Dateline September 1, 2019, The Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech
We started east toward Virginia, where our next planned stop was the home of Janice's cousin Kathy and her husband Eddie in Williamsburg. We had a few days in hand, so the days could be easy ones, and we made for Grayson Lake State Park in Kentucky. It was a fine find, a beautiful spot with lovely sites and a golf course of its own. We had no time to play it, but we had dinner and a much needed rest. Early the next morning we headed out, picking a course we could play in Virginia that sat on the way to Kathy's house, the Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech in Radford.
The River Course. The course was on our list to write about, and it was also named among the top five in the state by the Virginia State Golf Association. We had emailed the PGA professional ahead of time and been given a half-past-one tee time. The pro was not in when we arrived, but we were set up and sent off to the first tee.
A good many young college golfers from both Virginia Tech and Radford University were playing ahead of us. It was their day off, but the weather was so fine they had come out anyway, and those kids could hit the ball. As we played, one thing was plain: Pete Dye had his hand in this course. Small pot bunkers everywhere, and where you were long and the green sat by the river, there was always a little bunker waiting to save your ball from a watery grave, though never an easy save. Unlike a lot of his courses, the greens here were very small and fairly flat, and we learned the reason for that later. Even a short shot into one of them was a hard thing to hold.
The eighteenth was a wonderful finishing hole, the clubhouse standing behind the green, a great day of golf.
Meeting the pro, and the history. When we came in, head professional John Norton was there, and he told us how the course came to be. The River was originally designed by Ault, Clark and Associates and built in 1998 and 1999, and the Virginia Tech Foundation acquired it in 2002, seeing real promise in two and a half miles of well-laid ground along the scenic New River. A Tech alumnus and philanthropist, Bill Goodwin, and his wife Alice asked their friend Pete Dye to consider remaking The River into a world-class course. Dye visited, sketched out his ideas, and offered a revised plan. Construction began in 2003, and on June 5, 2006, the course was formally dedicated and renamed the Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech. Norton had the pleasure of working alongside Dye many times during the renovation, and he laughed and told us it is truly Pete Dye's "Revenge."
Pete's Revenge. Revenge for what, you wonder. Norton told us the story of the first time the Tour played Dye's new Stadium Course at Sawgrass, in Ponte Vedra, Florida, back in 1982. The story was not Jerry Pate's win, though that was something in itself; playing an orange ball, Pate stuck a 5-iron to a few feet on the last to seal it, then threw the commissioner and Pete Dye into the pond by the eighteenth and dove in after them. The story was the complaints. The course had supposedly been built in the players' honor, and they howled. Ben Crenshaw pronounced it "Star Wars golf, designed by Darth Vader." Asked whether the place suited his game, Jack Nicklaus answered, "No, I've never been very good at stopping a 5-iron on the hood of a car." J.C. Snead was blunter still, allowing that the course was mostly barnyard leavings and a little luck. Over the next year Dye softened the greens and moved some bunkers, and the place came around; even Crenshaw admitted it had become a darn good golf course. The revenge, Norton said, is that Dye brought that same taste for tiny, unforgiving greens here to the River.
Many of the greens at The River have those postage-stamp surfaces, and a long shot, or one aimed near the water, looks for all the world to be lost to the river, until one of Dye's signature little deep bunkers catches it just short. Norton told us about the eighth hole. He once took Pete out to it, hit a drive, and then played his approach, and he hit eight balls without leaving a single one on the green. This needs adjusting, he told Pete. Pete just laughed and said, "Just hit it into the bunker." No change was made to the hole.
It turned out Norton was an old friend of Michael O'Brien, the general manager at Fort Lauderdale Country Club and a good friend of ours from back in the day, so for better than an hour we stood and traded stories and laughed about times past. It was a fine afternoon.
Since it was getting late, we decided to just sleep at the Walmart in town, so we stopped in for a chicken and some vegetables for dinner and stayed the night in the lot. Up early, we took the by-ways toward Kathy and Eddie's house.
