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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Love is a five-time winner at Harbour Town Golf Links \u2014 actually, he will tell you he\u2019s a six-time winner including his Junior Heritage title \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Harbour Town is regularly cited by PGA Tour types as one of the best layouts on the circuit, and those Tour players weren\u2019t shy when Love was tasked with bringing the South Carolina layout into a new era.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve heard is just, what does it look like? The pros are interested in the quirky things. They\u2019re like, OK, are you really putting the [sod] bunker back on [No.] 14? Yes, yes we are,\u201d Love said during Tuesday\u2019s reopening at Harbour Town, which has hosted the RBC Heritage since 1969. \u201cI think [original architect Pete Dye] would tell you there\u2019s supposed to be some hard holes, and they\u2019re supposed to be some easy holes, and you\u2019re supposed to be challenged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harbour Town is always one of the Tour\u2019s most demanding courses despite being among the shorter layouts on the circuit\u2019s rotation, and length was a talking point for Love and his team throughout the process.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not as though Love added any real distance to the course \u2014 the redesign includes about 100 additional yards on a piece of property with little room to grow \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s come up a lot over the last couple of years. Like if you\u2019re going to redo a golf course, do you think about what could happen with the golf ball? Yes,\u201d Love said. \u201cBut in testing recently, it\u2019s only been like maybe 10 yards shorter that I\u2019ve seen. This golf course we could use, we could use 10 or 15 yards maybe on a lot of holes.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
For Love, the rollback will likely help keep Harbour Town one of the Tour\u2019s most challenging layouts \u2014 but it\u2019s Dye\u2019s design that will always be more important than length.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pros said, don\u2019t change the integrity of the golf course,\u201d Love noted. \u201cThe strategy, you either appreciate it or it frustrates you. Lee Trevino didn\u2019t like courses that didn\u2019t 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\u2019re rewarded. You hit it in the left side of the fairway on [No. 2], you\u2019re rewarded. Not if you just smash it out there a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The toughest job for any golf course architect is updating a beloved classic course without stomping on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-288524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}