It's already time to start preserving modern courses
Not all architecture is worthy of total conservation, but there needs to be a registry of important courses that should have landmark status.
Last fall, Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island reopened after a renovation by Love Golf Design, the firm of Mark and Davis Love III and lead architect Scot Sherman. The work, which was on display during the recent RBC Heritage, involved new drainage and irrigation, expanding lost green space, rebuilding bunkers—normal things that all courses need to do every 20 years or so. There was another element, one that introduced a new aesthetic: The conversion of a dozen or so bunkers to artificial, stacked sod-wall faces.
The resort termed the project a “restoration” of the original Pete Dye course that opened in 1969 and stands as one of the architect’s landmark early creations. While Dye did attempt to construct natural sod-faced bunkers, he gave them up by the early 1970s and never chose to reinstall them across the numerous occasions he personally renovated the course over the next 40 years. For 95 percent of Harbour Town’s life, they didn’t exist.
Whether reviving an idea the original architect quickly abandoned counts as restoration or editorial liberty is open to debate. But it does bring up an important question about how architects and memberships should handle renovations of contemporary designs. PGA TOUR Archive MORE: A huge difference between high-end private and affordable public golf that can be eliminated So far, most of the tinkering that’s been done to Dye’s courses was done by him.
But since he passed in 2020 , memberships and resorts require outside guidance when renovation work is needed. They will have to decide whether to preserve Dye’s distinctive and often groundbreaking architecture or go in new directions. The same questions will eventually apply to the best courses from active designers like Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner and others.