Harbour Town Golf Links sits on the southern tip of Hilton Head Island with its 18th hole -- one of the most famous finishing holes in golf -- bordering Calibogue Sound.

While Harbour Town holds a prominent place in the history of this island, bringing with it a legacy of golf and its champions, it may have had an even bigger impact on the direction of golf course design in this country and around the world.

Harbour Town, which was designed by Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus, who was a consultant, was built in an era of long, winding fairways and greens big enough to build a house on.

When Harbour Town was built, Dye's career had really just started. His only other major works were Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., and The Golf Club in Albany, Ohio. He had built about a dozen courses by the time he arrived on Hilton Head.

Ironically, Robert Trent Jones, who was building a course at nearby Palmetto Dunes when work started on Harbour Town, may have had a bigger impact on Harbour Town than anyone would have ever thought.

"Basically, what Pete says kind of inspired him was at the same time he was designing Harbour Town, the Jones Course at Palmetto Dunes was being built," said island golf writer Mark Brown. "It had wide fairways, big traps and big greens. Pete thought he needed to do something totally different to attract attention, so he decided to build it flat to ground and build the greens flat to ground."

Dye downsized everything. While other architects spent time and money moving dirt to create huge mounds and long, rolling fairways, Dye used the land there mostly as it was.

"We didn't have to move any dirt around like at most courses," Dye said in a 1993 interview. "All we had to do was cut some trees. All the native materials were there."

The result was a course with some of the most notable short par-4 holes in golf and a design that placed a premium on shot-making and accuracy instead of distance.

"Harbour Town was an incredible breakthrough in proving that a shorter, tighter golf course with small greens and strategically placed bunkers could be just as demanding as a 7,200-yard golf course," said author Mark Shaw, who wrote a book on Dye and his career called 'Bury Me In a Pot Bunker.' "As historians place Harbour Town in history, it will be an incredible part of golf course design."

Shaw also said that Harbour Town came not only at a critical point in the history of course design, but also in the career of Dye and his wife, Alice, who had significant influence on some of the shorter par-4s, particularly No. 13.

While Harbour Town was obviously different from those courses being built around it, golf course architect Robert Cupp, who was working on his first course in Miami at the time, said his business didn't change directions completely as a result of Dye's work on Hilton Head Island. But he's quick to add that Harbour Town's impact was definitely felt.

"It wasn't so much a change in directions, but (the course) started to get more recognized -- as a result of that recognition, the whole thing took a quantum leap forward," Cupp said. "And it's still doing it.

"So to say Harbour Town had an effect on American golf architecture -- it certainly did."

Cupp considers Dye, a long-time friend, a master of the short holes -- something evident at Harbour Town -- and said Nicklaus' influence is probably best seen on the longer holes.

Clyde Johnston, a Hilton Head-based golf designer, said Harbour Town has literally influenced hundreds of courses that followed.

"A lot of designers have watched what Pete has done," Johnston said. "It's not always exactly the same or inexpensive, but a lot have copied his work."

Brown called Dye a leader in innovation in his field over the past 25 years and Johnston agreed that Dye has developed a style of his own.

"(Dye) actually came along at a very opportune time in history," Johnston said. "Arnold Palmer and Nicklaus had brought golf to the forefront and Pete brought golf course architecture to the forefront."

Harbour Town, itself, has changed over the years.

Hale Irwin -- champion of the Heritage in 1971, 1973 and 1994 -- said the course has softened from the carved jungle it once was. Irwin remembered alligators and golf balls lost in the thick rough in the early years of the Heritage.

Brown also noted the changes.

"It's all kind of opened up quite a bit now," Brown said. "But it's still a great test of golf. I think it's still one of best courses in the United States."

As much as Harbour Town's design bucked the trends of architecture in the 1960s, it did not buck tradition.

"I believe Harbour Town was done by a master, who in that era was a true American genius," Cupp said. "It was a more traditional golf course featuring long and short holes."

While some consider Dye a radical, most of his ideas are traditional. The roots of most of Dye's trademarks such as railroad ties and pot bunkers, go back to Scotland, England and Ireland where the game was born, Shaw said.

Both professionals and amateurs may curse Dye and his creations more often than any course designer in the game, but few can argue that his designs are not a true test of golf.

"It's considered one of the greatest shot-making golf courses in the world," said Harbour Town head professional John Farrell. "Which is why our champions are a 'Who's Who' list of professional golfers."

"To win here, a player cannot have a shortcoming," Farrell added. "He cannot have a weakness. You have to drive it, you have to chip it and you have to putt it."

Harbour Town's greens are very negotiable, but golfers must get there first, and that is often the rub among the tight fairways and strategically-placed bunkers and hazards.

In creating Harbour Town, Dye, probably unwittingly, created a legacy for himself and to other golf course designers.

Cupp, one of the most respected course designers of this era, said the hopes of creating such a legacy with each new course he designs makes him work harder.

"But I don't know if Pete has those feelings -- he's like some athletes, who can't tell you how they do what they do, they just do it," Cupp said. "If you ask him to talk with you about it, you get some highly comical list of antecdotes.

"Unlike me, he's not premeditated -- he's one of those people that just goes out there and it just happens."