EarthGolf

Pete Dye is building a course in the Tennessee mountains - 60 miles north of Knoxville - and he took time out to explain his design process.

“I’ll be doggone if I can see it (a course) on a piece of paper,” said the 81-year-old Dye. “And nobody else can either. But you have to come (to the course) frequently and keep fooling around and work while it’s being roughed in.”

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“Somebody asks you, ‘Well, what’s it going to look like?’ ” said Pete Dye. “I can honestly tell you this man (P.B.) behind me doesn’t know. Nor do I.”

“It’s like painting a picture. You do it as you go along.”

So there you go. Pete goes on about the course.

“I always talk about the 18th hole at Pebble Beach,” said Pete Dye. “It’s a fine golf hole. The next thing out of bounds is Japan. When you play the 18th at Pebble Beach, you see the ocean and rocks and so forth. It’s the same thing right here. The five or six holes we have opened up, you got these long views.

“This golf course may not be much different than what’s in Columbus, Ohio, but the ambience is so different, much more dramatic. And that’s 90 percent of it. We can make the golf course playable. The rest is already here.”

It’s like a course in Columbus, Ohio and Pebble Beach?  Well, it’s called Rarity Mountain, and if you can get a course that looks like the midwest and the west coast on a southeastern mountain, you definitely have a rarity.

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