"This will not be your typical Missouri course."



From the outset, P.B. Dye had a vision of Old Hickory as a world-class golf course. With approximately 260 acres with which to work, P.B. was given the rare design opportunity to mold and shape the championship course in the fashion he envisioned. He was determined to turn Old Hickory into one of the finest golf courses that ever carried his signature.

"Rolling mounds, water hazards, sand bunkers, dunes, hallows, bunkered greens, and my trademark railroad ties are sure to seduce, threaten, and challenge every golfer." - P.B. Dye

A BRIEF HISTORY



He was born with a shovel in his hands and spent his childhood, he said, "in slave labor" working on his parents' courses. Among those early Dye-designs P. B. helped build in his youth was the Dominican Republic's legendary Casa de Campo - Teeth of the Dog Course.

P. B. was seven years old - and technically in violation of state child Labor laws - when he was shoveling dirt for 65 cents an hour on the Dye-designed and built Royal Oak Country Club (then known as El Dorado) in Indianapolis.

The next year he was operating small tractors and plowing equipment - nothing unusual for a Midwest farm boy. By the age of 9, P. B. claims, he "was pretty damn efficient on a bulldozer or backhoe" and had saved up enough money to buy himself an old model-A pickup truck whose engine he fixed up into working shape. "I spent every day on a golf course, whether it had grass on it or not," he said of his youth. He was a fine golfer - good enough to start on a high school team that went undefeated for three years and to play college golf as well at the University of Tampa. But P. B., like his dad, was a dirt hog, and what he loved more than anything was building courses.

"I spent every day on the golf course whether it had grass on it or not"


So off he went, working for his dad, and he matured his skills on some landmark projects that soon appeared on everybody's top-100 list: Long Cove in South Carolina (1982), The Honors Course in Tennessee (1983), and the original 18-layout of Blackwolf Run at the American Club in Wisconsin (1988). Gradually, P. B. assumed more responsibility for courses that had been undertaken by his father, who was not always able to spend his customary 80-90 days on each site. In this manner, P. B. took up major responsibilities for the renovation work on the Donald Ross-designed Country Club of Birmingham (West Course) in Alabama (1986) as well as the initial design of Atlanta National in Georgia (1987) and Debordieu in South Carolina (1989). He was coming into his own, and soon emerged with a succession of visually memorable layouts:

Kearney Hills in Kentucky (1989), Loblolly Pines in Florida (1993), and the P. B. Dye Golf Club in Maryland (1998) among them...

P. B. grew up with his older brother, Perry, in a family based in Indianapolis, Indiana that lived and breathed golf. Alice and Pete were both crack golfers who had played on the varsity team of Rollins College, Winter Park, FL., before going to work in the insurance business. Alice's resume includes ten state amateur titles (Indiana and Florida), two USGA Women's Senior Amateur Championship, and membership on the 1970 Curtis Cup team. Pete, no slouch himself, was good enough to win the Indiana Amateur and play in four U.S. Opens.

The key, P. B. reports, has been surrounding himself with people who love golf and who know how to translate that passion into imaginative golf ground. It's not enough to design on paper and to hand the plans over to a builder. "The best courses are done by the people who love golf," says P. B. "I can't teach the guy who built a highway to love golf. But I can get the kid who loves golf to operate a bulldozer."