Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex: Kampen Course

It's fitting that one of the country's best college courses should be built by college students. Purdue students didn't design the Kampen Course at Purdue University, but they served as essential cost-saving labor for Pete Dye when he redesigned the course in the mid-1990s. When Dye and the kids (who had no previous construction experience) were done with it, the university's old North Course full of rudimentary holes running back and forth became a playground of the architect's postmodern trademarks including expansive waste bunkers studded witih grassy moguls, deep pot and trench bunkers, elevated greens angled against hazards, par 3s across water and even a drivable par 4 with mirrored right and left fairways arcing around a large central wasteland. Built on a shoestring, this project had a special meaning for Dye as Purdue was where he first began studying agronomy prior to switching from a successful career selling insurance to golf course design.