PGA West’s Stadium Course was built by a World Golf Hall of Famer who added a California ethos to his groundbreaking style when he built this course out of the desert. Like its predecessor, the second S...
Sounds great. Who is the architect behind SoFi, the NFL’s first indoor-outdoor stadium? SoFi comes courtesy of a team of more than eight dozen architects and designers led by Lance Evans of HKS, a global architectural firm with offices in Los Angeles.
The Stadium Course was designed by noted golf course architects Pete and Alice Dye, and is known as one of the most difficult golf courses in the world. Constructed specifically to host The Players Championship, it employs a distinctive "stadium" concept: like in other sports, fans at the TPC sit in "stands" made of raised mounds of grass.
THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. From the initial idea by former PGA TOUR Commissioner Deane R. Beman, the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass was built in 1982 to host THE PLAYERS Championship and be the permanent Home of THE PLAYERS Championship.
Pete DyeWalk in the footsteps of golf legends on the Stadium Course at PGA WEST, ranked among some of the best courses in the world. Home of the Desert Classic Golf Tournament, this par-72 course designed by Pete Dye provides the ultimate golf experience.
architect Pete DyeMaster architect Pete Dye designed both golf courses, with The Stadium Course being the most recognizable thanks to the intimidating par-3, 17th hole that features the famed island green. Dye's Valley Course was recently recognized in Golfweek Magazine as one of the “Best Courses You Can Play” in the state of Florida.
Pete DyeWelcome to TPC Sawgrass – Home of THE PLAYERS Championship, birthplace of the TPC Network and backdrop to the PGA TOUR's Global Home. Located in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, TPC Sawgrass features two PGA TOUR championship courses designed by world renowned architect, Pete Dye.
Alice DyeAlice Dye, credited by her husband Pete with inspiring him to design the Island Green at the 17th hole of the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, passed away on Friday at her home near West Palm Beach at the age of 91.
At the time, he was using the design style of Trent Jones, but after seeing the work of Alister MacKenzie, who designed the 1931 Michigan course, Dye decided to incorporate features from two greens into his next project. Dye visited Scotland in 1963 and made a thorough study of its classic courses.
Alister MacKenzieAlister MacKenzie designed Augusta National, in collaboration with Jones.
No one had ever seen anything like TPC Sawgrass when it opened in 1980. Brainchild of Commissioner Deane Beman, and designed by Pete Dye, it was a course that left players wide-eyed with wonder.
The course and surrounding areas would be built with spectators in mind. It would be the first true “Stadium Course,” designed and built to improve the overall on-site fan experience.
between seven and 10 million dollarsThis whole golf course was built for somewhere between seven and 10 million dollars.
TPC at SawgrassClub informationElevation7 feet (2 m)Established1980, 42 years agoTypeResortOperated byPGA Tour TPC Network24 more rows
Tournament Players ClubTPC — which stands for Tournament Players Club — means that a golf course is part of a prestigious network of golf courses around the world. In the case of TPC Danzante Bay, we are licensed to use this designation and as the only TPC golf course in Mexico, have very special status.
1975 - Industrial America Corporation, the original developer, turns the property over to three banks. Atlantic Bank, the lead financial institution, becomes the trustee. 1976 - Sawgrass Property Owners Association is formed. 1977 - Arvida buys Sawgrass.
The 1982 PLAYERS was the first conducted at the Stadium Course. Dye’s radical design changed golf course architecture but also was criticized for its severity. Pate overcame Dye's visual deceptions with the same ball-striking and optimistic demeanor that helped him win the U.S. Open six years earlier.
Ben Crenshaw referred to the course as “Star Wars golf, designed by Darth Vader.”. After missing the cut, Jack Nicklaus said, “I’ve never been very good at stopping a 5-iron on the hood of a car.”.
Pate's final-round 67 was the day's low score, and one of just two Sunday rounds under 70. Birdies at 17 and 18 gave him a final score of 8-under 280 and a two-shot victory. Walking down the 18th fairway, he stared into a television camera and made his post-victory plans known to the national audience.
In 1982, he was a Cornell senior who interned for Dye. The 1982 PLAYERS Championship fell during Doak’s spring break, so he flew down to Florida to watch the tournament with the course’s designer. The attention the new course was receiving helped bring a new focus to the craft of golf course architecture.
Pate's ball had avoided the lake guarding the 18th green at THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. With only a short birdie putt standing between him and victory in the 1982 THE PLAYERS Championship, Pate knew he was headed for the water instead.
Pete Davison , the club’s first head pro, suggested that spectators wear jeans to the tournament. “There was lovegrass and dirt everywhere. It was raw,” he said. The mounds at 17 and 18 drew big crowds "as fans cheered the successful shots and groaned with those players who splashed a ball in the water," Dye wrote.
PGATOUR.COM gathered recollections from Scully, the Hall of Fame broadcaster; noted architect Tom Doak, who was interning for Dye in 1982; and several TOUR players, including Pate.
With its signature island green on the par-3, 17th hole being one of the most recognized in golf, this legendary track has captured the imagination of golf fans all over the world and is consistently named among the top golf courses worldwide.
Finally, the Stadium Course would be a championship-caliber course accessible to all golf fans. Working with renowned golf course architect Pete Dye, Commissioner Deane Beman created a course design that favored no particular player or style of play. The result is a truly balanced course.
Alice Dye and Pete Dye in 1980 during construction of the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. (PGA TOUR Archive) PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla.
After all, the swamp land that the PGA TOUR had purchased in North Florida – 415 acres for the sum of a single dollar, a bargain from most perspectives, although some, after looking at the actual land, suggested the TOUR had overpaid -- was essentially flat.
16, 17 and 18 at TPC Sawgrass. He needed room for creativity, to act upon his inspirations. He needed fluidity, able to improve something at any given moment, to act on his impulses. The last thing he wanted was to be caught in a corner, hands tied, unable to make something better.
The 17th was created as a solution to solve a problem. When Beman tasked Dye to build a “stadium” course that would allow fans to watch the action from different levels instead of standing behind each other with no gradient, the challenge was huge.
In addition, Dye also had to cap the fairways and build the greens, adding the kind of undulation throughout those 415 acres that would test the world’s finest golfers.
“Pete always said the saddest day for him was the day we had to grass a golf hole because he couldn’t tinker with it anymore,” said Bobby Weed, who apprenticed under Dye in the late ‘70s before striking out on his own.
After all, the swamp not only was flat but also, of course, full of water. Natural drainage had been cut off when the A1A By-way was installed between the course and the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Dye had to figure out a new way to drain the area, but he simply couldn’t eliminate all the water.
Opened 41 years ago in the autumn of 1980 , it was the first of several Tournament Players Clubs to be built. It is home to the PGA Tour headquarters and hosts The Players Championship, one of the PGA Tour's signature events, now held in March.
Alice Dye suggested the Island Green concept, remembering another course with a similar green. Pete was not thrilled at the idea but went ahead with it, in the process creating one of golf's most recognizable holes. Because of its popularity among fans, Golf Channel devotes eleven cameras to it during the tournament.
It is known for its signature hole, the par-3, 137-yard (125 m) 17th, known as the "Island Green," one of golf's most recognizable and difficult holes. It has a capacity of 36,000. The course has been featured for many years on the best-selling Tiger Woods PGA Tour series of video games.
However, the soil surrounding the 17th consisted of sand, which is necessary to build a good golf course, but rare on the otherwise swampy property, and by the time the course was near completion all the sand had been dug from the area, leaving a large crater.
During the week of Super Bowl XXXIX, played at nearby Jacksonville in February 2005, Fox Sports organized a "closest to pin" contest with MLB players, NFL players, and NASCAR drivers competing (all sports properties of the network) on the 17th green.
Probably the most famous incident that has occurred on the Island Green involved Brad Fabel in the 1998 event. His tee shot successfully landed on the green, but then a seagull swooped onto the green and picked up his ball several times.