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Some of Pete Dye's greatest designs were originally conceived on a cocktail napkin or restaurant placemat. So when Schmidt went into exhausting detail in a six-page treatise outlining each problem, well, suffice it to say it may not have been the best way to impress his first boss out of college.

Dye's phone call to Schmidt was short.

“Son, we need to talk. Meet me at the course.”

Schmidt was beginning to think his first job in the industry was about to become his last. Maybe they would take him back at Woodland Country Club in Indianapolis, where he had worked summers between semesters at Purdue.

Pre-eminent course designer Pete Dye posed in 2000 with Schmidt in a bunker on the ninth hole at the PGA West Stadium Course they built.

“We walked the course and we discussed every item on the list,” Schmidt says. “And in the end, Pete looks at me and says, 'You know what? You're right.' And he and I have been best friends ever since.”

Design associate for Dye at La Quinta

Pete Dye (who recently rebuilt Purdue's North Course, which was renamed the Kampen Course) built some of the most famous courses in the hemisphere with Lee Schmidt as a key member of the design team. Their projects include the PGA West Stadium Course in La Quinta, Calif., one of the sites of golf's Skins Game, and the La Quinta Hotel Mountain Course, site of the 1984 World Cup.

"Lee is as good a builder as there is in the business,” Dye says. “He is equally good with people and equipment, and nobody is more organized. He got a great education at Purdue, so he knows as much about turf as anybody around.”

But Schmidt is the first to admit there is more to building a golf course than strategically locating grass and sand.

"There are so many different disciplines involved in designing and building a golf course,” he says.

"There is landscape architecture, some civil engineering, hydrology, agronomy, site analysis, an understanding of environmental issues, and a knowledge of the rules of golf and golf strategy.”

An understanding of foreign languages can come in handy, as well.

Dye pulls a fast one while Schmidt is away

Under Dye, Schmidt got his first real taste of extended international travel. After completing several projects stateside, Schmidt was sent to the Dominican Republic to rework several areas on Casa De Campo's famous Teeth of the Dog golf course. The success of that project led to an adjacent course, The Links, where Dye unwittingly exacted a little revenge on Schmidt for his six-page Ohio manifesto.

“Lee and Jean were going to get married while he was working on our project in the Dominican,” Dye recalls. “So he was running around like crazy trying to get as much done as possible before the wedding. He had even made a list for me of who were the good workers and who were the bad workers.”

But Dye had a little surprise for the Schmidts when they returned to the island from their honeymoon.

“Where there were greens, there were now tees. And where there were once tees, now there were greens,” Dye says. “I changed the entire back nine around, but Lee was a pro and he handled it without a problem.”

And in the end, when Schmidt began to look for more professional challenges, Dye rewarded him.

“I told Jack Nicklaus I was going to do him the best favor anybody could ever do for him,” Dye said. “And that was to recommend Lee Schmidt to him as a designer.”

Schmidt worked for Nicklaus as a senior design associate for seven years. The Golden Bear turned Schmidt loose on many of his projects worldwide, including courses in Canada, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan.

“Many times we would sit around Jack's kitchen table and go over layouts for various courses,” Schmidt says. “But after a while, when he became fully confident in what I was doing, Jack would hand me a project and say 'Lee, you just do it.'”

Travel is ‘terrible,’ except for trip home

Schmidt says the worst part of his job is the travel, but even that has its rewards.

“The travel is just terrible, but it opens your eyes to how things are done in the rest of the world. And, I believe, it makes you a better person,” Schmidt says. “Foreign travel just gets in your blood. After a while, you become a Gypsy. But every time I come back to the United States, I appreciate, more and more, the freedoms we have in this country and what America stands for.”

Like the freedom to do anything you want to your front yard. Schmidt cuts his grass so short (about half an inch) he should have a mower endorsement deal with Schick. It's the only yard in his neighborhood, and probably in all of Scottsdale, that looks, appropriately enough, like a putting green.

At least he has resisted the urge to place a bunker between the driveway and the lawn ... for now.

Contact Schmidt at lschmidt@schmidt-curley.com