Casa De Campo (Teeth of the Dog Course) - Dominican Republic

Casa de Campo's Teeth of the Dog is Pete Dye's Dominican masterpiece, one of the world's truly great seaside Courses and perennially ranked as the top course in the Caribbean. Dye first surveyed the site in 1969, when it was part of the vast holdings of Gulf & Western Corporation, whose CEO Charles Bludhorn launched the Casa de Campo resort. The course was painstakingly constructed by hand, with 300 local laborers chiseling the fairways from the sharp coral known as "dientes del perro" that gives the course it cannie moniker. Topsoil was brought from the mountains by ox-drawn carts and the grass was all planted by hand. The entire Course bears Dye's unmistakable stamp, from the cinnamon-colored waste bunkers to the coral tee boxes, to the small, contoured greens. Dye created a variety of inland holes but showed his true brilliance in letting Mother Nature take care of the seven holes that straddle and somersault across the azure waters of the Caribbean. Combined with the lavish tropical beauty of the setting, it is not hard to understand why Dye admits that Teeth of the Dog is the favorite of all his courses, and where he built a thatched-roof home alongside the fifth hole.

Playa Grand Golf Course - Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic has earned a well-deserved reputation as the Caribbean's leading golf destination. The courses that have received all the attention are in the southeast, with four Pete Dye-designed courses at Casa de Campo and courses by P.B. Dye and Jack Nicklaus at Punta Cana, with several more on the drawing board. Playa Grande Golf Course is a spectacular but unheralded layout east of Puerta Plata in a remote area of the Dominican Republic's north coast. The last course worked on by legendary archictect Robert Trent Jones, it was completed after many years in 1997. The course runs across tabletop cliffs 100 feet above the royal blue waters. With 11 holes circumnavigating the seaside cliffs, Playa Grande is truly the Pebble Beach of the Caribbean.