The golf course that Pete Dye built for the PGA Tour in Ponte Vedra Beach in 1980 was a different animal than the course that hosts The Players Championship we see today.

Dye’s original Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass was like a scruffy and ravenous hyena scavenging golf balls and psyches. Moguls on and around the greens randomly kicked approaches into grassy hollows and lakes. Shots that missed fairways ended up in a deep salad of mixed roughs. Playing from poor angles left players in pot bunkers or with long putts that broke in two directions. No good shot, it seemed, went unpunished.

After years of complaining about the difficulty of TPC Sawgrass, the tour softened some of Pete Dye's most challenging elements.

Dom Furore / Golf Digest

The hyena laughed, but the professionals howled. After two years of exasperation, The Players succumbed to the players’ complaints and the TPC was modified, beginning a long journey to the much more predictable and pristinely presented Stadium Course.

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PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman, who had instructed Dye to create a course uniquely capable of challenging the best players in the world, got a little too much of what he asked for. Dye’s ideas were forward-looking—and effective—to the point of being avant-garde. Asked to draw out the greatness in tour players’ games, he succeeded in drawing out their ire. Yet he wasn’t wrong in his analysis of how to combat the modern professional game with angles, precision, water and hard surfaces. The pros just didn’t like being forced to hit the hard shots Dye drew up, or the random fates the TPC often inflicted.

It made us wonder what kind of course would be developed in 2026 if the entire experiment were run back, but with the contemporary professional game of 330-yard drives and 210-yard 7-irons in mind. If the tour were to give a blank-slate site like the original Ponte Vedra property to an architect or firm who innately understood how the pros play, how would they coax out great golf while keeping scores in check in the way Dye attempted with The Stadium Course?

Mike Cocking and Geoff Ogilvy of the Australian firm Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead (OCM) are among the most in-demand architects in the world. Their East Course at The Fall Line in central Georgia won Golf Digest’s 2025 Best New Course award and their major remodel of the famed #3 course at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago was named our 2024 Best Transformation. They currently have numerous projects under construction in the U.S. and Australia. We asked them if they were to design a new marquee venue for the PGA Tour, what would their version look and play like?

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They began by acknowledging that while the original TPC has been greatly sanitized from its early years, many of the concepts Dye introduced are still relevant, especially the use of angles and the way the routing constantly turns and bends the holes, forcing players to select precise lines and shape the ball.

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Working off these strengths, OCM outlined a variety of architectural concepts they believe necessary to challenge and stimulate the best players in the world.

Create doubt in players’ minds by disguising targets

This was perhaps Dye’s greatest innovation, at Sawgrass and most of his other designs. His ability to mask distances and hide landing areas with hazards made even the best players indecisive. It’s a tactic OCM says isn’t used often enough on most courses the tour visits. In their own work the architects often try to disguise targets by using or manufacturing contours that obscure the ground short of the green.

“It's a little psychological trick that makes the shot look shorter than it plays and can help to throw some doubt in the player’s mind,” Cocking says. “On a tour course, we may even use such a technique to hide a more dangerous hazard that sits behind it, say a water hazard against the green. From the wrong position on the fairway, the green and the hazard are blind, and it again adds to the confusion and doubt.” 

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Stephen Denton

Angles were vital to the TPC and all of Dye’s architecture before the course began to be narrowed. Without some lateral space, however, angles become irrelevant, and a degree of width is required to make players think and tempt them into taking aggressive lines.

“On holes that are too narrow from tee to green, we’re finding better players are reluctant to hit a layup club and instead opt for driver,” says Ogilvy. “The logic being that it’s just as easy to miss the fairway with a 3-iron or hybrid, but at least with a missed driver I end up with a shorter shot.” 

Giving players space and multiple tactical options can also create doubt, whether it’s cutting a corner, attempting to carry a set of bunkers or playing conservatively to a larger landing area. Cocking and Ogilvy would design holes where the choice off the tee isn't always obvious, where there might be four or five different shots or clubs to consider in order to create confusion, with each one bringing in a different degree of risk and reward.

“The 11th at Kingston Heath (in Melbourne) does this pretty well, especially after we made some changes to the fairway bunkering a few years ago,” Cocking says. “It’s a wide-to-narrow fairway that also turns at just the awkward distance between a 3-wood and driver. Driver is a scary play, but the reward is a much simpler pitch to one of the smallest greens on the course.  Laying up with an iron is relatively straight forward but leaves a much more difficult 4- or 5-iron approach.”  

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Test players’ ability to shape the ball to de-emphasize pure distance

Straight holes allow the longer hitters to take a free swing with their driver—if there’s no advantage to shaping the ball, their distance becomes an even greater advantage. Making golfers turn the ball with the shape of the hole puts more pressure on the tee shot, so OCM would emphasize doglegs and diagonal fairway zones.

“It’s amazing how often you seem to be hitting across the fairway rather than directly down the fairway at Sawgrass,” Ogilvy says. “There are so many holes where you are fearful of driving through the dogleg. The same goes for a hole like the 13th at Augusta National. Making them turn the ball with their driver both ways is an important aspect to retain for any course designed to test the best.”

Affect scoring through fairway shaping

David Cannon

Feet matter in professional golf. Missing a fairway in the rough by three yards can decrease the precision of the approach to the green, meaning longer putts. PGA Tour statistics show that the make percentage on putts from eight feet decreases by 50 percent when lengthened to 15 feet. Architectural elements that can put the professionals marginally farther away from their target can have a significant cumulative scoring impact over the course of 18 or 72 holes.

One of the most effective ways of making aerial shots fly even slightly off target is to create uneven lies that make the player factor additional shape and trajectory calculations. “We prefer to see some movement in the fairways, especially the small to medium scale ridges, mounds and hollows that can alter how a hole plays day to day due to the bounce, roll and uphill, sidehill or downhill lie,” Cocking says.   

This can also be achieved through longer contours. Cocking explains one of their favored tactics is to create, or utilize, reverse camber fairways, usually found on dogleg holes, where the slope of the land falls away from the preferred shot shape.

“It's a fantastic extra strategic element on top of just using angles,” he says. “Augusta does this incredibly well with holes like the ninth clearly setting up for a high draw, but the ball being below your feet in the fairway is doing everything to force a low cut.” For their modern TPC, they would seek out land that naturally falls away from the line of play, or in the best Pete Dye fashion, move earth to create the reverse camber.

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An example of the challenges Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead present around the greens at The Fall Line (East), Golf Digest's 2025 Best New Private winner.

Brian Oar

Both Cocking and Ogilvy grew up in Melbourne, so they have a natural affinity for tight, short-grass lies around greens. While it’s become popular for many modern courses to present shaved, fairway-height aprons and green run-offs, it’s a feature that can subtly impact the psychology of shot making in a professional tournament setting.

“There is a place for a deep bunker, a nasty grassy hollow or water around greens, but we also like to use short grass and a slope to inflict a different sort of punishment, in much the same way that The Old Course, Royal Melbourne or Augusta National do,” says Ogilvy. “From back in the fairway a shaved bank off the green can make for a much scarier approach than to a green surrounded by rough, knowing a miss might lead to a 30- or 40-yard return pitch. Plus, professionals don't much like recovering from tight, firm short grass.  They'd much prefer a simple option to chip with a 60-degree wedge out of beautifully maintained rough.”

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A new TPC course would need to be longer

TPC Sawgrass has remained an effective course despite the relatively modest yardage of 7,275 yards, due to many of the architectural aspects discussed. But when constructing a modern version from scratch, additional length would be necessary given the realities of the modern professional game.

Cocking believes the course would need to be at least 7,500 yards to somewhat handle the distances players hit the ball. But despite the overall length, he says, “we would still be looking to include some short holes, including two or three potentially drivable par 4s (330 to 350 yards), some reachable 5s with an aggressive play off the tee and a short par 3.” These would be offset by some holes on the opposite end of the spectrum. “A really long par 3,” he says, “and some par 4s that place a long iron in the best players' hands ... for once!”

Add unpredictability into lies off the fairway

Kevin C. Cox

Growing thick rough has always been part of the program when setting up courses for major tournaments, and long grass can certainly be an effective way of punishing errant shots. But in keeping with their preference for creating a design that’s more psychologically taxing than physically punitive, OCM would opt for a lighter presentation of rough that creates uncertainty when playing out of it.

“What really makes the professional edgy isn't long thick green rough but actually that slightly wispy, thin Bermuda that puts an element of doubt into the golfers’ minds,” says Ogilvy. “How is the ball going to come out? Will I catch a flyer? Will it come out clean?” He says that having some sand in the soil mix would make the grass sparser and increase the chance the ball might be sitting slightly down. “Ideally it’s a 50/50 scenario anytime you miss the fairway as to how the ball is lying,” he says.  

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Steve Lapper died in his sleep last week — a quiet passing for a beloved husband, father, unreformed golf junkie and friend to many in the game, none of whom would have described him as quiet.

I first met Steve some 15 years ago in the grill room of a hidebound Boston-area club. He was seated at the next table over, holding forth in a voluble stage whisper on the work of the Golden Age architect William Flynn. Someone made an introduction and we got to talking, first about courses, but soon about work and kids and where to get the best dim sum nearby. Within no time, he was giving me the kind of good-natured grief I only expect from people I have known and liked for years.

That was Steve. He made your acquaintance quickly. He was drawn to golf as an art form and a pastime, but even more as a catalyst for social connections, which he seemed to forge wherever he went. Busting chops was just one of his ways of expressing fondness. He relished his relationships in the game, with an understanding that the places golf took him and the people he met through it were its richest rewards.

Steve was born and raised in New Rochelle, N.Y., and grew up caddying at Wykagyl and Winged Foot. One of his cherished memories was walking Winged Foot as a standard bearer in the 1974 U.S. Open, an experience he’d happily recount to anyone who’d listen.

Both his parents played, his mother well enough to win her club championship. Steve could get his ball airborne, too. Sometimes, he even hit it with power and precision. But he never deluded himself into thinking he might do it for a living. Golf instead became a near-constant companion through a career that spanned trading floors in Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

It was in Manhattan where he met his wife, Melissa. They later moved to New Jersey, where they raised two daughters, Sydney and Whitney.

Like New York, Steve had an outsize personality and stories to match. Friends sometimes accused him of taking poetic license with his anecdotes, including the one about playing golf and poker with Michael Jordan when Jordan was a rookie. Steve’s pal, Mike Policano, was among the amiable doubters until a few years ago, when he wound up at dinner with Steve and two friends, one of whom mentioned he’d just bumped into Jordan in a hotel lobby. “He then described the two of them playing poker and golf with Jordan,” Policano told me. “I stammered, ‘You mean, that story was true?'”

Along with good yarns, Steve brimmed with interests and opinions. He read voraciously. He collected art. He could speak on high-brow topics without sounding pretentious and on low-brow matters without coming off as a knucklehead. Aside from his wife and daughters, few subjects delighted him more than golf design.

He was an early and forceful voice in online architecture forums. Debates on those platforms can be like academic feuds in which people care so much because the stakes are so small. At times, Steve ruffled feathers and had his ruffled back. But he never lost touch with the point of those exchanges, which was to swap ideas and insights with fellow obsessives, or their ultimate importance, which was minimal. He could disagree heatedly and laugh about it an hour later. And he was never too proud to admit when he was wrong.

“Steve could be a lot,” one of his friends told me, tenderly. I’ve always thought that’s better than being a little. To engage with Steve was to understand that he expected you to go all in. You could count on him to show you the same respect in return.

Steve served as a GOLF Magazine course rater for more than a decade. But his deepest involvement in the game was as a course operator and developer. He was president of Paramount Golf Club in New York and co-owner of Fox Hollow Golf Course in New Jersey, and he was working toward a real-estate project at nearby Spring Brook GC when he died.

Brandel Chamblee, the Golf Channel and NBC Sports analyst, first encountered Steve over lunch at Paramount under circumstances not unlike my own. Steve was seated nearby and “he was not inconspicuous,” Chamblee said. “He also knew more about architecture than anyone I’d ever met. It was like talking to George Thomas, Alister MacKenzie, Bill Coore and Gil Hanse all in one.”

Steve and Chamblee became friends, though not because they agreed on everything. “Politically, we couldn’t have been more opposite,” Chamblee said. “But with Steve, you could have an argument without animosity. He would listen to you. He was open to having his mind changed. Even on fraught topics, conversations with Steve were always civil. It reminded me of the way the world used to be. Of the way the world should be.”

They eventually partnered on a golf development project that fell into limbo. The friendship didn’t.

Steve will be remembered for his gregariousness but also for his generosity. He was giving with his time as well as with his contacts. Whether I was writing about design, agronomy, the business of golf development or legal issues around the Tour-LIV war, he topped my call list. If I needed a source, he had a reference. The Kevin Bacon of the golf world, he was rarely more than a few degrees removed from a notable figure. Often that figure was someone he knew well enough to bust their chops.

The golf course photographer Jon Cavalier experienced this firsthand. Steve was a big booster in Cavalier’s launch of LinksGems, the now-prominent Instagram account he runs. “When I was starting out, I didn’t know much about great architecture or private clubs,” Cavalier told me. “I didn’t know who to contact or how to conduct myself.” Steve liked Cavalier’s work, reached out to say so, and became both a friend and mentor, educating him about design, showing him how to navigate the industry. “If I’ve got 1,000 great relationships in golf,” Cavalier said, “I probably owe 950 of them to Steve.”

Steve shared his love of golf at home. He inspired Melissa to take up the game and taught both daughters to play. Before his death, Whitney had been planning to host a tournament at her college in Wisconsin to raise money for one of the campus clubs. That event is in April. Steve and Sydney had planned to attend. Now, Sydney and her mom will go. “But my dad will be there in spirit,” Sydney said. “His idea of heaven was a golf course.”

Steve would have turned 69 this year. The last time we spoke, he’d been scraping it around. His game had seen better days and he was the first to say so but without complaint. He knew that was the bargain every lifelong golfer strikes. He had trips planned and a clear sense of how he hoped to spend his time. He had played 99 of GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World, Augusta National being the exception. He would have thrilled to play it, but he wasn’t going to break his back to try to make that happen. Getting out with friends and family was the main thing. The cachet of the course concerned him less than the company he kept.

In 2022, one of Steve’s close friends, a fellow course rater named David Baum, was killed in a car accident in New Jersey. In a tribute on GOLF.com, Steve wrote: “Like so many of us, David took lessons and worked on his swing, yet his goal wasn’t as much to shoot a lower score as it was to enjoy the walk. . . He also saw the game as a portal to adventure and discovery.”

I count myself among the many who feel similarly about golf, and whose world was widened because of Steve.

The post Remembering Steve Lapper, a design buff who lived and breathed the game appeared first on Golf.