With its landmark, red-and-white striped lighthouse standing only yards behind its 18th green along the Calibogue Sound, Harbour Town Golf Links has long been a beacon of golf in the Carolinas.
Now, approaching 60 years old, the Pete Dye/Jack Nicklaus design reopened in November on Hilton Head Island after a subtle, but effective facelift from a fitting course doctor, Davis Love III, five-time champion of the RBC Heritage Classic, an annual upper-tier event on the PGA Tour.
TriadGolf.com visited Harbour Town in December hoping to see much the same classic layout, with minimal tweaks. I’d been fortunate to play the course perhaps a dozen times previously in media outings to promote the Heritage.
We weren’t disappointed. Harbour Town remains the classic, seaside shotmakers’ course that debuted in 1969. But with new infrastructure.
The routing and strategy for the holes remained much the same. This renovation didn’t include large-scale tree removal. Hitting fairways still isn’t enough — approaches often requiring hitting the target area in the short grass.
Bulkheads for greens set above hazards and bridges were rebuilt. New irrigation was installed. Railroad ties for the bulkhead was replaced. Some shrunken greens and bunkers were rebuilt to original size and shape, restoring lost pin positions at modern maintenance standards. Stack-sodded bunker faces, replaced over the years, were restored.
Though slightly larger, the course’s trademark small greens remain TifEagle Bermuda with winter overseeding with Poa Trivialis and the fairways are still Celebration and 419 Bermuda replaced with Perennial Rye in the winter. For maintenance reasons, the stacked sod on bunker faces were synthetic turf, a change we didn’t notice on the course.
Though known for requiring accuracy over power, par-71 Harbour Town plays to almost 7,100 yards with a 75.6 rating and 148 slope from the tips, with other men’s tees measuring around 6,600 and 6,300 yards.
So what changes come into play?
Well, a big live oak was uprooted and moved 20 feet or so left to tighten the approach on the right to the par-5 fifth hole. At No. 7, another tree was moved to provide a tunnel feeling on the tee.
The trio of windy closing holes remains truly special, a place to make longtime memories. After satisfying pars at the dogleg left, par-4 16th and the dangerous par-3 17th, I bailed out right away from the beach on my approach at the signature 18th and failed to get up and down.
Harbour Town isn’t a course many of us will play very often. The rack rate in December was around $500, tip not included, for forecaddies, who provide yardages that mitigate the inconvenience of the course’s cart path-only policy. Sea Pines Resort lodging packages can make the golf fees seem more palatable.
Sea Pines’ other two courses, Heron Point and Atlantic Dunes, have been transformed over the years from typical resort-style courses to more challenging, upper-tier layouts.
