Pete and Alice Dye to receive lifetime achievement awards

An editorial piece in today's Indy Star talks about the impact Pete & Alice Dye have had in the golf course design industry. Pete & Alice are being honored by the Methodist Sports Medicine Foundation for their contributions to the sport.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110422/OPINION07/104220321/

Pete and Alice started designing courses in the Indianapolis area in the 1960s, including the well-known Crooked Stick Golf in Carmel, and since then the Dye family has designed hundreds of courses around the world, including TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedre, Florida; Whistling Straits near Sheboygan, Wisconsin (site of last year's PGA Championship); the breathtaking new course near the French Lick Resort in Indiana; Teeth of the Dog at Caso de Campo, Dominican Republic; Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, South Carolina (where the PGA tour pros are currently competing) and their current project, the Black Pearl course in Roatan, Honduras. For an interactive map of Dye courses, check out http://dyedesigns.com/courses/.

I've been fortunate enough to have played 7 Dye courses - Brickyard Crossing in Speedway (my personal favorite); The Fort, Eagle Creek (Sycamore and Pines Course), Sahm, and Maple Creek, all in Indianapolis; Plum Creek in Carmel; and Harbour Trees in Noblesville. And I have more than 100 more Dye courses on my list and can't wait to check them off.

So which Dye courses have you played? Which ones are you planning to or hoping to play this summer? Which one is your favorite? Let me know about some of your experiences and observations. Like the time I birdied a hole (#8 at Brickyard Crossing) inside of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is something I'll never forget. Or the early morning Columbus Day round I played with two good friends at Eagle Creek's Sycamore Course. Or the tee shot my wife poked into Morse Reservoir on a par-3 at Harbour Trees. I'm Dyeing to hear some of your memorable Dye course moments!

Golf Rule of the Month

Bear Slide Golf Club in Cicero, IN has a "Rule of the Month" feature on its website.

http://bearslide.com/golf-club/rule-of-the-month/

This month's rule covers substituted ball and wrong ball situations. Good use of website space to help golfers build or refresh their knowledge of the game's many (often non-intuitive) rules. I'm still not sure I fully understand the explanation of Rule 15, but I know more now than I did before I visited the Rule of the Month page, and maybe I'll be able to talk a little more knowledgeably about these things the next time they come up during a round.

Spring is a good thing

Baseball season started off today (with a bottom-of-the-9th-with-2-outs home run for a Reds win!), Butler in the Final Four tomorrow, grass is starting to get green, and golf season (after a couple of false starts and weather delays) is basically here. Lot of good things happening to keep us positive and maybe to deal with some of the other things that aren't so awesome. Hope you get a chance to enjoy some of the aspects of seasonal change and regeneration and new beginnings. Roll your windows down and pull out the short sleeve shirts, people. It'll be time for swimsuits and flipflops before you know it.