All with the same message:
Don’t make a mess.
Designed by Pete Dye with Jack Nicklaus who worked with him in his first venture into the course design industry, Harbor Town has long been considered a classic layout, running through the low-lying live oaks and along the Calibogue Sound, having introduced a new style of golf course design when it opened in 1969.
So when it came time to give Harbor Town its first substantial makeover in 25 years, it was up to Love – who has won the RBC Heritage five times and the Junior Heritage once – to improve and modernize the layout without sacrificing the strategic brilliance that Dye had built into the course.
Mission accomplished.
The revamped version of Harbor Town reopened this week and looks and plays exactly as Dye imagined it more than 50 years ago.
Some branches have been trimmed, bunkers have been reworked, some lost pot bunkers have been restored, the greens have been subtly reshaped and gently reshaped in places to add pin positions, and it’s all been accomplished without losing the magic of Harbor Town.
It is a beautiful bridge that connects the past, present and future.
“We locked arms, we had a common goal. We knew exactly what we were going to do,” said John Farrell, director of sports activities at Sea Pines Resort.
“Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay. They came to us without being asked [last year] and said, “We heard you’re closing.” And they said, ‘Please don’t change the integrity of this golf course. We have something we love. ”
It mimicked the message given to former Harbor Town Golf Director Cary Corbitt when the last major work was done on the course in 1999.
“Tom Watson, Lanny Wadkins, Peter Jacobsen, Mark O’Meara, a lot of them came and said, ‘Don’t change it.’ It was the exact same script we got 25 years later,” Farrell said.
Love knows Harbor Town perhaps as well as anyone. He attended the first Heritage in 1969 when his father played the PGA Tour and Love’s success in Harbor Town has defined his Hall of Fame career, along with his rainbow victory in the 1997 PGA Championship at Winged Foot.
One of the tallest players in his prime, Love consistently won on a course that rewards precision over strength, and he continues to do so. Harbor Town has always been more about where the ball goes than how far it goes.
It’s not always enough to hit one of Harbor Town’s narrow fairways.
“I think what Scottie Scheffler likes about this golf course is when you hit it on the right side of the fairway [No.] 1, you will be rewarded. You hit it on the left side of the fairway [No.] 2, you will be rewarded,” Love said.
It’s the kind of work that a resort guest who plays Harbor Town once a year might not notice, but tour players and architecture buffs will.
And so it goes throughout the layout, which still features small greens that now have more movement than before, without adding sharp edges and contours.
Part of the course work involved removing footbridges and rerouting cart paths. The par-5 fifth hole, annually one of the easiest holes at the RBC Heritage, now has more grip thanks to bringing a large live oak closer to the green while creating a new back left pin position.
Iconic greens like the horseshoe-shaped ninth remain as they were, although the bunkers around No. 9 are slightly deeper. The stacked turf walls on some bunker walls had been lost over the years, but they have been restored with artificial grass walls. The front of the 13th green was lowered slightly where the planks frame the expansive bunker surface.
It’s the kind of work that a resort guest who plays Harbor Town once a year might not notice, but tour players and architecture buffs will.
No. 16 (left) and No. 17 in Harbor Town
“We have spoken [course architect] Tom [Doak] Before Davis came on board, and Tom said, you had a Pete Dye masterpiece that revolutionized American golf course architecture. The worst thing you can do… is dramatically change the integrity of the golf course so the tour players can come back and say I liked it better before you messed it up. So we didn’t do that,” Farrell said.
Work began immediately after the RBC Heritage ended in April, starting on the 18th green and working partially backward to accommodate weddings and other events with views of the Calibogue Sound.
Love immediately realized the magnitude of the project when he arrived on site the Monday after Justin Thomas won the 2025 RBC Heritage.
“When I walked onto the 18th green the day they started, [they] were digging up the spot I had once broken into the ground [2003] Heritage. I’m like, wow, this really hits home,” Love said.
“We all had our goals and desires and we all had to come to the conclusion, ‘Okay, this is what Pete would do.'”
Pete Dye would approve.
Above: No. 18 in Harbor Town. Photos: The Sea Pines Resort / Bill Hornstein
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