Harbour Town Golf Links Hole-by-Hole Guide: Inside the 2025 Restoration
A hole-by-hole guide
Designed by renowned architect Pete Dye with his wife, Alice, and assisted by Jack Nicklaus, Harbour Town Golf Links has been the home of the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing since it opened in 1969. It is widely regarded as one of Dye’s best and most iconic creations, among the early masterpieces of his long and brilliant career, enjoyed by Tour players and amateur golfers alike.
When Sea Pines management first proposed renovating the course, the goal was to update its infrastructure and ensure championship-caliber conditions year-round. They soon realized it also presented an opportunity to restore elements of Dye’s original design and guarantee that one of the country’s most recognizable layouts would stand the test of time. Most of the work is out of sight: improvements to agronomy and maintenance, along with rebuilding all greens, bunkers, tees and bulkheads. The turf species — TifEagle on the greens and Celebration Bermuda on the fairways, tees and rough — remain the same.
The design changes will be difficult to detect, even for experienced Harbour Town players. Some greens were returned to their original shapes, restoring hole locations that had been lost as surfaces shrank over time. The same is true for certain greenside bunkers which, after years of play and edging, no longer abutted the greens.
“There won’t be places where people say, ‘Oh my goodness, where did this come from?’” said John Farrell, director of sports operations for The Sea Pines Resort. “Most changes will have to be pointed out to people, whether they are the Tour pros who come back once a year or our members. Every ‘change’ we made had documentation, images or video showing what it was like previously.”
Davis Love III — five-time Heritage champion, successful course architect and someone familiar with Harbour Town since it opened — was brought in to provide a Tour player’s perspective. According to Farrell, Love understood management’s desire to keep the course fun, exciting and challenging 52 weeks a year: the week the world’s best golfers compete and, just as importantly, the other 51 weeks when it is enjoyed by resort guests, property owners and locals.
“There’s no ego here. There’s no one saying, ‘I want to show what I’ve got,’” Farrell said. “The job here is to honor Pete Dye.”
Along with the infrastructure improvements mentioned above, here is how each hole at Harbour Town Golf Links was restored:
Hole No. 1
- Added 10 yards
- Moved greenside cart path 14 yards away from the green’s edge
Hole No. 2
- Moved fairway bunker 7 yards into the fairway and steepened bunker face
- Added new bunker at the back of the green
- Added stacked-sod bunker face to existing bunker
- Added 200 square feet to the green complex
Hole No. 3
- Replaced fairway cart path with crushed sand and shell (removed asphalt)
- Reduced left greenside bunker size by 35 percent
- Reshaped right greenside bunkers to original, larger size and positioned them closer to the green complex
Hole No. 4
- Expanded all tee complexes
- Removed bridge crossing lagoon 50 yards short of the green complex
- Rerouted cart path to the right side of the lagoon and hole
- Added stacked-sod bunker behind green
Hole No. 5
- Removed cart path crossing the middle of the fairway
- Expanded left lagoon 10 feet closer to the fairway (where the cart path was)
- Added waste-area cart path on right side
- Added stacked-sod greenside bunker on left side of green complex
- Lowered green complex 16 inches and restored it closer to original shape
- Moved live oak on right side of green 18 feet closer to fairway, with canopy extending to the right third of the green complex
Hole No. 6
- Expanded back of green
- Reshaped greenside bunkers
- Added stacked sod to existing left bunker
Hole No. 7
- Removed bridge and rerouted cart path around right side of hole
- Added bulkhead around pond
- Expanded bunker around green to edge of bulkhead
- Expanded back-left portion of green
Hole No. 8
- Expanded left greenside bunker to edge of bulkhead closest to tee
Hole No. 9
- Raised entire green complex 14 inches
- Added stacked sod to two bunkers behind green
Hole No. 10
- Removed cart path and created waste-area cart path on right side of fairway
- Changed front-right bunker to stacked sod
- Expanded back portion of green
- Added trees on right side of fairway
Hole No. 11
- Removed cart path from middle of hole to 40 yards short of green
- Created waste-area cart path on right side of fairway
- Changed front-right bunker to stacked sod
- Expanded back portion of green
Hole No. 12
- Enlarged bunkers to original shape and size
Hole No. 13
- Removed cart path from middle of hole to 14th tee
- Created waste-area cart path on left side of fairway
- Lowered green surround to align more closely with cypress planks bordering bunker short of green
Hole No. 14
- Doubled size of raised Heritage tee
- Changed existing greenside bunker to stacked sod
- Added additional pot bunker; both bunkers are stacked sod
- Removed cart path near green
Hole No. 15
- Removed cart path in middle of hole
- Created waste-area cart path on right side of fairway
- Slightly reshaped green to create more hole locations without changing square footage
Hole No. 16
- Expanded fairway waste bunker approximately 10 feet toward fairway on right side
- Changed existing pot bunkers to stacked sod
- Converted right cart path to waste-area cart path
Hole No. 17
- Slightly expanded back of green
Hole No. 18
- Added retaining wall around back portion of tee
- Moved tee approximately 10 yards back and left, closer to the marsh
