Crooked Stick Golf Club – home to the Dyes and their “firstborn” championship course – to stage inaugural event May 25-27, 2020
CARMEL, IND. (Feb. 24, 2020) – Members of Crooked Golf Club today announced they will stage a boys and girls tournament to honor the lives and legacies of its founders, champion golfers and world-renowned course designers Pete and Alice Dye. The unveiling of the event – a year in the planning – comes just weeks after the January 9th passing of Pete Dye at the age of 94.
About the Championship
The inaugural Pete and Alice Dye Junior Invitational – “The Dye” – will be contested May 25-27 at the famed Dye-created and designed Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., an Indianapolis suburb. Top-ranked junior amateurs – a field of 33 boy and 33 girl junior players from across the U.S. – will compete for the championship in 54 holes of medal play and for points from World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR), National Junior Golf Scoreboard (NJGS) and Golfweek Sagarin Junior Rankings.
About the Field
The field of 33 boys and girls is a nod to the number of cars in the Indianapolis 500, which is being staged a day ahead of The Dye and just a few miles south of Crooked Stick. Top juniors (aged 18 and younger in 2020) from 15 states have accepted invitations and are scheduled to compete. Players include Michael Brennan, John Daly, Jr. (son of ’91 Crooked Stick PGA champ John Daly), Alexa Pano, Katherine Schuster and dozens of other top junior players.
“Pete and Alice Dye were both elite level amateur players and began winning tournaments as juniors,” said Wayne Timberman, tournament chairman. “The Dye is the only national invitational where elite boy and girl golfers play for a major title on the same Top 100 course at the same time,” he said. “Crooked Stick members are thrilled to honor the Dyes with a world class tournament in a unique format. ‘The Dye’ is truly one-of-a-kind, just like Pete and Alice!”
For more Information
Details about the inaugural Pete and Alice Dye Junior Invitational at Crooked Stick can be found at the championship website: www.dyejuniorinvitational.com and on the event’s social media channels: @TheDyeJunior (Twitter), thedyejuniorinvitational (Instagram) and @TheDyeJuniorInvitational (Facebook).
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
About the host: Crooked Stick Golf Club
A perennial “U.S. Top 100” course, Crooked Stick first climbed into that echelon in 1971, just four years after Pete Dye completed construction of all 18 holes. In all, Crooked Stick has been awarded Top 100 rankings in six different decades. As a tournament site, it has hosted five USGA National Championships, along with the 1991 PGA won by John Daly, the 2005 Solheim Cup, and two BMW Championships – won by Rory McIlroy in 2012 and Dustin Johnson in 2016.
“It’s only fitting for Crooked Stick – one of the Dye’s most famous and tournament-tested layouts – to stage a premier national invitational event for boys and girls,” said Chris Wirthwein, club historian and author of a book about Crooked Stick and the Dyes. “Pete Dye scouted and acquired the land, sold memberships and sculpted its fairways from the seat of a bulldozer. Alice ran the business. And she could run a tractor, too,” he said. “Crooked Stick was a ‘Pete and Alice’ team effort and love affair that lasted 60 years.”
May 17, 2014 — Pete and Alice Dye at Crooked Stick 50th Anniversary for unveiling of founders’ statues
About Pete and Alice Dye
Paul “Pete” Dye, Jr., born in Urbana, Ohio, learned golf on a course built by his father. He would become an accomplished junior player, winning the 1942 Ohio Boys High School championship. As an amateur, Pete played his way into five U.S. Amateur Championships, the 1957 U.S. Open (where he missed the cut but finished ahead of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer) and a British Amateur (1963). A 2008 inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Mr. Dye designed more than 100 courses throughout the world in a career that spanned six decades. He passed away on January 9, 2020 at the age of 94.
Alice (O’Neal) Dye, who passed away in February 2019 at age 91, was born and raised in Indianapolis, Ind. and learned the game at an early age. She would go on to become a champion golfer and earn more than 50 amateur titles, including two USGA Sr. Women’s Amateur crowns and a place on the victorious 1970 U.S. Curtis Cup team. Mrs. Dye would later become the first woman member and President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA). In 2004 she received the PGA of America’s First Lady of Golf Award and in 2017 Alice joined husband Pete as a recipient of the Donald Ross Award, ASGCA’s highest honor.
About “The Dye” Championship Trophies
The champion boy and girl golfers will each receive a unique award, hand-carved in the shape of the club’s iconic ‘Crooked Stick.’ Winners will receive their trophies alongside the 18th green and located a few hundred yards from the house where Pete and Alice Dye made their home for nearly 40 years. The 18th green is the same site where Crooked Stick champions John Daly, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, the victorious U.S. Solheim Cup team and many other winners have been crowned over the past half-century.
