Source: San Antonio (Texas) Express-News
As Pete Dye stood near the clubhouse last week at the legendary Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, the stadium-style berms he had designed loomed nearby like green dunes bordering sparkling manmade lakes.
Built on low-lying wasteland near the far northeast Florida coast 25 years ago, Dye's course project used hundreds of thick railroad ties to shore up the dirt for the unique elevated vantage points that have become the trademark of TPC courses.
His blueprint for the TPC at San Antonio, however, will require far less effort.
"You've got enough rocks," Dye said. "We don't need any railroad ties out there."
The famed course architect, who this past week received the PGA Tour's Lifetime Achievement Award, plans to accompany officials to San Antonio in mid-May to accelerate the planning for the construction of the resort complex in northern Bexar County.
The routing for the facility's 36 holes has been completed, and wind gauges have been installed at higher elevations to help in decisions on the final design.
"We've shown where the holes will go," said Dye, planner for 12 of the top 100-rated courses in the world. "Now, we'll go down there and put stakes in the ground."
Vernon Kelly, president of PGA Tour Golf Course Properties, said physical construction of what he termed "a mega-resort," including the golf landscape and an upscale 800-room Marriott hotel, may begin late this year, pending final blueprints and the securing of necessary construction permits.
"We always knew that this first year would be spent planning and permitting," Kelly said. "There's normally a dead period while we go through this process."
The property is forecast to open by 2008, with the Valero Texas Open shifting from The Resort Course at La Cantera to the PGA Tour club as early as 2009.
"This site has the potential to be a top-100 golf course," Kelly said. "We're excited about living up to the promise we made to San Antonio."
Dye, who has designed four previous TPC properties, including the newly opened facility near New Orleans, will oversee the construction of the main 18-hole layout in the two-course complex north of Loop 1604 and east of U.S. 281.
The evolution of the pro game, particularly in equipment, will require that Dye build the San Antonio course markedly longer than the original TPC track at Sawgrass, which is just shy of 7,100 yards in length.
"Now, clubs are 25 years old, and we are now on a mission to revisit what we really want clubs to be for the next 25 years and how they can better serve, if you will, the competitive needs of the PGA Tour, which are different today than they were 20 years ago," tour commissioner Tim Finchem said.
Dye, 79, first visited the San Antonio site during the PGA of America's failed courtship of the city, making preliminary sketches for three potential courses. That bid fell apart under the weight of a political battle over protection of the Edwards Aquifer, but Dye's appreciation of the area survived.
"The topography for the two 18s is pretty good," he said of the PGA Tour's scaled-down plan. "It's a piece of work, but it's still pretty good."
The PGA Tour is looking for an architect to design the second course and expects a decision within two months. Austin-based golfer and designer Ben Crenshaw initially had been signed to work with the PGA of America's effort.
"But this thing went on so long and became so controversial," Kelly said, "that he kind of moved on. It's a highly attractive project. It has generated national attention among architects."
The valuable property has been a focus of the PGA Tour for some time. Former commissioner Deane Beman, whose vision of a fan- and television-friendly course sparked the TPC concept in 1980, visited San Antonio 15 years ago in hopes of building a Sawgrass-type layout then.
Today, "You can see what is possible," he said of the craggy Hill Country landscape. "It's wonderful to have the opportunity to have many people enjoy golf as spectators. You're on the threshold of that down in San Antonio."
