All bite

Jerry Pate arrived at Teeth of the Dog 51 years ago this month, part of a quartet of up-and-comers representing the United States at the 1974 World Amateur Team Championship.

Before Pate raised the Eisenhower Trophy in victory alongside George Burns, Gary Koch and Curtis Strange, he shared flights and news conferences and practice rounds with them. They were all so young then — 25, 21, 21 and 19 — with so much success still ahead of them. They all hydrated throughout that week with liter glass jugs of water during the day, sure to steer clear of the Dominican tap, and El Presidente beer at night. And they were often shadowed by Pete Dye, who lived near the seventh hole of what would become one of his most famous creations.

Dye talked with all four of the youngsters. He shared information about Casa de Campo’s first course. He explained some of his design decisions. He even showed off some, admonishing them for plunking shots on 16, then pulling a four-wood from Koch’s bag and landing his only shot of the day on the green. Perhaps he spotted in them a little bit of himself.

Those days on the island sparked something in Pate. He famously won the U.S. Open on the Highlands Course at the Atlanta Athletic Club less than two years later, still just 22, and the 1982 Tournament Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass — where he celebrated by tossing Dye and PGA commissioner Deane Beman into a lake before jumping in after them. But shoulder injuries derailed his career before he turned 30, and so he dived into golf course design and architecture much like he dived into that lake after 72 holes.

Maybe Pate would have discovered design without Dye, but the Marquis de Sod certainly spurred him on decades ago.

“Pete Dye was the catalyst in my love for architecture,” Pate says. “And it started at Casa de Campo in 1974.”

E. Nuñez Malena arrived at Teeth of the Dog more than 45 years ago, not long after returning to the Dominican Republic from the United States, where he earned a degree in soil and water management at Colorado State University.

Malena was born and raised in La Vega, “in the middle of the island” and his interest in irrigation and agriculture focused entirely on helping the Dominican develop. Even after three and a half years in Fort Collins, “I was not thinking about golf,” he says. Why would he have been? There were “three, maybe four courses” on the island at the time. When Malena landed at Casa de Campo in the late 1970s, he was hired as an agronomist.

Much like Dye followed Pate and his playing partners, passing along information that might one day help the game, Dye quickly turned an eye toward Malena. Something about the young man. A couple conversations convinced Malena to return to the United States — this time for months rather than years, and to Florida rather than Colorado — learning about golf course maintenance at Delray Beach Golf Club. “That’s where I learned the basics,” Malena says. “And the rest is history.”

Malena returned to Casa de Campo and never left again. Starting in 1980, he climbed from maintenance team member, to Teeth of the Dog superintendent, to vice president of golf courses and ground maintenance for all of the resort’s courses — every one of them a Dye design.

What keeps a person at the same place for 45 years? “Many things,” Malena says. “First, is that I love this place and I’m very proud to be part of the organization that runs it. Second, Teeth of the Dog has been rated one of the best golf courses for years. That’s enough for any superintendent to stay.”

And third, for project after satisfying project, was working “hand in hand with Pete.”

Pete Dye is gone now, of course. He died nearly six years ago during his annual visit south to the resort. Alice, his wife of more than 58 years and his longtime design partner, died less than a year earlier. Casa de Campo is filled with so much life — more than 2,500 homes, nearly two dozen restaurants, equestrian and polo fields, racket sport courts and shooting ranges all dot 7,000 or so acres — and the Dyes helped provide so much of it: Dye Fore opened in 2000, preceded by La Romana Country Club in 1990, The Links in 1974 and Teeth of the Dog in 1971.

The Dyes normally arrived at the resort around Christmas to celebrate the holidays and tinker with Teeth.

“When he was here,” Malena says, “my time was his time.” Dye would write a list of small fixes “and share it with me. We always went around the golf course together. He kept making small changes all the time to Teeth of the Dog.”

“He would move greens, he would move bunkers, he would do sort of anything at a whim,” says Robert Birtel, who succeeded Gilles Gagnon as director of golf a decade ago. Dye’s tweaks decreased during his last years, though, and the course, to hear Pate describe it, “had become long in the tooth. It was getting old.” After a series of smaller projects on Teeth and around the resort, Malena, Birtel and the Casa de Campo decision makers were ready to update their lead attraction.

Thanks to Pate’s more than half a century of visits to the resort and friendship with the Dyes, Casa de Campo owner Alfonso Fanjul hired him as golf course consultant in 2019. And Pate, in turn, handed over much of the day-to-day renovation work to Steve Dana, senior designer and VP at Jerry Pate Design, who had dreamed for decades of just traveling to Casa de Campo much less working on Teeth.

“We started the project because we needed to sand cap our fairways,” Birtel says. “Nuñez was trying to grow grass through contamination, basically on clay. We had no sand base and that was where we started our project. Once you start doing that, that’s still eight months, so within the eight months you can do a whole lot of stuff.”

Officially, the Teeth renovation features sand capping on 14 fairways, work on 70 teeing areas and 127 bunkers — highlighted by new drainage and liners — new cart paths throughout the course and five new reinforced retaining walls. Pure Dynasty Paspalum replaces 419 Bermudagrass on all fairways, a far better fit for salt sprays up from the Caribbean. Malena says he and his team are confident they will be able to handle the switch after recently replacing greens at La Romana with the same variety. Malena sourced more than 18,000 cubic meters of silica sand from Geoterra Dominica in Santo Domingo, about two hours west of the resort.

“We really wanted to improve the agronomic conditioning of Teeth of the Dog, especially with the soil,” Malena says. “Part of this project was capping the fairways with three inches of pure silica sand. That will really make a difference in allowing people to be able to play after heavy rain.”

“Most of the work is below the ground and it’s to help us with longevity and maintaining the golf course and keeping it in the best shape, keeping it healthy for the next 25 years,” Birtel says. “The proper sand, the proper drainage, the latest paspalum grass.”

Every bunker, Birtel says, has been reshaped, retouched, returned to play or moved. “It’s not just a carbon copy of where it was. Every tee shot landing area has been thought about, where the bunkers go in relation to how far the ball’s going. The bunkers add so much more strategy to the golf course. A lot more went into it than just the liner and drainage and sand.”

Teeth will also feature some new teeing areas, including one on No. 2 that adds about 30 yards, all based on archival photos and videos. “There are certain holes where we moved the green enough to create a pin,” Birtel says, “and there others that just got bigger because the fringe went away and the green is where the fringe used to be.”

Part of the charm of Teeth is its timelessness. Even through Dye’s annual updates, the course feels the same in 2025 as it did in 2015, or 1995, or 1975. But resorts need to remain current, so the renovation also includes the construction of two new buildings with bars and bathrooms.

“That’s been interesting from a project management point of view,” Birtel says, “because if the bars and bathrooms were delayed, you couldn’t finish the cart path because you didn’t want heavy trucks driving on the new grass. It pushed things around. You needed to be aware of what you were doing and you needed to be flexible.” They are also wired for electricity — “so we can blend things,” he says with a laugh.

Pate will return to Teeth of the Dog this month or next month, to check in on Dana’s work with Malena and his team, and to play a round or two before the course opens back up for public play. The project is ahead of schedule.

Pate has played so many memorable rounds at Teeth. The team championship in 1971. A special round with his sons and Dye just before the course reopened after a 2005 renovation. A round with Dye, coal magnate and golf course developer Garry Drummond and Fanjul in 1984, shortly after Fanjul purchased Caso de Campo. During that round, Pate remembers riding in the golf car and Fanjul telling him, “Pete’s building his next course here, Jerry, and we’re going to build some more, but I’ve got to be careful. I was told he could break me building all these golf courses.” “Alfy,” Pate replied. “Pete never spent a lot of money on golf courses. He figured out how to do it himself.”

“Alfy was making a joke about Pete because he had so much creativity. He would build something and he would change it and he would make it better. He would always make it better.”

Like Dye, like Pate, Malena has always helped make Teeth better. After backing into the game, he has developed a love for golf almost as strong as his love for Dye. Pate considers Dye a mentor and a father. Malena considers him a friend.

“Jerry really understands the philosophy of Mr. Dye,” Malena says. “Even though everybody recognized the course needed some tweaking, we always say that we are trying to maintain the legacy of Pete on Teeth of the Dog. The structure, the design, we wanted to keep it, and Jerry agreed with us. He respected the tradition of the golf course.

“I think if Mr. Dye was able to see what Jerry did, he’d be happy with it.”