Here's an interesting article on the course plucked from the Charleston Post & Courier during the 1997 World Cup:
Ocean Course continues to change itself
By: Ken Burger
Originally Published in Charleston Post & Courier on: 11/23/97
Page: I1
KIAWAH ISLAND - Unlike most golf courses that are the same every time you walk up to the first tee box, the Ocean Course is a living, breathing animal that changes with the whims of nature.
Not only does it change from year to year with the shifting sands and tides, but from day to day. And, sometimes, from hour to hour.
Those who have played this Pete Dye layout know the best time to attack this course is early in the morning before the winds pick up. That alone, can be a 10-stroke swing in your score.
The direction of the wind can also have an impact on the course. When it's blowing straight up and down the seaside links it makes half the course easier and the other half virtually impossible to play.
Worse yet is when the wind blows across the golf course that runs parallel with the sea. When that happens, tee shots are simply a geometric exercise in guessing how far out over the marsh to play it.
``When there are crosswinds, you have to start your drives out over the junk and hope they come back on the fairway,'' Davis Love III explained during World Cup play this week. ``And, sometimes you hit it too far out to the wind side and it doesn't come back.
``When the wind blows here, it certainly makes you think more. Tee shots are harder and a little tricky.''
`A walking course'
All of this makes Dye, the course designer, smile a bit as he watches the world's best golfers struggle with the natural forces that enhance his creation.
And while it was his hand that laid this golf course down in the dunes for the 1991 Ryder Cup Matches, he knows he has no control over the subtle changes that Mother Nature decides to introduce over time.
Dye, in fact, calls this a ``walking golf course.''
By that, he means that it changes as time and tides and wind take their toll on the golf course. It will, for instance, build up on one end of the course as northerly winds push sand onto the course and elevate certain areas that originally were meant to be lower.
Also, there is the constant shifting of the sand dunes and the sea oats and the tidal creeks that have little respect for something as whimsical as a golf course.
They will, therefore, encroach into areas that just a few years or months ago were soft landing areas for wayward shots.
Kinder, gentler
And a lot has changed since the Americans won the 1991 Ryder Cup here in what then was called, ``The War by the Shore,'' when the Ocean Course was dubbed the hardest golf course in the world while humbling some of the world's best.
Among them were Scotland's Colin Montgomerie who has returned to represent his country this week in the World Cup of Golf.
``This is nothing like the same course as 1991,'' Montgomerie commented after the first day of competition when low scores ruled the day. ``No one shot 63 six years ago I can assure you.
``It is a much softer golf course, a lot easier and a lot fairer as well.''
This kinder, gentler Ocean Course is a relief to those international pros who have to record every stroke during this tournament.
Because it has been shortened for this competition and the winds have held off, no one yet has recorded a score in triple digits.
Pristine and wild
Saturday, however, a new and different obstacle came into play for the 32 teams competing here - fog.
Shortly after 9 a.m. a heavy bank of fog rolled over the golf course causing play to be suspended for more than two hours. But it did not stop the German team from stepping out to a commanding lead as they enter final round play today.
Another example of how this golf course is a living, breathing thing. It has a conscience, a memory, it ages, it becomes vulnerable and it lashes out with fury at times.
And early in the mornings or late in the afternoons, you can actually hear it moaning under the weight of mowers and the restraint of maintenance machinery as it strains to return to its natural state.
Because you can tell that if we left it alone, in a matter of months it would become a windswept seascape, as pristine and wild as the day before man found it.