Designer Pete Dye’s ability to combine physical beauty with severe punishment earned him the nickname Marquis de Sod. In the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, Dye created the perfect paradox of golf’s exquisite torture. Here, restless sand dunes and thorny marshes frame holes as beautiful as they are deadly. When the biennial U.S.-vs.-Europe team event the Ryder Cup was held at Kiawah Island in 1991, the contest was played in such ill temper that it became known as “the War on the Shore.”
See pictures of the (at times tense) history of the Ryder Cup.