pete Dye earned his worldwide legendary status as a golf course architect through his rare blend of creative thinking, extraordinary salesmanship, and his love and understanding of the game of golf. Fortunately, along the way to his journey that culminates this week in his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Pete met his soulmate and wonderful wife, Alice, whom he shares equal credit -- and blame -- but who is the real force behind the Dye Dynasty.

Together, Pete, the storyteller, and Alice, the politician, make up the most dynamic duo in golf, save for Jack and Barbara Nicklaus. Producing such incredible achievers and personalities speaks well for the 1960s in the Midwest and its passion for all things golf.

You know, there's a saying among golf course architects that goes like this: Robert Trent Jones made golf course architecture a profession, Pete Dye made it an art form, and Jack Nicklaus made it expensive. Undoubtedly, they all made this profession a great one, and in the case of the latter two, fellow Ohioans, I am proud to call them friends.

Mark Cubbedge/WGHOF

Pete Dye designs courses by feel, walking the land to give himself an understanding of the terrain. These well-soiled boots were Dye's and represent his love for muddy places.

But let's talk about the artist. To his colleagues and contemporaries, Pete Dye feared no evil or public criticism. His revolutionary design style of using traditional architectural methods in central Ohio at The Golf Club, set him apart from everyone else, and he never looked back. Just when folks were ready to write him off as a one-hit wonder, the Dyes, in conjunction with Nicklaus, created Harbor Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C., and everyone gasped - a links land theme in a swamp.

Shortly thereafter, Pete and Alice not only turned the soil upside down at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, literally putting lower elevation sand on top and bringing the original muck above it, but they also turned the design world upside down with stadium golf. Then came Kiawah Island being awarded a Ryder Cup even before it was built, showing what kind of confidence the golf world had in his abilities.

This small sample of Pete's monumental body of work did not meet with universal approval; he did have to face his share of critics, but was willing to face them head on, and he charmed them with his good ol' boy approach and subtle salesmanship that made him one of Indiana's best insurance salesmen in the 1950s.

In fact, one can dislike his golf courses like PGA West or Kiawah Island, but you simply cannot dislike Pete the man. In my mind, he is golf's greatest ambassador since Bobby Jones. Pete always has time to speak to everyone that wants to talk (or listen), has fostered more interns who are now world famous designers than anyone else, and put everyone at ease with his down-home humor.

There are as many wonderful Pete Dye stories out there as there are golf balls in the water surrounding the famed island 17th green at TPC Sawgrass. We all have them, and they are all hilarious. Among my favorite happens not long after he had a very serious colon cancer problem and we were all pulling for his recovery.

That Christmas, in typical Alice style, she sends out these wonderful Christmas cards with a little personal note like your mom would write. In the corner of mine, Pete wrote, "Get your butt checked."

Now, is that not a keeper?

Back in 1950s there was a song titled, "To Know Him is to Love Him." That perfectly sums up how all of us lucky enough to have met Pete Dye feel about him. He is simply one of a kind. The World Golf Hall of Fame just got brighter by inducting the sunshine of Pete Dye into it.