The Met Golfer - June 2008

Course superintendent Will Heintz was involved in all phases of the construction at Pound Ridge.

Meanwhile, the Dyes had long ago come up with a routing that was ready to be implemented. Ken Wang recalls a meeting at the Dye home in Florida with Pete, Perry, Pete’s wife Alice, and niece Cynthia, huddled over a table and coming up with the preliminary design. He was encouraged by what he saw.

“My reason for hiring Pete was that I liked his courses,” says the 57-year-old Wang, a graduate of M.I. T. “I think they’re special. If he hadn’t been involved, I don’t think I would have done the project. There’s some magic in what he does.”

The nine-hole course was closed at the end of 2003, when it was clear the project would

be approved. Construction got underway in the spring of 2006, which unfortunately was the same year that C.C. Wang passed away. As the family was coming to terms with that, it also started to become clear just how big a job Pound Ridge was going to be.

The shaper for the project, Michael Langkau, has previously worked on 16 Dye courses throughout the country. “The holes were the toughest 18 holes to shape in my 20- year career because of the quantity of rock,” Langkau says.

There was rock not only on the formerly unused portion of the property, but also in the meadow area occupied by the nine-hole course, where the irrigation ponds needed to be dug. Langkau decided to make the most of it, and coincidentally, these challenges helped give the course its character. Some of the rock was blasted and crushed into cart paths. Big boulders were used to line the irrigation ponds. Rock walls were built along the sides of holes, next to wetlands, and wherever Perry Dye’s imagination conjured them up.

“There are literally miles and miles of rock walls,” he says. “I really thought we would run out of rock, but we never did.”

The rock wasn’t all blasted away. Some of it remains as backdrops for the holes, and the results will make Pound Ridge one of the most memorable, distinctive courses in the Met Area. The rugged nature of the site is particularly dramatic on the par-three 15th, with the green set at the base of an impressive rock cliff, and the par-five 13th, which has a canyon-like effect thanks to a tall cliff lining the right side of the hole.

Pete Dye: Northern Exposure

Pete Dye is one of the game’s or 30 courses a year. I only do one,” legendary course architects, a says Dye. genius responsible for some of It’s a slight exaggeration, as the 82- the most talked-about designs of the year-old Dye, an Indiana native, has modern era, including major designed 148 courses in his career. But championship and PGA Tour sites such it is true that he takes on fewer projects as the TPC Sawgrass (Ponte Vedra than most other architects, partly out of Beach, Fla.), PGA West (La Quinta, necessity. He has a hands-on approach Calif.), Ocean Course at Kiawah Island during the design and construction (South Carolina) and Whistling Straits phases, and couldn’t possibly devote (Haven, Wis.). He’s been at it for 45 the same amount of time if he worked years, but oddly enough, Pound Ridge on dozens of courses at once. represents his first course in the Met In this case, he collaborated with his Area, and his first in New York State. son, Perry, a Denver-based course

There’s no particular reason Dye architect who has done many designs hasn’t plied his trade here before, other on his own. In the division of than the right opportunity not coming responsibilities, it was Perry who spent along, and the fact that he isn’t as the most time on site. But on his visits, prolific as some of the other top names Pete got in more than his two cents. in the design field. “Every time Pete comes, I hold my

Not that he minds too much. Wang sought out Dye in the first place because he admired his work. “The first time I walked onto TPC Sawgrass, the overwhelming feeling I had was of being in the middle of a giant math problem conjured up by a master of geometry. I was struck by the precision of choices I was being presented with, and I found that feature to be absolutely fascinating.”

Wang had met Perry Dye on some other golf projects he was considering, and managed to get the elder Dye on board for the Pound Ridge project. While it was a team effort, there’s no question that the finished product carries the Pete Dye stamp.