Chocolate Drop: Revetted Bunkers at Harbour Town (Quelle Horreur!)

Jason Bruno (aka "Links Nation") caused a bit of a stir on X earlier this week when he posted some fresh shots of Harbour Town Golf Links, which recently reopened after a historical renovation by Love Golf Design. The controversy revolved around a pair of revetted green-side bunkers in one photo.

Some commenters complained that Harbour Town architect Pete Dye never built revetted bunkers. (He did — at Harbour Town. They just didn't last very long because the sod stacks collapsed. Ultimately Dye replaced the revetted walls with the turfed-over walls that became a mainstay of his later designs.)

Others objected to the use of artificial materials in the sod stacks.

For the most part, though, the critics just didn't seem to like the look of the bunkers. Which is fair, but we should probably wait until the bunkers have had a chance to mature before rendering a final judgment.

In an April 2025 edition of Design Notebook, Scot Sherman, lead designer at Love Golf Design, gave me some insight into the thinking and technical process behind bringing back these bunkers:

Scot: We’re working on some details that really speak to what Pete did originally that didn’t last real long. He did some sod-stacking to several bunkers out there, and from the pictures and from recollections of others, some of that stacking was with Bahia and or St. Augustine grass, and it didn’t last long. And natural sod-stacking usually has to be replaced every three or four or five years, and [Harbour Town] just didn’t do it and [eventually] just grassed the faces. So again, in a tip of the cap to [Dye], we’re going to go ahead and do some of these that were originally stacked, but we’re going to do it in a little bit of a modern context. We think we could do something that’ll last a little longer. We have an artificial product, and we’re going to alternate artificial stacking with natural sod. We really don’t want it to look artificial, but we also want there to be hints of the sod-stacking. So we’re going to do a row of the artificial, a row of Celebration [Bermudagrass] sod, a row of the artificial, a row of the Celebration, and it’ll fuzz a little bit, and you’ll be able to discern the stacking.

Garrett: So the outcome of this sod-stacking process — will it look like a revetted bunker, like you would see in Scotland?

Scot: It’ll have a little bit different appearance. It won’t be that clean revetment like you’re used to seeing, and nor was Pete’s original sod-stacking. It’s going to be a little fuzzier, a little more ragged.Between ourselves and the owner and the old pictures that we have from the late 60s — the original tournament there that Mr. Palmer won — we’re going to put some of them back. I don’t know that we’re putting all of the ones we know about back, but some of that’s going to be a field decision. For example, there were a couple [sod-stacked bunkers] behind No. 9 green. Those are going to go back for sure. We’re putting back the dreaded deep pot bunker left of 14 green.

"Restoring" a golf course always involves tricky decisions like this one. If you want to honor Dye's vision, do you try to recapture the course that existed on opening day, including the parts that didn't end up being sustainable because of some technical deficit? Or you do pay tribute to the architectural refinements of the ensuing years — which, in Harbour Town's case, were overseen by the original architect and a long-tenured, well-respected construction company?

Or do you simply trust your own taste and go with what you think is the better option?

I'm personally a skeptic of the new revetted bunkers at Harbour Town. But not because I think they dishonor Pete Dye. They just don't look all that great to me. But I'm not too worked up about it because ultimately it's a fairly minor aesthetic issue.