In 1967 Charles Fraser had a vision for his family's property on Hilton Head Island and a piece of ground that hardly seemed to support it. The land beside Calibogue Sound was flat and soggy. He wanted a world-famous resort, and he wanted a championship golf course at its heart. He hired Pete Dye to build it. What Dye made there went against much of what American golf was doing at the time. The mid-century fashion leaned toward ever-longer holes: runway tees, cavernous bunkers, large elevated greens. Harbour Town went the other way. It was small-scale and low in profile, just 6,655 yards, its fairways running between pines toward greens that were smallish, angled, and very fair. Nothing on them was tricked up. The course did not ask a player how far he could hit the ball. It asked whether he could hit it straight, and then whether he could strike an iron precisely enough to hold a small target. It would come to be seen as a turning point in American golf architecture. A question of authorship has always hung over the place, and it belongs to the course's own story. Jack Nicklaus, then in his late twenties, came on as a consultant, and his name has long been tied to the course. Dye listened to him, worked inside a general land plan drawn by George Cobb, and made a few tweaks after hearing from the writer Charles Price. Yet Nicklaus's hand on the design seems to have been light, and the finished course is unmistakably Dye's. The person with the strongest claim to share the credit was Alice Dye, Pete's wife and his most trusted advisor. She directed the construction of the 13th green and the horseshoe-shaped bunker at its front, its sides lined with railroad ties. With that work she turned a short par four into one of Harbour Town's most memorable holes. Pete himself was always quick to name the people he drew on. "When I design a golf course," he wrote, "it's really not just a Pete Dye golf course." The world was slow to see it that way. Harbour Town was finished in 1969 and soon hosted the first Heritage Classic. Arnold Palmer won it, ending a winless stretch of fourteen months, and he had his line ready. He thanked his wife for the encouragement, and then he thanked "my good friend and competitor Jack Nicklaus for building a golf course that I could win again on." It was a graceful joke, and it handed Nicklaus a little more of the credit than he was due. Dye's recognition as the primary designer arrived eventually, and he went on to become the most influential golf architect of the late twentieth century. The course is full of endearing details. The 9th green is shaped like a V. Beside the 16th lies the world's first waste bunker. The par threes look like picture postcards, and there are many fine strategic holes. Deane Beman, PGA Tour commissioner from 1974 to 1994, thought it the best course on the Tour. "Harbour Town is a golf course that has just as many right-to-left as left-to-right holes," he said. "It doesn't favor a long hitter versus a shorter hitter." That sense of balance is why, in the late 1970s, Beman chose Dye to build TPC Sawgrass. Then comes the ending, one of two iconic finishing holes. The 18th is a brutish par four of 478 yards from the tips. The lighthouse stands in the distance as the aiming point, and a solid drive on that line finds a landing area that juts out into Calibogue Sound. The tournament still comes every year, now called the RBC Heritage, and the course remains a favorite on Tour. Long after the round is over, that last drive toward the lighthouse is likely to stay lodged in the memory, the final word from a course built to reward accuracy rather than length.