Welcome back Harbour Town Golf Links. The iconic Pete Dye-designed course that set the foundation for his legendary career has reopened following a six-month restoration project led by Davis Love III.
The centerpiece of The Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island, SC, Harbour Town Golf Links has been the home of the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing since it opened in 1969. It’s also widely regarded as one of Dye’s best and more iconic creations – among the first masterpieces of his long and brilliant career. It should be noted that Dye’s wife, Alice, a respected course architect in her own right, and a young Jack Nicklaus, each worked with Dye at Harbour Town.
Love, who grew up on the Southeast’s coastal islands, and his company, Love Golf Design, designed another course at The Sea Pines Resort, Atlantic Dunes by Davis Love III.
From the beginning of the project, Love and the team responsible for the restoration – including Allan MacCurrach from MacCurrach Golf Construction; Jon Wright, Head Golf Superintendent, Harbour Town Golf Links; John Farrell, Director of Sports Operations; The Riverstone Group, who own The Sea Pines Resort; and others – were committed to, as Love said, “protecting the strategy and integrity of Pete’s design.”
“My job was to say, ‘I think this is what Pete would want us to do now,’’ Love said. “I was just a small part of the team. We had a great group that honored what the Goodwin family (owner of The Sea Pines Resort) has done for so long: protecting this masterpiece. It’s iconic in golf course architecture. It’s a place you really want to see and play.’’
Originally intended as an updating of the course’s infrastructure to ensure championship-caliber conditions year-round, it also presented an opportunity to restore many features from Dye’s original design and to provide one of the country’s most recognizable layouts that stands the test of time. Along with improvements to agronomy and maintenance, each green, bunker, and bulkhead was rebuilt. The turf – TifEagle on the greens, Celebration Bermuda on the fairways, tees, and rough- remains the same.
As for changes to the design, even the experienced Harbour Town Golf Links player will have trouble spotting them, explained Farrell.
“Every ‘change’ we made had some documentation or images or video of what it was like previously.”
Updates include returning some greens to their original shapes, restoring hole locations that were lost as the surfaces shrank over time. The same with some greenside bunkering, which, due to years of play and shrinkage, no longer abutted their greens.
“I’ve received a lot of emails from members who told me ‘You made something great even better,’’’ Farrell said.
Photo Courtesy of The Sea Pines Resort
