Famous golfer sharpens Teeth of the Dog in the Dominican Republic

The most famous interaction between Jerry Pate and Pete Dye surely came in 1982, when Pate won what would become the Players Championship the first time it was played at Dye’s new Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass in Florida. Following his victory, Pate pushed Dye and PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman into the water left of No. 18 green, an amusing scene with plenty of laughs that nevertheless highlighted the frustration felt by many players about the difficult new layout. 

Dye and Pate – also the winner of the 1976 U.S. Open at Atlanta Athletic Club – would go on to become friends. Pate even helped the famous golf course architect as a player consultant in the construction of the Dye’s Valley Course that opened in 1987 next door to the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. 

Their paths have crossed again, this time at one of the legendary architect’s greatest courses: Teeth of the Dog at Casa de Campo on the south shore of the Dominican Republic. After his playing career ended young because of shoulder injuries, Pate went on to a golf course design career of his own. Now the Florida native, 72, is wrapping up a restoration of Teeth of the Dog that kept Dye front and center in memory every step of the way. 

Opened in 1971, Teeth of the Dog sits at No. 4 on the 2026 Golfweek’s Best ranking of the top courses in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Atlantic Islands and Central America. But like all courses, especially those sitting tight to a sea, the layout had aged. Dye owned a home at Casa de Campo and continuously tinkered with Teeth of the Dog over the decades before his passing in 2020 at the age of 94, but in recent years there was work to be done on the visually stunning course that features seven holes carved into the rocky shoreline. 

Pate was retained nearly eight years ago to suggest modifications, but he never wanted to re-do Dye’s work. 

“Our goal was just to keep it looking like it used to look,” Pate said near the end of 2025, soon before first shots would be struck after the work. “We tried to keep the same philosophy that Pete instilled in just about all his golf courses. ... I knew the golf course, I like the golf course and I respect the golf course, and I wanted to keep the same design philosophy throughout.”

Casa de Campo director of golf Robert Birtel said the project began as the resort’s operators considered resurfacing tees, fairways and greens with new paspalum grass. The scope expanded to a total refresh. 

Tees were flattened and enlarged to provide better playing surfaces. A few holes were lengthened with new rear tee boxes. The fairways were capped with three to four inches of sand and the greens were capped with seven inches, providing better drainage and bouncier, faster playing surfaces. Drainage was added. Bunkers were renovated and new liners were added, with some traps moving, a few being added and others just touched up in place. The faces of the bunkers were sharpened. Greens were expanded, offering new hole locations. Cart paths were added, mostly tucked out of view. 

But at its core, it’s the same golf course Dye constructed years before tackling such famous layouts as the Players Stadium Course, Whistling Straits in Wisconsin or the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina. The grand reopening of Teeth of the Dog is scheduled for March 10, though there will be several events and limited preview play before then. 

“The purpose, and Jerry would tell you the same thing, was not to take away from anything Pete did,” Birtel said. “The purpose of the project was to enhance Pete’s golf course. Jerry had that in mind the whole time, and we all had that in mind through this planning process. We’re really excited for how it’s going to come out.”

Pate had played the course since the 1970s. Just as he won the first event at Dye’s Players Stadium Course in 1982, Pate was the reigning U.S. Amateur Champion (at Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey) when he arrived at Casa de Campo’s first big event, the 1974 World Amateur Team Championship. Pate won the individual title to lead the U.S. to victory. Pate’s relationship with the resort didn’t stop there: In the ensuing years, he developed a friendship with the eventual owner of the resort, Alfie Fanjul. 

Pate would regularly return to Casa de Campo, speaking about Teeth of the Dog and the resort’s other courses with Dye and his wife, Alice Dye. The last thing Pate wanted to do was remake a wheel that turned so well. 

“It’s like renovating a house,” Pate said of his work at Teeth of the Dog. “We’re putting down new carpet, new wallpaper, new faucets and maybe new doors. But it’s still the same house. And it’s going to look like the same house. It’s just been updated. So the golf course will look the same. ... We had pictures that went back to 1971 and ’72, and we had photos of the progression of the changes over the years. We had a lot to work with.”

Birtel said discussions began with changing the main grass playing surfaces to paspalum grass, a hearty genus that can tolerate salty spray from the sea. Paspalum already was in play on the resort’s 27-hole Dye Fore course, and it also had been planted at the property’s private La Romana Country Club. The greens at Teeth of the Dog had been replanted with paspalum nearly two decades ago, but other grasses were still in play. 

“The main purpose of the renovation was we were growing the fairways effectively on clay, and we had multiple variations of grass that we were taking care of, whether it was Bermuda or paspalum and some zoysia,” Birtel said. “So the crux of the project was to sand cap the fairways and plant pure Dynasty paspalum. And by the time it takes to figure that out and do that, that’s an eight-month project anyway.

“So then we sat down and said, well, we can do bunkers, level tees and do cart paths all at the same time, along with a few other projects. And that’s how the whole project started.”

Birtel said golfers who have returned to play Teeth of the Dog dozens of times likely will notice some of the changes, but most of those changes won’t be overly obvious to those golfers who have seen the layout just a handful of times. 

Some of the biggest changes came at the greens, which in addition to being sand-capped were expanded to their original sizes in most cases. Birtel said the greens average around 5,000 square feet, and most of them were enlarged in the neighborhood of 200 square feet. Dye’s original greens stretched to the slopes around the putting surfaces, but as with most courses, those greens had retreated several feet over the decades. 

“We brought the fringes out to the edges of the hills, which brings the green closer to the apex of the hill, which will add for more movement of the ball as it approaches the sides of the hills,” Birtel said of the restoration. “You have to be a little more precise (with approach shots). Whereas the fringe might have saved you in the past, it won’t save you this time.”

A few of the greens received even larger expansions, most notably at No. 2, Birtel said. A back-right section of the green was visible in old photos, but it had vanished over the years, taking with it a challenging hole location. That section of the green has now been restored. Similarly, the green at the stunning seaside eighth hole was expanded to allow balls to better funnel into the putting surface perched above sparkling water. And Pate created a new version of the seaside 15th green, which is now a version of a Biarritz – a historically famous architectural template that features a high front, a low middle and a high back.

“It’s a subtle Biarritz,” Birtel said. “If the pin is back-right and you leave your ball in the middle, you have to go up a little plateau and then navigate that. Teeth of the Dog was always very subtle, and I think Jerry did a good job of maintaining those subtleties but adding in some new in placements that we had all kind of spoken about.”

The other main changes that catch the eye were to Teeth of the Dog’s bunkers. Over the decades, the faces of the bunkers had sagged and the bottoms of the bunkers had shifted. 

“I think, from my eye, the bunker work is so good with enhanced lips,” Birtel said. “They’re Pete Dye bunkers, so the sand is down at the bottom and grass comes down. The faces (of the fairway bunkers in particular) are just the right height now to really make you think about approach shots.”

New liners were added in the restoration, and the faces were pushed back up and more into play. Some new bunkers were added, such as a pot bunker on the par-3 13th where a tree once stood before a hurricane knocked it over. Other bunkers were shifted, such as the fairway trio on the par-5 14th that was flipped and moved a few yards closer to the line of play. The bunkers feature sand trucked in from near the capital city of Santa Domingo, and Birtel said it offers beautiful playability. 

All the work should shine brightly at the jewel of the massive resort, which offers some five miles of Caribbean coastline. With multiple styles of accommodations that range from luxurious hotel rooms to massive oceanfront villas, three full-size resort-access courses including Dye Fore and the Dye-designed Links, a world-class marina, even a ridiculously gorgeous cliffside Mediterranean-style village at Altos de Chavon, Casa de Campo never disappoints. 

“For anybody that goes to Casa de Campo, they’re going to find it’s a wonderful experience,” Pate said. “I mean, the restaurants are spectacular, everything is amazing – I’m on a sales pitch now, but I’m just being honest. I haven’t been going back there all these years just to play golf. I rarely play golf now. I go there because it’s one incredible experience.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Casa de Campo sharpens its Teeth of the Dog in the Dominican Republic