Golf course architect Beau Welling plans to treat Pete Dye's Oak Marsh course with reverence

Beau Welling first met Pete Dye in a swampy area of Kiawah Island, S.C.

The World Golf Hall of Fame architect yelled at him. Welling said there might have been some choice language involved.

That shaky start turned into a lifelong relationship and Welling said would be uppermost in his mind as he oversees the renovation of one of Dye's first golf course designs on the First Coast — which predates the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass by almost a decade.

Welling got a guided tour of Ocean Course

It was 1990 and Welling was a 20-year-old college student at Brown who was interning for another famed golf course architect, Tom Fazio.

Welling's father was thinking about buying property at Kiawah Island near the site of the Ocean Course that would later host the Ryder Cup and two PGA Championships. They were being driven around the construction sites by a sales representative for the development company.

It was then that they encountered Dye, who was tramping through the wetlands supervising the construction of the course. And the World Golf Hall of Fame architect wasn't happy with the intrusion.

"He started yelling at us for being on the property," said Welling, who now owns his architecture firm, Beau Welling Design, based in Greensville, S.C. "We were totally embarrassed. Then my dad rolled down the window and told him that I was interning for Tom Fazio."

That stopped Dye in his tracks.

"Pete stopped yelling and then told the salesman to get out of the car," Welling said. "Pete got behind the wheel and then proceeded to give me a hole-by-hole tour of the golf course. It's the coolest thing that ever happened to me."

Welling to oversee Oak Marsh renovation

Welling will now get his first chance to renovate an original Dye design, the Omni Amelia Island Oak Marsh Golf Course. It was built in 1972 — eight years before the opening of Dye's most famous creation, the Stadium Course.

The $7.4 million Oak Marsh project broke ground last week, with extensive infrastructure such as drainage and irrigation under the course, rebuilding cart paths, a complete re-grassing of the fairways and greens and rebuilding the practice areas.

The course will be closed for the spring and summer and is scheduled to re-open Oct. 1.

Welling said the integrity of Dye's design on a 6,500-yard course that winds through marshland, woods and has breathtaking views of the Intracoastal Waterway, will be maintained as much as possible while keeping within a golf of modernizing the course for the skill of modern players and the equipment available to them.

"We're going to keep all the things that make this a Pete Dye golf course," Welling said. "There are areas we have to update for the modern version of golf. People are hitting it further, but they're also playing golf longer and longer, and we have to account for resort and private players who want to play the ball on the ground."

New Oak Marsh will allow more run-up shots

To that end, Welling will be giving players more options to run the ball into the greens. There are 14 holes with water hazards in play and there will be options for skilled players to hit the ball high and over water and for handicap players to play bump-and-run shots, especially within 50 yards from the green.

"The greens have shrunk a lot, and we need to re-establish some of those," Welling said. "We might tweak some green locations. With a course more than 50 years old, the oak trees have grown out and trees, shade and turf don't mix. We'll shift a green or two, take some bunkers out and soften some of the mounding to make it more playable. But it's important to the ownership and to me that we just not start over."

The greens will be re-grassed with TifEagle Bermuda and the fairways, teeing grounds, rough and green collars will be TifTuf Bermuda.

Welling has experience with the property. He designed the 10-hole "Little Sandy" course that opened in 2022 and replaced the Ocean Links course. He's also the architect for one of two championship courses at the PGA of American headquarters in Frisco, Texas, the Omni PGA Frisco Resort.

The Dye touch will remain intact

He said he's approaching the project as if he were preserving a piece of history. Dye designed Oak Marsh only five years after his Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C.

Welling said he will make sure some of Dye's quirks remain — such as a bunker that wraps around the fifth green like a boomerang and the beauty of the ninth, 16th, 17th and 18th holes where the views of the Intracoastal are at their most scenic.

"If you're a golfer from South Carolina, Pete is a big name," Welling said. "Oak Marsh has a Harbour Town feel to it and we want to maintain that. Pete and I developed a relationship over time and he was always ready to offer his advice any time I called. He was very opinionated, and I liked that. And knowing him like I did, if I mess this up, he'll hunt me down."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Pete Dye's Oak Marsh will get reverential treatment from Beau Welling