In the spring of 1990, there was a news conference for the Ryder Cup, which was coming one year later to the inconspicuous, windswept South Carolina barrier island known as Kiawah. The man charged with turning an oceanside tract of swamp and shrub into a dauntingly beautiful championship golf course was asked where he planned to put the huge galleries expected for the event.

“Galleries?” the golf architect Pete Dye answered. “How do I know? We don’t even have holes yet. We don’t even have a paved road to get there.”

Less than 14 months later, Dye’s Ocean Course made its debut as the compelling and unparalleled stage for a riveting competition that transformed the Ryder Cup from a midlevel golf attraction to a major international sports happening.

The 1991 Ryder Cup, known as the War by the Shore, went down to a last missed putt, drew top television ratings even on an NFL Sunday and earned for the Ocean Course a reputation as one of America’s most distinctive — and perhaps most difficult — courses.

On Thursday, at the start of the 2012 PGA Championship, the world’s best golfers return to Dye’s devilish layout for the first time in 21 years. Although the course hosted the 2007 Senior PGA Championship and some World Cup play, this week’s PGA will be the first of golf’s majors to be contested on the renowned spit of land south of Charleston.

Dye, now 86, has been refining the course for the past two years, softening some features near the vast and penal bunkers, while adding teeth — and length — in other spots. But much has not changed; the course is as isolated and fickle as ever, and the ocean has not moved. It still closely borders most of the holes, bringing with it precarious seaside wind patterns.

“It can never be like any other course,” Dye said last year while touring the course on foot. “It is the only course we built that walks and swims. It is of the land and of the water.”

It was also one of the least popular golf courses to host a big event.

Before the Ryder Cup, David Feherty, then a player and not a broadcaster, was asked if the course and its coastal location reminded him of something from Ireland or Scotland.

“It’s like something from Mars,” he insisted instead.

U.S. players who visited the course for practice rounds enjoyed it on fair days but hated it when the wind blew. Raymond Floyd went from hitting carefree 8-irons into some greens to 3-irons. On the par-3 17th hole, Hale Irwin hit 6-iron one day and 3-wood the next day. Visiting players were in a foul mood, especially when their sponsor-paid courtesy cars got stuck in the makeshift parking lot, the tires of each car sinking until the fenders rested on the sand and mud.

Even the U.S. victory in the 1991 Ryder Cup — assured when Germany’s Bernhard Langer failed to convert the final, curving 6-foot putt — did not change many opinions. In fact, more than 20 years has not changed the prevailing sentiment. The author Curt Sampson did extensive interviewing for his new book, “The War by the Shore,” which examines the drama and historical significance of the 1991 Ryder Cup.

“Fans loved the Ocean Course, but I never heard a positive word about it from the pros,” Sampson said. “I think they all felt beat up by it.”

But recreational golfers continue to flock to the Ocean Course, which is open to the public. Though it can cost as much as $343 to play, the course routinely hosts more than 40,000 rounds annually.

The Ryder Cup put Kiawah Island on the map as a resort, and it has become a premier destination. Even nongolfers come to gawk at the scenic, alluring and mysterious Ocean Course.

Tourists, especially European ones, routinely want to see where Langer missed his putt. Unfortunately, it cannot be replicated. The 18th green has since been moved closer to the ocean.

Movie buffs come to the Ocean Course, too. It was the setting for “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” starring Will Smith and Matt Damon.

That the Ocean Course would find such renown was not plainly evident in 1989 when the project was started.

“It was nothing but myrtles and ugly bushes,” Dye said. “The first time the PGA folks saw the land they almost threw up. But I saw the future the moment I got there.”

Dye, who has hundreds of golf courses to his name, is fond of saying that he never designed a golf course. But he will talk about the ones he built, and so he does with the Ocean Course. In 1989, the Dyes moved to Kiawah with their two young sons, both now golf architects.

“I was told every single day that we would never get it ready in time for the Ryder Cup,” Dye said.

But when it was over, people remembered the 1991 Ryder Cup for where it was held almost as much as for what happened there. The Ocean Course was immediately on Golf Digest’s list of top 100 courses, where it has remained. It still ranks in the top five public resorts in America.

Tom Fazio, the celebrated U.S. golf architect, recalled watching the 1991 Ryder Cup on television and knowing what it would become.

“It had a Pebble Beach quality,” Fazio said, “and yet it was new.”

Dye thinks his masterpiece will again be the golf theater that serves as a backdrop for competitive thrills and high drama.

“Sure, it’s grown up now,” he said, snickering. “New clubhouse, big practice range, roads and all the trimmings. It’s polished. But it’s still got its bite.”