Blasting more rock and moving piles of dirt through steep hills didn’t deter Pete Dye from returning to Pennsylvania lumber titan Joe Hardy’s posh resort.
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Dye visited Mystic Rock, the golfing centerpiece of Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, earlier this month to trade banter with Hardy and his daughter, Maggie Hardy Magerko, offer opinions on multiple industry issues and smack a gold ball resting between two gold tee markers using a gold driver into the Southwestern Pennsylvania woods.
(Pictured: Pete Dye and associate Tim Liddy)
Along the way, he discussed his newest project: the addition of nine holes to Mystic Rock, a 20-year-old course that hosted the PGA Tour’s 84 Lumber Classic from 2003-06. “All I know is that there are 18 holes out there,” Dye says. “I don’t know where, but it’s out there somewhere. It’s still there isn’t it?”
Yes, Dye’s original 18 holes at Nemacolin Woodlands still exist, although they were tweaked and stiffened multiple times in preparation for the PGA Tour’s stint at the remote location. The 89-year-old Dye will work with some familiar faces at Mystic Rock, including associate Tim Liddy and the crew from MacCurrach Golf Construction. Liddy aided Dye when Hardy decided to renovate Mystic Rock in the 2000s.
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The new nine will stretch to 3,500 yards, and feature 84 acres of turf with bentgrass greens, fairways and tees, bluegrass primary rough and fescue secondary rough. The new nine will be seeded, and if the project follows its script, it will open in summer 2017. “It will be more challenging than Mystic Rock,” Dye says. “It will be different. But when you can’t remember what you did before and you try to build a new one…”
Dye remains one of the busiest architects in the industry. He’s working with Liddy and MaCurrach at Chatham Hills, a new course in Westfield, Ind., and involved in the design of a fifth course billionaire Herb Kohler is trying to build in Wisconsin. Dye also is leading a massive renovation of Purdue University’s Ackerman Hills course. Ask Dye about the perceived sluggish state of golf course construction, and he will quickly interrupt you.
“It’s not slow,” he says. “Wait, wait, wait… There was a lot of housing built at places. The owners are housing people and they don’t get it. The number of golfers playing is still the same. It didn’t really hurt the business per se. They are doing OK. It was the housing projects that got in there. People thought, ‘Well, if I build a golf course and put 600, 700 homes in there, it will go.’ But they didn’t have the 600 or 700 people join.”
Competition among resorts are spurring construction activity and opportunities for architects, according to Dye and Liddy. Nemacolin Woodlands, for example, is within driving distance of multiple major cities, including Pittsburgh, Washington, Baltimore and Cleveland. “I think it’s great the resort business is doing well and corporations have some money to spend on outings and golf and retreats,” Liddy says.
Nemacolin Woodlands general manager Jennifer Jubin says demand is spurring the project. The resort hosted 42,000 rounds last year: 24,000 at Mystic Rock and 18,000 at the original links course. “I think the place has a hell of a future,” Joe Hardy says.
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Hardy lauds the Nemacolin Woodlands staff, which includes a 30-employee golf course maintenance crew. Director of golf and turfgrass Alan Fike, golf course superintendent Andy Bates and construction superintendent Greg Iversen are among the resort employees who will work closely with Dye and Liddy.
Preliminary work on the new nine started last December. It didn’t take long for Dye to make an impression with supervisors who are young enough to be his grandchildren. “I met him one day when he was initially designing the layout,” Bates says. “It really took him 15, 20 minutes and he had a plan on a map. He threw his pencil down and said, ‘All we need to do is throw a par 3 in there, and now all you have to do is pay for it.’”
The Hardy family is showing little reluctance to open their pocketbook for Dye. The new nine will cost $6 million, according to Jubin.
“He’s a real master at looking at land and knowing what the land can form,” Joe Hardy says. “Designers might have two or three ideas on a golf course and take one of those and say, ‘Oh, yeah, use this one.’ He really works all around the course. He thinks of the views and the elevations, and really comes out with a gorgeous picture of that hole. He’s the best in the world. He’s a real pro at designing courses. A lot of people really want to play a Pete Dye course.”
