Starting out, I begged for advice and, needless to say, any kind of job. I wrote many letters to all the top architects. Only Geoff Cornish and Pete Dye answered, and Pete, bless him, hired me as a laborer, using a shovel and rake for $5 an hour, six days a week.
What I learned from Pete was the importance of devoting the time. If the island green at the TPC at Sawgrass were too shallow, the mounds a foot too high, the pot bunkers a bit too deep, the course would have been a circus. Some features were softened later, but Pete was there to make sure things were done close to right at the outset. I can't understand designers who make one-day trips to their projects every week or two. They spend half their time in the airport and are never on site long enough to sleep on a problem and make it right.
During my college years at Cornell, I decided to try for a scholarship to spend a year studying golf courses overseas. Ben Crenshaw wrote a long letter of recommendation for me. He wrote that if they sent me to Great Britain and Ireland to study golf course architecture, the future of golf would benefit from it. I've spent my adult life trying to live up to that.
I think Sand Hills in Nebraska is one of the best courses ever built. Bill Coore and Ben are both friends of mine, so I was happy for them, but I did wonder if I would ever get a piece of property that good, because Bill and Ben obviously would be in line ahead of me. But when Pacific Dunes came along, it turned out they had all the work they wanted. So I got Pacific Dunes, and the result is probably my best design to date. I'm very aware that getting the job came down to my getting a lucky break. In the end, Sand Hills was great for me, because it inspired other developers to seek out great property in remote locations.
A great piece of land makes an architect look like a genius. I mean, if I couldn't build something special on the land I was given at Pacific Dunes, I should find another job.
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