PINEHURST, N.C. – I won’t bother writing that you should play golf in Pinehurst. You already know that. The Sandhills region of North Carolina is dubbed the Home of American Golf for a reason.
Advising well-traveled players they should try out Pinehurst is akin to telling gearheads that Ferraris are nice or suggesting a foodie sample something beyond the SpaghettiOs. But until you immerse yourself in Pinehurst, it’s difficult to imagine how much the game defines this little village and its surrounds – and vice versa. It’s one of the few places in the world where just about any conversation can safely begin with the question, “How you been hitting it?”
So many options among great courses. So many chances to bunk up in historic lodging. So many shots to be hit by so many golfers. Pinehurst doesn’t simply scratch an itch to play somewhere new, or even old – it fulfills a deeper need to immerse oneself in the game. Even the USGA is tapping into that need, building a second HQ in Pinehurst and bringing more national championships, feeding on the game’s energy that flourishes among the tall trees and sandy soil.
The only problem is time. How to set aside enough days to sample it all?
Pinehurst No. 8 in North Carolina (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)
That’s where the Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for the top public-access layouts in each state comes into play. The list for North Carolina includes 15 courses, with more than half around Pinehurst. So while I won’t bother telling you that you should play golf in Pinehurst, we can look at the rankings list to see where you might want to start among the region’s 40-plus layouts.
The eponymous Pinehurst Resort is an obvious choice, home to four of the top 15 public-access tracks in North Carolina, including the famed No. 2. But the great golf doesn’t end at the resort’s sprawling borders or on its numerical lineup. Four more of the top 15 layouts in the state lie just beyond. It’s an area so packed with strong golf that, given time, it’s entirely possible to play all eight of these layouts without stopping to refuel a rental car.
The Carolina Hotel at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina (Courtesy of Pinehurst)
The ranked lineup truly does offer golf to suit just about any taste. Old courses that define classic architecture. More recent courses that promise modern flair. Restored courses. Renovated courses. Even a newish par-3 course that shouldn’t be missed. You get the idea – it’s all here.
I set out on an epic adventure of golf earlier this year to see exactly how much Pinehurst golf could be squeezed into four and a half days. Trust me, it’s a lot of steps. I played six of the best-in-state public-access courses in the Pinehurst area plus two private clubs and a quick trip around the hottest par-3 course in town. That was all a follow-up to a previous trip in which I played the other best-in-state courses. There is no doubt, if you want to play as many solid golf holes as possible in the shortest amount of time, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better destination than Pinehurst and the courses below.
After five years, Gina Kim has finally solved the Pinehurst riddle.
After five years, Gina Kim has finally solved the Pinehurst riddle. It couldn’t have come at a better time, considering that this week’s Women’s North & South Amateur may have been Kim’s summer-amateur swan song.
The 21-year-old’s week-long crusade to the iconic Putter Boy trophy awarded at the long-running amateur event at Pinehurst No. 2 played out in phases. She barely made the match-play bracket – advancing out of a 10-for-8 playoff just to get the 32nd and last spot on the bracket against medalist Abbey Daniels.
Then, with no expectations, she watched closely as Daniels deftly navigated her way through sandy No. 2.
“She knew how to make up out of those waste areas, it was amazing the way she used those slopes,” Kim said. “I learned a lot form her. . . . It was actually a really tough battle to get out on top because she was doing so well and playing such solid golf.”
Kim has a similar story about every opponent she faced through the week. Catching Addie Baggarly in the next round “was the unluckiest draw” because the two are such good friends.
By the time she reached the semifinals, she had to face Allisen Corpuz, a finalist at this event last year.
“She’s had a great track record over there,” Kim said. “I, on the other hand, have not. Getting into match play was a miracle for me.
“Getting to the semifinals was one thing, having to face Allison was another.”
Regardless, Kim took down Corpuz, 6 and 4, and suddenly had a Saturday afternoon match against Furman’s Anna Morgan for the title.
The Championship Match of 119th Women's North & South Amateur has a Carolinas feel to it – @DukeWGOLF star Gina Kim vs. @FurmanWGolf and Carolinas Am Champ Anna Morgan on Pinehurst No. 2.
We'll have updates in this thread throughout the match, which begins at 12:45 p.m. pic.twitter.com/yjdCWgJPzh
In the brutally hot Sandhills, the seven-round North & South is an endurance event. That, and Kim got a 3 a.m. wakeup call each day from a train that rolled by the condos she and her mom stayed in by Pinehurst No. 3. When Kim and Morgan were evacuated for the first weather delay, Kim got so comfortable on a couch that she closed her eyes for a short snooze. She was so deep in sleep she’s not even sure how long that nap lasted – only that it could have gone on much longer.
“If somebody wasn’t there with me,” she said, “I would still be there snoozing, just gone.”
When the match was halted for weather a second time, Kim came off the course before hitting a difficult chip on No. 7. She knew she had that waiting for her but she relished it.
“For me, I was like, ‘I want this chip,’” she said, “because I know I can do it. I can make this work.”
In facing that return shot, Kim drew on a memory from earlier this summer at the Palmer Cup. Kim was paired with Walker Cup hero Pierceson Coody in the opening mixed fourball session and they were 2 down through nine holes to Julian Perico and Pauline Roussin-Bouchard, who were “firing on all cylinders, going ham and egg on us.”
A weather delay also paused that match, and when Kim and Coody returned to the course, Kim told her partner she could feel it in their bones they were going to win.
“We ended up taking it to the 18th hole and Pierceson makes this unreal eagle putt,” she said.
They won, 1 up.
At Pinehurst, Kim tied that seventh hole before winning that next hole. She eventually closed out Morgan, 3 and 1.
Kim would like nothing more than to play on the Curtis Cup later this fall, the women’s equivalent to the Walker Cup. She has already been selected for two practice sessions for team hopefuls, and this week’s North & South run should have left a big impression on team selectors. Kim was very aware that this would be a good time to show what she can do. Instead of playing next month’s U.S. Women’s Amateur, Kim will head to California to prepare for LPGA Q-School later this year. In fact, she won’t appear in a women’s amateur field again this summer.
“I knew this tournament would really swing things in my favor if things go well,” Kim said. “I think that was the no. 1 thing that was on my priority list. It’s every amateur golfer’s dream to make the Curtis cup or the walker cup. These tournaments are just so prestigious.”
It was a short drive home for Kim after claiming her trophy late on Saturday evening because of two weather delays. She grew up just 60 miles northeast in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Even though she won the tournament, there were debts to pay when she got home. Kim had convinced her mom, Sansuk, to caddie for her this week, but there was a catch.
“We made a deal that if I get mad at her, I would have to pay $50,” Gina said. “Even though I won this tournament I actually lost some money.”
She confessed the final total was $100, but it’s a small caddie fee to pay for an unforgettable week.
Gina Kim is living on the edge at Pinehurst. The close calls keep coming, and yet Kim keeps advancing at the North & South Women’s Amateur.
Gina Kim is living on the edge at Pinehurst. The close calls keep coming, and yet Kim, a Duke junior, keeps advancing at the North & South Women’s Amateur.
It all started with a 10-for-8 playoff just to make the 32-woman match-play bracket on Wednesday. Kim advanced through that to take the No. 32 seed. The next morning she returned to dispatch medalist Abbey Daniel.
From there, Kim had to face good friend Addie Baggarly. Victory in 19 holes followed. It was the same 19-hole story in the quarterfinals against Jessica Spicer.
Now Kim finds herself with a Saturday-morning tee time alongside Allisen Corpuz, a finalist in this event a year ago.
Kim is the No. 23-ranked amateur in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. She won the individual title at the ACC Championship and was fifth at the NCAA Women’s Championship this spring. This week marks the fifth North & South start for the North Carolina native.
As close as Kim’s matches have been, Corpuz’s have been just the opposite. Two of her past three matches have ended on the 14th hole, including her Friday afternoon quarterfinal match against Mississippi State’s Blair Stockett.
Asked for her best piece of match-play advice at this event a year ago, Corpuz, who just completed her fifth year at USC, had this to offer: “I think most of the time it’s really just trying to keep it as close to stroke play as possible. Just trying to play my game. If they make a mistake, try to capitalize on that.”
Two matches remain until the iconic Putter Boy trophy is handed out at Pinehurst. The winner of the Kim-Corpuz showdown will meet the winner of Anna Morgan vs. Megan Schofill for the championship match on Saturday afternoon.
Morgan, a Furman sophomore, is a recurring figure in Carolinas golf events, having won both the Carolinas Amateur and the South Carolina Amateur last summer.
Schofill, who won the Florida Women’s Amateur in a big comeback last year, was a member of Auburn’s SEC-title winning team this spring.
Pinehurst is Addie Baggarly’s annual escape in the summer amateur season, and she’s likely to be making the trip for years to come.
On long summer days, Pinehurst Resort has a Never Neverland quality. For the past five years, it has been Addie Baggarly’s summer escape. This time her week started barefoot with a bucket hat on her head and only a 50-degree wedge to get her around the Cradle, Pinehurst’s new par-3 course.
Baggarly, who just wrapped up her fourth season on the University of Florida roster, partnered with good friend and fellow Tennessee native Siarra Stout in a barefoot, one-club par-3 contest to start North & South Women’s Am week. Both players used their gap wedge – even to putt – around the Cradle and went 5 under.
“We ended up going out and winning in playoff,” Baggarly said. “It was a blast, it was so much fun to start the week. We finished in the dark and people’s flashlights were on at the Cradle.
“It was definitely – probably going to be the most memorable part of this week.”
— Tennessee Golf Association (@TNgolf) July 12, 2021
Baggarly has been playing this event for the past five years and reached the final 16 in 2019. She dispatched Minnesota player Grace Curran on Thursday in the opening round of match play and meets Duke junior Gina Kim in the next round. Baggarly called that an unlucky draw so early in the week. She and Kim have played together on a Palmer Cup team, and spent a week together at Olympic Club in San Francisco last month after both qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open.
Kim was part of a playoff for the final spot on the North & South bracket on Tuesday evening, and Baggarly offered her encouragement.
“I kind of drove by and gave her a little wave and she said seeing you in the cart made my day,” she said.
Baggarly’s week at the Women’s Open drove home a realization she’d first had earlier this spring at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She’d been waffling over whether she wanted to turn professional and try to make a living out of golf.
“My feelings there just solidified the fact that I don’t think pro life is really cut out for me,” she said. “I like to enjoy the sport for how it’s meant to be played for fun.”
Emilia Migliaccio, runner-up at the ANWA and a former top 3 amateur in the world, recently embarked on a golf journalism career as an intern at Golf Channel and was a key voice in taking that non-traditional route. Baggarly also consulted fellow Tennessean Sarah Ingram, a three-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champ and the current Curtis Cup captain, and at Pinehurst, talked with Lauren Greenlief, a former Virginia player who never turned professional, won the 2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur and continues to be extremely competitive on the amateur circuit at age 39.
That fits Baggarly’s vision for what her future golf life could be.
“(Greenlief) had a lot of great words to say about the competitive side and still having a career and the balance that it takes,” Baggarly said. “She said it’s possible because she’s doing it, and I admire that.”
Baggarly has another semester of classes at Florida to finish her degree in telecommunications. Gator history runs deep in Baggarly’s veins. She was born in Gainesville, Florida, and family history intertwines with the university. Her great grandfather helped found the school of building construction and her dad Mark Baggarly was part of the men’s golf national title team in 1993.
Beginning in January, however, Baggarly is headed for Baylor. With a year of eligibility left, she’ll play the spring season for the Bears as she starts an 18-month masters program in sports pedagogy. That would set her up to get into college coaching down the road.
“I’m forever grateful for the opportunity (Florida) gave me over the last four years,” she said. “Something really nice came up for me at Baylor and I’m able to get my masters.”
Baggarly has a deeply rooted affection for amateur golf, and no future coaching gig would change that. This week is a sweet reminder of all she loves about competing.
“This is my escape week – I’m here to play golf but I’m also having so much fun in other areas,” Baggarly said. “The people here are great, everyone is so welcoming. It’s definitely my favorite week of the year.”
Only nine players finished under par in the first round of the Women’s North & South Amateur on Tuesday.
After the first round of the North and South Women’s Amateur, it’s Pinehurst: 109, Field: Nine.
Only nine players finished under par on Tuesday, with eight of those rounds on Pinehurst No. 4. Brooke Rivers was the lone player under par on famed Pinehurst No. 2. The Canadian won the 43rd Girls North & South Championship last week and currently sits T-2 alongside seven players at 1 under. Hsin-Yu (Cynthia) Lu, an incoming freshman at Oregon, leads at 2 under.
The first two rounds of stroke play are split between Nos. 2 and 4. Following Wednesday’s second round the field will be cut to 32 players for match play. All matches will be contested on No. 2.
Three Mississippi State players find themselves tied for 10th at even: Abbey Daniel (No. 2), Ashley Gilliam and Blair Stockett (No. 4). Wake Forest’s Rachel Kuehn, the defending champion, struggled around No. 2 to the tune of a 5-over 77 and sits T-66.
Australian Louis Dobbelaar now has six wins in the last two years.
Louis Dobbelaar and Jackson Van Paris put on a show in the final match of the 121st North & South Amateur.
On the famed Pinehurst No. 2, the two dueled in a match that never got more than 2 up in either’s advantage and ended after one extra hole that saw the 19-year-old Australian Dobbelaar take the trophy with a clutch up-and-down for par.
“This place is extremely special to me and to my family,” Dobbelaar said of his win at Pinehurst. “It hasn’t really sunk it in yet, but there’s nothing better than winning at a place like Pinehurst. … there’s history everywhere you look.”
A large crowd was on hand for the match, with the majority pulling for Van Paris, a 17-year-old Pinehurst local bound for Vanderbilt in the fall.
“To see that many people, it was amazing,” Van Paris said of the atmosphere. “It takes you out of the moment for a bit. You get to appreciate how special this all really is.”
“Hat’s off to Louis. He never really gave me any breathing room,” Van Paris said. “I chipped in and made a 40-footer and played pretty good golf, and still didn’t beat him. It was an incredible match. He’s a great champion.”
A Pinehurst local hasn’t won the North & South since Jack Fields in 2011. Dobbelaar has won six events in the last two years.
“We’ve been mates for a little while, so it was good to soak that in together,” added Dobbelaar. “We both just looked around and said how special it was. Those situations are generally pretty tense, but playing against someone like him, we were both able to see the broader side and appreciate the opportunity to be doing this.”
Van Paris held a 2 up lead through 14 holes but lost Nos. 15 and 16 due to a few errant shots and some handiwork around the greens by Dobbelaar, who kept the match even through 18 and into the extra hole.
Donald Ross, one through five. That’s basically the roundup for the top public-access courses in North Carolina.
Donald Ross, one through five. That’s basically the roundup for the top public-access courses in North Carolina, as the famed designer left fingerprints all across the Golfweek’s Best rankings in the Tar Heel State.
Best of all, there is a great variety among just those five. And scrolling down the list leaves plenty of other great options as well, be they original Ross designs or modern renovations on ground that Ross first shaped into golf courses.
Golfweek ranks courses by compiling the average ratings – on a points basis of 1 to 10 – of its more than 750 raters to create several industry-leading lists of courses. That includes the popular Best Courses You Can Play list for courses that allow non-member tee times. These generally are defined as layouts accessible to resort guests or regular daily-fee players.
No. 1 is, without any irony of nomenclature, No. 2 (pictured atop this story). The famed No. 2 course at Pinehurst Resort was built by Ross and opened in 1903. The native Scotsman loved the Sandhills around the resort so much that he lived there in a house, now known as the Dornoch Cottage and named for his birthplace, off No. 2’s third fairway from 1925 until his death in 1948.
No. 2 might be the best example of what have become known as Ross greens, frequently crowned with runoffs in all directions. Picture a turtle shell or an upside-down saucer – these kinds of greens demands on approach shots and even chips as players try to keep balls on the putting surfaces. The design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw renovated No. 2 a decade ago, returning the course to its sandy past while preserving the famed greens.
No. 2 has been the host of three U.S. Opens, with the next coming in 2024 and several more on the schedule as the U.S. Golf Association plans to move a second headquarters to Pinehurst, complete with club-testing facilities and more. Besides being the top public-access course in North Carolina, No. 2 ranks third on Golfweek’s Best Resort Courses list for the whole U.S. and is 15th on the Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list for all layouts opened before 1960 in the U.S.
Pinehurst No. 4 in North Carolina (Courtesy of Pinehurst)
Players don’t have to look far to find the next course on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in North Carolina. The course named No. 4 at Pinehurst Resort sits in the second spot, as well as sitting right next door to No. 2. Ross originally laid out a course on that rolling land, with six holes opening in 1913 and the full, original 18 available in 1919. The course was renovated over the ensuring decades by Robert Trent Jones and then Tom Fazio, and in 2018 Gil Hanse completed the most recent reimagining of the layout. Since then, No. 4 has jumped up the course ratings and ranks 28th on Golfweek’s Best Resort Courses list.
No. 3 in North Carolina is Mid Pines just across town from the famed resort. Built by Ross in 1921 on ground that features more elevation changes than Nos. 2 or 4, Mid Pines was restored in 2013 by Kyle Franz. Shorter and more intimate, Mid Pines is a can’t-miss course in the Sandhills region.
Mid Pines in North Carolina (Courtesy of Mid Pines)
The fourth-ranked Pine Needles sits just across the street from Mid Pines and is owned by the same operating group founded by LPGA legend Peggy Kirk Bell. Also restored by Franz in 2017, this Ross design has hosted three U.S. Women’s Opens and will be the site for that event again in 2022. It’s a bigger layout than Mid Pines, with more length available as a championship test, and the two courses’ proximity and heritage make them a perfect target for traveling golfers.
No. 5 among North Carolina’s public-access layouts is Linville Golf Club, another Ross design that opened in 1924 about a three-hour drive west of Pinehurst.
But don’t consider those to be a complete roundup of must-see courses in North Carolina, which is ridiculously stacked with great public-access layouts, especially around the Pinehurst area.
Pine Needles in North Carolina (Courtesy of Pine Needles)
The resort, for example, had four courses in all on the 2020 Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for North Carolina, with the course named No. 8 ranking seventh in the state and the course known as No. 7 ranked ninth.
A short drive north of Pinehurst in Sanford is Tobacco Road, ranked sixth among public-access courses in the state. Completed by the highly creative Mike Strantz in 1988, Tobacco Road offers several holes the likes of which won’t be found anywhere else – at times it feels more like a video game, trying to bounce balls off dramatic slopes to avoid hazards that scream to players, “Don’t go here.” Great fun.
And Mid South at Talamore Golf Resort, not far from Pine Needles and Mid Pines, was built by Arnold Palmer as a much more modern-feeling layout, and it ranks No. 13 in North Carolina.
Tobacco Road in North Carolina (Golfweek files)
Also worth noting, Franz in 2021 is working on another restoration of a Ross course at Southern Pines, improving the layout at the behest of the same owners of Mid Pines and Pine Needles. Southern Pines ranked No. 15 in North Carolina before the restoration. Sitting on some of the hilliest ground of any course around Pinehurst, it promises to be another great destination for traveling players when the work is planned to be completed in the fall of 2021.
Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play in North Carolina
The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged together to produce a final rating for each course. Then each course is ranked against other courses in its state, or nationally, to produce the final rankings.
Golf designers Gil Hanse and Bill Coore feel the pressure and pride of tackling restorations of classic courses that host U.S. Opens.
There’s a segment of art fans who regularly demand the Mona Lisa be cleaned and restored. It’s a touchy debate. If the painting were to be restored, it might better represent what Leonardo da Vinci intended as he created it. But if so much as a line of her smile was damaged during such attempts, a real possibility when dealing with a 500-year-old painting … well, art fans don’t like to consider the loss of even a single stroke of paint on that famous face.
There are similar debates throughout the art world as experts consider what was, what is and what will be for masterpieces of all kinds. Paintings. Classic architecture. Sculpture. The list goes on and on.
Even golf courses.
The early 20th century has been dubbed by many to be the golden age of course design in the United States, as 94 of the top 100 layouts on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list were built in the four decades through the 1930s as cars proliferated and airplanes took off. The 1990s and early 2000s also were boom times, but nothing compared to that previous stretch in which famed designers – artists, really – produced so many masterpieces.
And just like famous paintings, these courses sometimes show their age. Throw in the effects of benign neglect or, even worse, well-intended alterations that abandon key characteristics, and many of the best golf courses have slowly lost much of their original designers’ intentions, even without considering the greater distances that modern golf balls travel.
Greens shrink and their internal contours are often subdued. Bunkers migrate, changing shapes, depths and sizes. Fairway widths are altered. Trees grow to block ideal lines of play. Golf courses are living, breathing creations that are subject to ever-changing budgets, growth patterns and whims of membership committees – nothing remains static.
As with any work that might be done to the Mona Lisa, there are many considerations when tackling the problems of aging golf courses. But Mona Lisa doesn’t live outside in a field, subject to weather and all kinds of dynamic forces. Golf courses do, and they need work to retain their artistry.
Enter the modern golf architect, many of whom have become restoration artists. For most of today’s designers, much of their business since the financial crash of the late 2000s and subsequent drop in new golf course development is less about creating their own namesake layouts as it is restoring, renovating and otherwise touching up existing layouts.
In fact, it’s safe to say that in the past decade we have entered a golden era of restoration and renovation. The top courses on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list is full of prime examples, many of which are on full, televised display during major championships. Even the list of top resort courses in the U.S. – which tends to favor more modern layouts – is dotted with significant renovations and restorations.
“There’s been an appreciation building over time going back several decades, and I think what’s been happening is, because of this golden age of restoration, not only is there an appreciation for the name architects – A.W. Tillinghast, Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie, C.B. Macdonald and several others – there’s a greater appreciation for their talents and their golf courses,” said Gil Hanse, whose portfolio of restorations with design partner Jim Wagner continues to grow. “There’s maybe more of an appreciation for those architects now. You can see that across the board for other modern architects and the courses they have touched, too.”
The ninth hole at Winged Foot Golf Club’s West Course in New York, which was restored by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner before the 2020 U.S. Open (Copyright USGA/Russell Kirk)
Hanse’s restorations and renovations include but certainly are not limited to Merion’s East, most recently host of the 2013 U.S. Open; Winged Foot’s West, most recently host of the 2020 U.S. Open; The Country Club, next hosting the 2022 U.S. Open, and Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course (in collaboration with author and blogger Geoff Shackelford), next hosting the 2023 U.S. Open.
“It’s a long-winded kind of answer,” Hanse continued, “and there’s been this kind of appreciation for a long time, but now because of all this good restoration work that is happening – of which we are happy to do our part – there’s an even bigger appreciation of the older golf courses and those architects. ‘Wow, we knew these guys were good, but we didn’t know they were this good.’ ”
Bill Coore – who with design partner Ben Crenshaw has worked on classics such as Pinehurst No. 2, Maidstone, Seminole, Riviera and many others – agrees.
“We do seem to be in an era where there are significant efforts going on to try to restore or, in some cases I guess you could say, address the current playing conditions of some of the classic old courses,” Coore said. “They are all living, breathing things like we are, and they change and evolve.
“In the case of the best courses in the country, they have for the most part evolved in a very positive fashion. But they do change. Sometimes the changes are so incremental that they’re almost unnoticeable until years and years later. Then, you realize they were slightly better the way they were intended. You see a lot of that going on, I think. We’re trying to recapture the original intent and playing characteristics of some of these old courses.”
Seminole Golf Club in South Florida was restored by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. (David Cannon/Getty Images)
It can be a daunting task. How exactly does one go about touching up a masterpiece without damaging it? The first step typically involves some definition of intent.
“Part of the process you go through is, what are the goals?” Coore said. “What are you trying to obtain if you’re working at one of those great old courses? Is it purely trying to recapture the character and the aesthetics? Is it trying to recapture the playing characteristics? Is it trying to address issues pertaining to more modern golf? Is it all of the above?”
The terms thrown about can muddle things. What exactly is a restoration? And what is a renovation? Do those terms ever cross, and how many shades of gray are present between them?
“The easiest way for us to describe it, for Jim Wagner and myself, is that a restoration is when the original architect’s thoughts, style and design are the driving force behind every decision on the site,” Hanse said. “A renovation is when we’re interjecting our original design thoughts into an existing golf course, allowing our prejudices, thoughts, skills, etcetera, to influence what we think would make for a better golf course.”
Hanse pointed to his and Wagner’s work at Winged Foot’s West course in New York as a restoration, with the duo trying to reclaim the characteristics instilled by the original designer, Tillinghast. Greens edges had crept in since the course opened in 1923, leaving fewer hole locations. Some bunkers had become irrelevant. Among all the work involved, perhaps key was Hanse and Wagner’s expansion of putting surfaces back to their original sizes and shifting of bunkers to better fit Tillinghast’s intent of challenging players.
The second hole at Pinehurst No. 4, which was renovated by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)
At the opposite end of Hanse’s redesign-renovation spectrum is Pinehurst No. 4, a Ross layout at the famed North Carolina resort that had been the subject of numerous subsequent redesigns since its opening as a full 18 in 1919. Defining it as a renovation and not a restoration from the start, Hanse and Wagner built what Hanse called “close to being a whole new golf course” through mostly existing corridors in the pines, and that renovation opened to play in 2018.
Pinehurst is a great example of the different ways to approach a renovation or restoration, as it has been 10 years since Coore and Crenshaw wrapped up what most certainly was a restoration of Pinehurst No. 2, the resort’s flagship course that rests directly next to Hanse’s since-renovated No. 4.
Often cited as among the best of Ross’s designs, No. 2 had changed considerably over the decades following its 1903 opening. The course’s most famous features are its crowned greens, but much of the rest of the course might have been almost unrecognizable to Ross, who lived for years to the side of the third green. Most dramatically, the native sandy areas alongside fairways had been replaced with grass at rough heights, presenting totally different appearances and playing challenges.
No. 2 hosted U.S. Opens in 1999 and 2005, and even between those Opens the course changed, with fairways growing more narrow between ever-expanding fields of rough. After that 2005 Open, the resort’s operators wanted to make drastic changes. Employing Coore and Crenshaw in 2010, they opted to take the course back in time, restoring what once was to replace what it had become.
“Sometimes we look back at some of the architecture that has happened at Pinehurst, whether it’s golf course architecture or building architecture, and you scratch your head a little bit,” Tom Pashley, now the president of Pinehurst Resort, said at Golfweek’s Architecture Summit in November of 2020. “How did this happen, how did that happen? …
“The decision was made, and it was a risk but it was obviously the right decision, to take No. 2 back. It had become a very manicured golf course, and the standing wire grass areas were only ornamental. It didn’t look like a Sandhills course. … Things had happened over the years, and the courses had evolved and all that, and we just said, look, this land is where Ross laid out the original four courses in Pinehurst, and we need to be true to some sort of aesthetic, the Ross aesthetic.”
So Coore and Crenshaw were tasked with taking the course back, but to what, exactly? And for whom, Tour pros in the U.S. Open or resort guests? And how to do that?
“At least for us, the single biggest priority is to take ourselves out of it,” Coore said. “If we leave signatures that we’ve been there, we failed, quite frankly. The goal is to recapture – at least at places like Pinehurst or Maidstone or wherever – the goal is to try to recapture what made that place so special in the beginning. And all those cases, they were built long before Ben and I were ever on this earth. So we take ourselves out of it, yet we’re so involved in it, trying to study the original intent. What did Donald Ross intend at Pinehurst No. 2? What was the focus? How did the course play and look?”
Coore and Crenshaw got a major boost when local resident Craig Disher presented them with aerial photos of Pinehurst No. 2 taken on Christmas Day in 1943. The design duo received another break when Pinehurst agronomist Bob Farren told them the current irrigation system had been laid in the same trenches as the water pipes installed during Ross’s time, allowing them to figure out the previous center lines of the fairways while projecting their width based on how far water would have been sprinkled.
“I said, ‘Bob, if that’s the case, we have not only a road map, we have the center of the road,’ ” Coore said of the old irrigation system.
Such sleuthing can be crucial to a true restoration. At Pinehurst, those kinds of efforts allowed Coore and Crenshaw, with a fairly high degree of certainty, to present the course as it looked in 1943, with wider fairways surrounded by native grasses and no traditional rough.
The ninth green at Pinehurst No. 2, as seen before Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s restoration (inset photo) and after, with new wire grass (Photos courtesy of Pinehurst and by David Cannon/Getty Images)
The U.S. Open returned to No. 2 in 2014, with Martin Kaymer winning on a firmer, faster and browner layout that looked almost nothing as it had in 1999 and 2005. It was a departure from the typical U.S. Open setup of tall rough, but the work was roundly praised. And with the U.S. Golf Association now slated to establish a second headquarters at Pinehurst, the U.S. Open will return with No. 2 as an anchor site in 2024, 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047.
“We’re very proud of Pinehurst, because the people there are very proud of it,” Coore said. “I know there were people who said, what on earth are they doing, they’re going to destroy the place. But I think given the time since the work – and it’s probably been enough time to begin to assess – that this was a positive move.
“I grew up in North Carolina and I played golf at Pinehurst as a kid, and I remembered it from what it was in the 1960s, and I just knew from my own memory that it had changed dramatically through the years. Ben and I certainly never would have gone there and said you need to change this, you need to restore this. All that influence came from the Pinehurst people, who said we’ve been listening and studying that this course is not the way it used to be. It was a huge leap of faith.”
While Pinehurst serves as a great model for restorations and renovations, it’s hardly alone in efforts to refine a golf course, even among U.S. Open venues. Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, host to nine Opens, for example famously removed thousands of trees in the 1990s and 2000s to restore playing corridors as intended by original designer Henry Fownes. That certainly would be one of the most visually impactful restorations for any television viewer.
None of this is exactly new. Robert Trent Jones Sr. was known for his work on championship courses, and his son Rees followed in his footsteps. Courses have been the targets of redesign efforts ever since the game developed. Old Tom Morris certainly was known to tinker.
But as courses continue to age, efforts have been stepped up at many private clubs and resorts alike, often with grander goals of revisiting previous work that was more limited in scope. Whereas announcements of course openings filled the news wires in the early 2000s, today’s design news is more typically filled with restorations and renovations – not a week goes by without announcements of such work across the U.S.
It’s all a great opportunity for current architects, but it can be very different than creating a new course. In a sense, great restorations are more of a research endeavor than a design process.
“When you’re in the field, there’s a ton of archaeology,” Hanse said. “You’ll find old bunkers and things. We’re working at Oakland Hills right now, and we’ll be sifting through, and ‘That looks like old bunker sand. Yep, there’s a layer, chase it and find where it goes.’ So there are markers on the ground. Working at Baltusrol, we’ve been sort of peeling away layers of bunker sand buildup along the edges of greens. You have thatch and sort of top dressing, then all the sudden you hit this sort of blackish soil layer. You can chase that soil layer, and that sort of reestablishes where the edge of the bunker was. If you’re paying attention, you can find these things.”
Hanse said the greatest example may have come at Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, a George C. Thomas Jr. original design from 1921 that had been reshaped and diminished through the decades. A skilled contractor on an excavator kept finding all kinds of clues to the original course beneath the sod, especially as to the placement of the second and sixth greens.
“He found the old green surfaces that literally had been covered by dirt – they hadn’t even stripped the grass off it,” Hanse said. “Pulling this away, we even found old cup holes. It was remarkable. We were just able to pull away the dirt and have the old green edges and contours intact. That was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.”
But the fact there are clues in the dirt doesn’t necessarily make it any easier for the architects.
“Without question, I think Ben and I would both say that there’s more stress in (restoring a classic course than in building a new one),” said Coore, who along with Crenshaw delivered one of the most-anticipated new courses of 2020, the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon. “It’s because you’re not dealing with your product. You’re trying to return the greatest potential of somebody else’s product, a product that has proved to be successful and sometimes even revered around the world for years.
“So it’s way more stressful and intense than creating a new product where, even though the site might have great potential and expectations, the course doesn’t exist yet. On a new course you’re living up to what the potential of the site is, but you’re not living up to what was. You’re not chasing a ghost.”
– This story originally ran in Golfweek’s 2021 Ultimate Guide.
No. 2, No. 4, the Cradle and a strong cast of area courses maintain the status of the North Carolina resort as a must-play destination.
Give or take a DeChambeau drive, it’s about 3,750 miles from the town of St. Andrews in the Kingdom of Fife to the village of Pinehurst in the sandhills of North Carolina. But what distance separates, golf connects.
St. Andrews and Pinehurst are often mentioned in the same breath as homes of the game in the Old World and the New, respectively, not least because both places don’t just embrace golf but rather seem to have grown organically around its finest canvases.
The village of Pinehurst is dominated by its eponymous resort, which can now boast more golf courses than Elizabeth Taylor could ex-husbands. There are nine standard courses, all numbered, and the most celebrated – the Richard Burton, if you like – is No. 2. It has hosted three U.S. Opens, a U.S. Women’s Open, a U.S. Senior Open, a PGA Championship, a Ryder Cup and three U.S. Amateurs. There isn’t another venue in golf that owns such a glittering resume.
When I first visited No. 2 about 15 years ago, much of its strategic charm was buried beneath sod. Its fairways were wall-to-wall grass, generous enough to land an aircraft without disturbing a pine cone. What little it demanded of players off the tee, it made up for around the famously crowned greens, where someone with a stonemason’s touch might ping-pong hither and yon for some time. To wit: A friend once shot an ignominious round of 121 at No. 2. With one ball!
A long season of change at Pinehurst began a decade ago, when No. 2 was restored by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The duo ripped out 35 acres of turf, leaving native areas dotted with grass and scrub that not only returned long-lost playing angles to the old masterpiece but gave it back real character and authenticity too. You’ll still find almost every wayward shot out there – trust me on this – but No. 2’s demands off the tee are considerably more thoughtful and exacting than they once were.
Pinehurst No. 4, recently redesigned by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner (Courtesy of Pinehurst)
For my money, No. 2 is No. 2 only to Pacific Dunes among the finest publicly accessible golf courses in America. The U.S. Open returns here in 2024, marking its fourth staging in a quarter-century in Pinehurst.
The rebirth of No. 2 was a springboard for greater change at Pinehurst, a subtle shift that firmly consigned the era of stiff collars and upper lips to the photos adorning the walls and ushered in a more mellow mien. The ambience of the resort and the golf options it offers are much more relaxed these days, to the point of being kid-friendly (if you’re into that sort of thing).
Two years after the new No. 2 was unveiled, Thistle Dhu opened. It’s an 18-hole putting course right by the clubhouse, inspired by the famed Himalayas course in St. Andrews. Two years after that, in 2014, the resort purchased a nearby Jack Nicklaus course called National Golf Club, which became No. 9 for members and guests.
But Pinehurst still suffered the same burden as many other fine resorts –Kiawah Island and Sea Island, to name but two – in that the drop-off in quality between its premier golf course and its other layouts was precipitous. Pinehurst’s second-best was considered No. 4, which had been touched by more designers than a supermodel, all the way back to Donald Ross his ownself. What existed a few years ago was a Tom Fazio design that was popular but unspectacular.
So Pinehurst hired Gil Hanse and gave him a bulldozer. Both did fine work.
What exists today is unrecognizable from what was there previously. No. 4 shares only a number and a footprint with its predecessors, and today suggests more the native, sandy look of No. 2 than the parkland vibe of the old Fazio effort (though its contours are considerably more helpful than those of its more feted neighbor). A year after reopening, No. 4 co-hosted the ’19 U.S. Amateur with No. 2.
It was not Hanse’s only mark on Pinehurst.
In 2017, Hanse created the Cradle, presumably so named because it will rock you. Located by the clubhouse and right next to Thistle Dhu, it’s a 9-hole adventure, with holes ranging in length from 56 yards to 126 yards. All you need to navigate the Cradle is a putter, a couple of wedges and a thirst for entertainment. On any given day, the Cradle is peopled with more than a few aspiring golfers who are still years away from being old enough to tackle the more storied course around the corner of the clubhouse. Fees are $50, replays are free and kids under 17 play free when accompanied by a paying adult. The Cradle is as chill as golf gets, and in a town long known for a more formal bearing, it might be the best use of 10 acres in the game.
Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Course in Southern Pines, N.C. (Courtesy of Pine Needles)
There is more to Pinehurst than the behemoth resort. A few miles away is Pine Needles, another Donald Ross course, long owned by the late Hall of Fame teacher Peggy Kirk Bell, whose family still runs the place. Pine Needles and its sister course, Mid-Pines, were both restored in recent years by Kyle Franz, who cut his teeth working on projects like Pacific Dunes in Oregon, Barnbougle Dunes in Australia and, closer to home, the No. 2 restoration.
Pine Needles recaptures every tease of Ross’s imagination, tumbling over heaving terrain with every hole beautifully framed amid the pines. Its green complexes are the equal of most any you’ll find. Adding to the thrill ride: Pine Needles offers Finn Cycles, sporty two-wheeled motorized scooters that carry both bag and player. They might not clean your clubs, but nor do they give you a bad yardage or mock your misreads, plus after 18 holes you dismount feeling like Steve McQueen.
Tobacco Road near Pinehurst, N.C. (Courtesy of Pinehurst)
Just as there are dozens of fine courses within range of the Old in St. Andrews, the sandhills too offers more options than most travelers have days to spend. One I am loath to pass up is Tobacco Road, located in Sanford, halfway between Pinehurst and the airport in Raleigh. Arguably the most polarizing course in America, Tobacco Road is a wildly engrossing design by the late architect Mike Strantz. It has its share of blind shots – some of them on putts – but there is not a single dull shot among its 18 incredibly varied holes. It is well worth a detour.
What ultimately connects Pinehurst and St. Andrews is not simply history but evolution, the fact that they are living museums to this ancient game. Both are grounded in old sepia images of dour Scots and gentlemen golfers, but each has in its own way adapted to ever-changing challenges, audiences and eras. And that’s perhaps the most impressive accomplishment evident now in Pinehurst: that so much has been added, while nothing has been lost.
