There are a few holes in golf that as a golfer you know you just have to cross off your list. When you get to Sea Pines Resort in Hilton Head Island, you know that you are just counting the minutes until you get to walk over to the 18th tee box on Harbour Town Golf Links and look down at the iconic red and white striped lighthouse located behind the 18th green.
This indelible image is burnt into our golf brain every year during the RBC Heritage on the PGA Tour, but what many people fail to realize is the incredible significance that this golf course has had on modern golf course architecture.
Enter Jack Nicklaus and Pete Dye. Jack and Pete were both proud Ohioans, and the two first met actually in competition where a young Jack Nicklaus took down a middle-aged Pete Dye in the Trans-Mississippi Amateur. Years later, Pete was working on the Golf Club in Columbus, Ohio (Nicklaus’ hometown), and he brought in the budding star for his first project.
The perfect combination
Years later, Jack had the opportunity to repay the favor when Jack brought Pete into the project to build Harbour Town Golf Links. As we sit now, this seems like a no-brainer because we associate Pete with his multitude of incredible projects including TPC Sawgrass, Whistling Straights, The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, and a multitude of others.
But this was not the case in 1968. Pete had a modest resume at the time with only a handful of courses under his name as he was just getting started.
Dye took the lead on the project, and he knew that the new design was not going to garner a lot of favor with players when they played in the inaugural Heritage Golf Classic in 1969. At that time, players were used to much easier layouts and had yet to experience the Dye-abolical designs that we are all so familiar with today. Enter a third character into the story who solidified the quality of the experience at Harbour Town — none other than Arnold Palmer.
The course had beaten up the field, with the King ending up as the only person to shoot under par winning with a total score of 1-under 283. After winning the event, Palmer proceeded to rave about this new course and how good of a job Pete and Jack, his biggest rival, had done putting it together.
Fast forward more than 50 years, and the success of this one design has led to Pete’s portfolio of 127 golf courses himself, as well as a list of disciples that is basically a “who’s who” in modern day golf course design including Bill Coore, Tom Doak, Tim Liddy, Jim Urbina, Bobby Weed, Rod Whitman and more, furthering his reach onto golf courses and extending his legacy.
For Jack, the development of Harbour Town Golf Links sparked something inside him. To date, the Nicklaus Design company has designed more than 425 courses in some 45 countries worldwide.
If it wasn’t for the development of Harbour Town Golf Links at Sea Pines Resort, it’s tough to imagine what the golf landscape would look like. This epic track is a must-play for any golfer, and if you haven’t made it here yet or haven’t been in a while, hopefully this gives you one more reason to get to this destination in the near future.