Alterations to Keswick Shows
Pete Dye in Vintage Form
Course reshaped and character enhanced by the world-renowned designer
by DAVID GOULD
Keswick is being reinvigorated with a toe-to-top
renovation by Pete Dye.
FILE PHOTOS (2)
T
he scribes of medieval Europe,
who wrote mainly on parchment,
would occasionally re-purpose
a scroll by scraping off the old
ink. This happened to a famous
treatise on Roman politics by Cicero—seems
parchment was needed to record St. Augustine’s
commentary on the Psalms. A “palimpsest” is
what historians call the new document, and in
golf course construction there are cases of a
similar switcheroo.
One example would be Stonehaven, a
Scottsdale, Ariz., course that was purchased
in 2001 and bulldozed down to dirt level just
weeks before its scheduled opening. New
owners erased Greg Norman’s artistry so that
Tom Fazio could create Mirabel Golf Club
on the site. Another would be Medinah (Ill.)
Country Club’s longtime “overflow” 18, the
No. 1 course. As of this summer it’s a new
design by Tom Doak, sculpted on the hole
corridors of T Bendelow’s 1926 routing.
om
The award-winning Doak has many
heroes among golf course designers, but
no contemporary architect earns more
of his praise than Pete Dye. And it’s the
venerable Dye who last year scraped down
the land features of a 6,306-yard golf
w w w. v s g a . o r g
course at The Keswick Club,
outside Charlottesville, to
create something new. The
contours Dye eradicated
were carved by Arnold
Palmer in the 1990s, on a
parcel that had originally
contained a pair of Fred
Findlay-built nines from 1948 and 1953.
You could think of it as a double palimpsest.
TRANSFORMATIVE EFFECT
WITH NEW DESIGN
Keswick is owned by the same group that
hired Dye to build his iconic Ocean Course at
Kiawah Island. The company owns Sea Pines
Resort as well, where Dye’s Harbour T
own
Golf Links receives daily pilgrimages. He
was an easy choice to re-imagine the Keswick
golf amenity, on which members and hotel
guests played about 10,000 annual rounds in
recent years. As he was getting down to the
final adjustments that characterize the growin stage, Dye took stock and called this latest
creation “a pretty course with rolling hills and
great views of the mountains. I think golfers
are really going to enjoy it.”
In a sign of true commitment to the project,
ownership converted several golf-bordering
homesites it could have sold for a pretty
penny over to golf acreage, in the name
of additional tee-to-green yardage. They
even purchased lots that were in the hands
of private owners, again to add land area.
The finished Keswick layout that
members and hotel guests will be
playing this autumn boasts a back
tee measurement of 7,136 yards.
Extensive earth-moving and
tree removal gave Dye open
territory for the fascinating angles
and lines he builds into each one of
his courses.
“The goal of everyone involved was
to make this a fast and firm surface,” says
Erik McGraw, Keswick’s PGA head golf
professional and a 15-year veteran of the
resort golf program. “Our fairway grass is
called Latitude