Pete Dye - Early Life

Early Life

Pete Dye was born in Urbana, Ohio. A few years before Pete's birth, his father, "Pink" Dye, got hooked on golf and built a nine-hole course on family land in Champaign County. Pete worked and played that course while growing up. He won the Ohio State High School Golf Championship and medaled in the Ohio State Amateur Golf Championship before he went into the Army in 1944. He attended United States Army Airborne School at Fort Benning in Georgia to be a paratrooper, but World War II ended before he was sent overseas. He was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina where he served the rest of his hitch as greenskeeper on the base golf course. Pete Dye explained,

"I played the golf course at Pinehurst No. 2 for six solid months, and I got to know Mr. Donald Ross...(who) had built the Fort Bragg golf course. He would come over and watch us play golf, and most of the time the captain and colonel hauled me over there. They didn't know who Mr. Ross was, but the other fellow walking with him was JC Penney, and they all knew him."

After his discharge, he became a student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida where he met his wife, the former Alice Holliday O'Neal. They were married in early 1950, and their marriage produced two sons, Perry and P.B. (Paul Burke). They moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, Alice's hometown, and Pete began selling insurance. Within a few years, he distinguished himself as a million dollar salesman. At the same time, he was a successful amateur golfer. Dye was runner-up in 1954 and 1955 at the Indiana State Amateur Championship, which he won in 1958. He also played in a number of USGA Amateurs. His score at the 1957 U.S. Open was better than Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.