The toughest job for any golf course architect is updating a beloved classic course without stomping on the unique and timeless elements that make it special.
Now, compound that anxiety with the most modern of concerns, like the impending golf ball rollback, and you get a hint of what the last few months have been like for Davis Love III.
Love is a five-time winner at Harbour Town Golf Links — actually, he will tell you he’s a six-time winner including his Junior Heritage title — and he was an easy choice to lead the redesign efforts when Sea Pines Resort decided it was time to give the tree-lined gem a facelift. But if Love was an easy choice, the actual job was far more demanding.
Harbour Town is regularly cited by PGA Tour types as one of the best layouts on the circuit, and those Tour players weren’t shy when Love was tasked with bringing the South Carolina layout into a new era.
“What I’ve heard is just, what does it look like? The pros are interested in the quirky things. They’re like, OK, are you really putting the [sod] bunker back on [No.] 14? Yes, yes we are,” Love said during Tuesday’s reopening at Harbour Town, which has hosted the RBC Heritage since 1969. “I think [original architect Pete Dye] would tell you there’s supposed to be some hard holes, and they’re supposed to be some easy holes, and you’re supposed to be challenged.”
Harbour Town is always one of the Tour’s most demanding courses despite being among the shorter layouts on the circuit’s rotation, and length was a talking point for Love and his team throughout the process.
It’s not as though Love added any real distance to the course — the redesign includes about 100 additional yards on a piece of property with little room to grow — but with the USGA and R&A ball rollback looming in 2028, there was reason to consider exactly what the game might look like in three years.
“That’s come up a lot over the last couple of years. Like if you’re going to redo a golf course, do you think about what could happen with the golf ball? Yes,” Love said. “But in testing recently, it’s only been like maybe 10 yards shorter that I’ve seen. This golf course we could use, we could use 10 or 15 yards maybe on a lot of holes.”
This year, Harbour Town stretched to 7,213 yards, well short of the likes of Caves Valley (BMW Championship), which check in at 7,600 yards. Yet the longtime home of the Heritage yielded a modest winning score of 17 under.
For Love, the rollback will likely help keep Harbour Town one of the Tour’s most challenging layouts — but it’s Dye’s design that will always be more important than length.
“The pros said, don’t change the integrity of the golf course,” Love noted. “The strategy, you either appreciate it or it frustrates you. Lee Trevino didn’t like courses that didn’t fit his golf ball, but I think what Scottie Scheffler loves about this golf course is if you hit it in the right side of the fairway on [No. 1], you’re rewarded. You hit it in the left side of the fairway on [No. 2], you’re rewarded. Not if you just smash it out there a long way.”