Pinehurst No. 2 - The Time Machine
“If you use a line and a square to build a bunker, the result is sure to have an artificial-ness akin to hideous. It’s just as easy to break up all the lines and avoid such a regrettable result. Man cannot do in a few days what nature took years to accomplish.”
Donald Ross, Architect of Pinehurst No. 2
We got into Charlotte just before twilight, the sun setting on North Carolina before we could even step foot in it. But after a quick stop at “the best barbeque spot in Charlotte'', or so the sign stated, we were consoled and ready to hit the road east to Pinehurst , a two hour drive. By the time we were knocking on the village’s door, it was a complete black out, which is the definition of anticlimactic when driving into a place you’ve been waiting to see for years. There was no glimpse, no use in a neck turn with your nose pressed up against the rental car window, just black. “Well I guess we’ll all just see it for the first time tomorrow then”, my dad said solemnly from the driver’s seat.
We were all handed big metal room keys the length of our hands as though we had been told to take the night shift at the local jail. It was an interestingly classic touch I didn’t expect, no need for the hassle of modernizing anything when they relish the past so dearly. And when we got back in the car with directions given to us by the concierge, I could faintly point out the silhouette of the main clubhouse. “I have to see it. I have to know what it looks like”, I kept telling myself. I was up until the wee hours of the morning, doing what any sane golfer does before any big trip: cleaning clubs in the hotel sink. But the monotony didn’t help me fall asleep, so I laid there in my hotel bed watching the time go by. Two o’clock. Three o’clock. Four o’clock. “This is torture. I can’t sit here anymore”, I finally concluded as I got up, grabbed my camera, and looked at the weather app to see when the sun would rise.
I stepped out onto the street and had no clue where I was. It seemed like North Carolina. It felt like the south with its moisture filled air, but I didn’t see any golf. There was a racetrack and a restaurant across the street just starting to open up for business, its chimneys pumping out smoke from the start of fryers and griddles for the day to come. “Which way is the golf?”, I asked as I stepped inside. I could tell they had never gotten that question before, especially at five in the morning by their response of a mouth agape and a point of a finger up the street. They gave me a freshly made biscuit, mostly because I think they took pity looking into my sleepless red eyes, and I started my way up the road in the faint blackness of the early morning.
I had found a four foot high wooden fence on the side of the road, and interestingly enough, recognized it from pictures. It was the fence that separated The Cradle from Beulah Hills Road, the partition between the main hub of Pinehurst and courses like No.3 and No. 5. I could see the sun just starting to creep up over the horizon to the east and the reflective sheen coming off of the dew. Not that I would’ve known it at the time, but the clock tower’s light drew me even closer to what is probably the busiest spot on the resort. Both starting and finishing holes on No. 2 and No. 4, the practice facility, the Thistle Dhu putting course, and The Cradle were all laid out like a buffet.
As the sun was starting to come up, I mosied over to the first tee at No. 2. I knew that this was probably going to be the only time in my life that I would get this little corner of earth to myself. Envisioning myself playing in the US Open (everyone does it, I’m just the only shameless one), I walked down the brick steps, past the famously ornate starter shack, took my good time for a pre-shot routine, and swung an imaginary club. “Did it go straight?”, someone to the side of me asked with a hint of proud grandfather in his voice.
“No, I have too many nerves on first tees. They rarely go where I want.”
“Too many eyes watching. I get it.”, he responded as we both shared our first hearty laugh of the day. He was an older gentleman with a calm demeanor, and by the look of what was in the back of his golf cart, was a member of the grounds crew. He came over to introduce himself, shook my hand and asked, “How do you feel being here?”, as he motioned to our surroundings.
“I don’t really know how to explain it yet. Tranquil? Peaceful? It feels like this was always supposed to be where people come to play golf I guess”, I concluded.
His response of “Well, welcome to Pinehurst then” echoed off of the vacant starter shack. He resumed his morning duties with a smile on his face and another convert made.
The USGA wasn’t catching on right away to the possibility of one of their championship anchor sites getting mown down and painted over. The line of thought was, and understandably so, that there was nothing wrong with the course when Payne Stewart won the US Open there in 1999, making for one of the most memorable victories in the tournament’s history. That US Open made people interested in the game. It made kids and adults alike go out to their local course and try to make 20 foot bombs just to punch the air in celebration like Stewart had done. Now Pinehurst Resort, already committed to hosting the 2014 US Open, was going to completely alter that visual. Donald Padget II and Tom Pashley, President and Vice President respectively of Pinehurst Resort, found that risk a necessary one.
No. 2 had simply overgrown. “A lot of those distinctive, sandy elements had been lost slowly over time.”, Pashley explains. America had seen it time and time again; narrower fairways, more rough, smaller greens, and Augusta-like maintenance practices. “It’s a national treasure. We had to restore it.", said Padget. And even though it’s easy, bordering on obligatory, when being the president to say that your course is a “national treasure”, Padget knew what he was talking about. Pinehurst is to America as St. Andrews is to Scotland. There would be riots in the streets if the R&A, the club and governing body that owns St. Andrews, came out and four years before hosting the Open Championship declared that they were going to start tearing up the Road Hole. It was a precarious and fragile situation to put yourself in if you were Pinehurst. It is the birthplace of American golf. “This is going to be the smartest thing we ever did or the stupidest thing we ever did”, Padget once told Pashley in a meeting. The question had passed whether or not they were going to do it and had landed on one big variable: Who was going to do it?
In 2010, there were multiple names that probably came to the minds of those trying to make this decision. But in hindsight, only two names, one entity, would ever truly be able to encapsulate and manage such a project as this one. Doak would’ve been too austere. And even though he had been entrusted with important restoration work before, including The Valley Club of Montecito a few years earlier, he didn’t have the bedside manner yet to deal with a membership that had their courses’ reputation on the line and in the country’s limelight. Kidd was in a literal identity crisis. After his sudden emergence onto the architecture scene with Bandon Dunes, his career was then riddled with grotesque designs in comparison. Places like Nanea, The Castle Course in St. Andrews, and Tetherow screamed penal and lacked maturity. Fazio’s design mantra at that time was a part of the mess in the first place. Perfectly maintained rough being pulled off of a course would’ve been like pulling out his own internal organs. It was only a North Carolina native and a two-time major champion that would sing the song Pinehurst was wanting to hear: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
Almost 20 years prior to that decision, the two partners and a man named Dick Youngscap from Lincoln were hiking around in 15 degree weather with snow on the ground, trying to find golf holes in the middle of the Nebraskan wilderness. It was the genesis of Sand Hills Golf Club, and it was a risky project. The closest town was 20 minutes away with a population in the 100s. Destination golf wasn’t a thing yet. No one knew about the overwhelming abundance that is the Sandhills. And though Youngscap had accumulated quite the national membership already, most of them would see the golf course for the first time after they had already paid their initiation fee, estimated to be around $100,000.
Coore and Crenshaw were entrusted with 8,000 acres south of Mullen. Narrowing it down from 136 potential holes, known as the “Constellation Map” and to this day still hangs downstairs in the clubhouse, to 18 individually outstanding holes probably seemed impossible at the moment. Holes that an architect really likes in the routing process almost become like children to them. It would have been a much different course if Bill and Ben weren’t there, but it still would’ve worked out if Youngscap decided to go in a different direction with someone else. That is the difference between Sand Hills and Pinehurst, two pinnacles of their design career: Sand Hills could’ve gone on without Coore and Crenshaw, Pinehurst needed them more than even they knew.
The four of us were laying out what we were going to wear for our round on No. 2 the night before. Even my dad was clearly excited, looking like he was getting ready for his first day of high school, going between the striped and patterned shirt. He had played much more golf than the other three of us combined, including numerous US Open venues, and yet still had no clue what to expect.
There’s a difference between playing at No.2 and an “average” US Open anchor site, if there even is such a thing. Fast, small greens, lots of rough, and fairways reminiscent of runways have become the facade of our national championship. Consistent players don’t have to change anything about their game if they’re playing at Merion, Oakmont, or The Country Club. Hit the ball high, hit it far, and when you miss a green in regulation, flop it precariously onto surfaces that act more like hardwood flooring than grass. Don’t do anything stupid and you're probably not going to severely blow up. That’s just not the case for No. 2.
The par-5 5th
While the rest of the US Open, and PGA Tour rota at that, can be clumped into one big course management bubble, Pinehurst No. 2 shines brightly with its differences. It requires its own style of play. If a player, amateur or touring professional, approaches No. 2 like any other course, including even the other courses at the resort, they will get chewed up, spit out, and left wondering to themselves what went drastically awry. They’ll be standing on the next tee confused as to how they just drew a snowman on their scorecard, angrily mumbling “I just needed to stay on the green from 20 yards.” Instead of just requiring one type of shot when finding a ball from off the fairway, there are multiple types. When I say “from off the fairway”, you would assume that it’s easier to describe this area of the course as “rough”, but that description is anything but adequate.
There are some that believe luck should have no part of the game of golf. Champions and great players aren’t made by getting lucky all the time, or so the line of thought goes. Gary Player’s mind is made up. “Golf is a game in which luck plays no part on the championship level. Hole-in-ones are just little accidents.” This makes sense of course, not wanting his personal reputation of being one of “The Big Three” and beating Jack and Arny once in a blue moon all up to luck. But this isn’t the spirit of what Pinehurst gives us. No. 2 falls more in line with what Bobby Jones thought when he said, “Golf is not, and never has been, a fair game. Fate, good and bad, has a larger part than any player or man can control. Fate deals you the cards, and you play them."
Here is a personal example. I chose the absolute hardest club in my bag to hit my first drive - an amateur mistake when one has first tee jitters. My passively hit two iron snatched only a quarter of the ball and its flight drained faintly to the right. I found it on a hardpan lie with zero obstructions in front of me, hit my approach to about 20 feet, two-putt for par, and walked onto the par-4 2nd tee thinking that the golf course was too forgiving while it was really just a lucky break. I would come to find out, sooner rather than later, that there was more than just hardpan lies and unobstructed views at No. 2. I would hit from very soft, sandy lies, uneven stances, and completely gridlocked looks at any digestible score. Gary Player would probably not think that it’s fair for someone to be just a foot off the fairway and have to completely uproot a wire grass plant in the hopes of saving double. But there are ways to play this type of golf. There are tricks to the trade in navigating No. 2’s domed greens, the tight, hardpan lies, and beautifully yet randomly situated wire grass. Chris Solomon from No Laying Up has said “I can’t imagine a better golf course that is designed for a separation of talent.” What it requires is something Pinehurst is individual in, and has been asking for ever since its inception: a timeless expertise.
“If you’re talking about undertaking this restoration prior to the [U.S.] Open championship, where does the USGA come in on all of this?”, Bill Coore originally questioned. Although Pinehurst as a resort has the ability to make its own decisions, the USGA was planning on having their largest and most profitable tournament of the year there. In about three or so years, the USGA, including all of their championship and agronomic staff, were going to take over the course to get it ready for the US Open, and they needed to see how the nuts and bolts go together.
What made Bill, Ben, and then President of the USGA Mike Davis’ confidence rise was a collection of old aerial photographs. They were 8x10s of every single hole, taken on Christmas Day of 1943 from a pilot based out of Fort Bragg, 5 years before Ross died. It was a time machine back to when Donald Ross still could’ve stepped outside his house positioned on the par-4 3rd fairway, known as the Dornoch Cottage, and been able to give input to those that had a say. They were pictures of the very course Donald Ross looked at in the final years of his life and was satisfied with. And in no time, the 35 acres of turf that was taken out was sent all over Moore county to anyone who needed it, from football fields to churches to people’s front yards.
Behind the par-3 9th at No. 2, there is an abandoned hole originally built as an alternate for the course.
Right as the restoration was getting underway, as bermuda rough was getting torn out and straight lined bunkers were getting leveled, Bill Coore got stopped while walking out to his car by a man. The man, a member, said “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but I’ll tell you one thing. You better not mess this up. As this golf course goes, so goes this entire town.”, and he turned around and walked away. Bill Coore was introduced to golf from his next door neighbor; and every once in a while would invite Bill to go play at Pinehurst, about a two hour drive away. They would play all day long for $25. The roots of his love for, and ultimately his career, in the game of golf came from Pinehurst. Anyone else, most probably with the exception of his business partner Ben Crenshaw, wouldn’t have taken what that member said well. I can name a couple designers who would’ve been offended and some that would’ve shaken it off and never thought about it again. But you can see through the work done at No. 2 that Bill and Ben did neither. I believe it was their constant guiding line.
The visualization of the first tee shot earlier in the week, although serene, didn’t help my ball from fading uncontrollably to the right. The first hole being a medium length short par-4, I had left myself with a six iron in my hand from the native area hitting to a green that looked as though it had three or four Corollas parked beneath it. Miraculously, after putting it on and two putting for a routine par, I walked up to the second tee with a mindset that I could somewhat bend this course to my will if I could just hit the ball well enough. Maybe that’s what first holes are for. Donald Ross always tried to make his openers “a gentle handshake”. Handshake evolved into push, push to shove, and shove finally into what felt like a fist in the face.
Sometimes, when getting beat up by a course, it can be a good time. As long as one knows going into the ordeal that they will probably get thrown around, scorecards are thrown out and everyone takes a deep breath of scoreless freedom. The straw that broke the domed green’s back was on the long par-3 6th. I had just saved bogey on the previous hole and felt like I had gotten back into the mental boxing match I was partaking in. After hitting the best 4 iron of my life with an added early tee pick up, I heard my dad’s caddie behind me say “Nice double”. Me and everyone else in the group laughed. It was slowly creeping closer to the pin and I was looking at a 15 foot birdie putt, we laughed based off of its insanity. I looked back at the caddie and his facial expression hadn’t changed one iota though. And as I started to turn back around with squinted eyebrows, the ball kept rolling. “It’s gotta stop”, I said. No, it didn’t really have to stop and it wouldn’t, finding itself at the bottom of a cavernous looking left green side bunker. It felt like a personal attack on how I knew the game to be, the course almost whispering to me “It doesn’t matter where and how you’ve played before. If you don’t play how I require, then even your best shots don’t matter.” No. 2 writes its own rules.
There are plenty of courses that conjure up the desire to play it again immediately after walking off the 18th. That in itself is not a rarity in the golfing world. That can be said for almost every course Mike Kesier, the founder of locations like Bandon Dunes, Cabot Cape Breton, and Sand Valley, has ever built. But there are only a select few where, when played for the first time, feels like a puzzle that is barely solved. The Old Course in St. Andrews is the penultimate example. Bobby Jones, arguably the greatest amateur of all time, hated the Old Course the first time he played it. It was too quirky and too flat. It would later become his favorite place to play, and win, in the world. Pinehurst No. 2 holds the same sentiments. I can guarantee that there have been more than one player who has originally thought that No. 2 was unfair, too flat for anything interesting, or just too damn hard. And just like Jones’ experience in St. Andrews, those feelings of temporary insufficiency are replaced with the wonderment of trying to solve the puzzle that is No. 2.