There are older golf courses in the United States than those in Pinehurst, but this charming little
village and its surroundings in the sandhills of North Carolina
has such a rich history and golf heritage that it's easy to see why it is recognized as the Home of American Golf.
Pinehurst #2, the world famous masterpiece of
Donald Ross, and many of the other 30 courses in the
region fit the landscape as naturally as the towering longleaf pines that backdrop them. A good walk
on a Pinehurst course is anything but spoiled when the pine-scented air is so fresh and the turf
underfoot is as soft as a sponge. In the sandhills, nature must have anticipated that a game like
golf would be invented. Here, at least, the setting for a great game couldn't be more ideal.
To create such a setting, nature began her work long ago. Throughout much of its geologic history,
what is now the East Coast of the US was under the sea. With continuous advances and retreats, the
sea's alluvial deposits formed the sandhills. Marked by rich, porous sand-based soil, the sandhills
supported lush vegetation including the longleaf pine. At one time, the entire East Coast from
Florida
to the mid-Atlantic and west to Texas was covered with
a longleaf pine forest that was harvested for
multiple uses including ship building and the manufacture of turpentine.
Today, most of that ecosystem is gone, but its remnants have remained remarkably intact in the North
Carolina sandhills which are sandwiched between the coastal plain and the piedmont. Here, in 1895,
Bostonian James Tufts, searching for a place to establish an affordable health spa for New Englanders,
found ideal conditions in the area's fresh pine air, fecund soil and clean aquifer.
Tufts bought 5,000 barren acres for $1 an acre and hired famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted,
who planned New York's Central park among other notable sites, to lay out a New England-style village that
was named Pinehurst. Guests enjoyed produce and dairy products from the Tufts' nurseries, orchards and dairy farm.
By 1897, visitors had begun to bring their golf clubs and use the open fields for practice. As the story
goes, golf balls frequently strayed into the pastures, disturbing the cows and stunting milk production.
This resulted in the decision to build a golf course. Tufts saw an opportunity in the budding popularity
of golf. In 1900 he convinced Donald Ross to oversee the development of golf at the resort.
In a few short years, the Scottish architect designed three resort courses, including his most famous
achievement, Pinehurst #2, which subsequently hosted
dozens of major tournaments, including the North-South
Amateur Open, the US Amateur, and the US Opens of 1999 and 2005. Every legendary golfer including Ben Hogan,
Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus have competed here, calling #2 one of the finest tests of golf
in the world. Ross continued to live at Pinehurst until his death in 1948, after designing more than 300
courses nationwide.
To support the interest in golf, the resort added the Pinehurst Hotel (later named The Carolina) near the
village. The hotel supplemented the lodging in town that included the Holly, Manor and Pine Crest Inns,
noted for their home-style cooking, warm cozy fires, wooden floors and iron bedsprings. To stay at these
preserved places today is to step back in time.
The 230-room Carolina, complete with a world class restaurant and meeting rooms, has been visited by
untold dignitaries and legendary golfers over the years including presidents and heads of state. The
hotel sits on a rise at one end of a tree-canopied boulevard at the other end of which is the clubhouse
which began as a modest structure but has since been enlarged dramatically to serve the first five of
the resort's eight numbered courses. (Pinehurst #6,
#7 and #8,
are within a two miles of the resort.)
Aside from golf, the resort in those early days added other activities. Lawn bowling played by enthusiasts
dressed in customary cotton whites became very popular to the point where the resort began hosting major
tournaments, a practice which continues to this day. Tennis, biking, horseback riding, and boating on a
200-acre lake are also offered. In 2001, the resort opened a state-of-the-art fitness center and health
spa. At 31,000 square feet it is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
Since the region's salad days, new golf resorts and courses have emerged to meet the growing demand for
golf, and today there are no fewer than 46 courses within a 25-mile radius of Pinehurst, which is now
marketed in association with the region's two other villages,
Aberdeen and Southern Pines.
Besides Ross, the region's courses have been designed by a virtual Who's Who of Golf Course Architecture-Arnold
Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ellis Maples, his son Dan, Tom Fazio and Rees Jones, the latter two of whom
are known for their restorations of other Open venues. Ross also designed Pine Needles
and Mid Pines, two resorts
in Southern Pines owned and managed by the family of Peggy Kirk Bell
(see profile). Pine Needles hosted the 1996
and 2001 women's US Open and it returns there in 2007. Fazio, widely regarded as one of the best living
architects, redesigned Pinehurst #4 into a
spectacular gem that will host the 2008 US Amateur. Fazio,
who designed Pinehurst #8 in 1996 in honor of the
resort's Centennial, also designed Forest Creek, a magnificent private golf club in Southern Pines.
The area's other resorts include Woodlake whose original layouts have been redesigned by Dan Maples
and Arnold Palmer; Foxfire that features two outstanding, medium-length courses by Gene Hamm, who
also did one of two courses at fabulous Pinewild Country Club (Player designed the second layout);
and Talamore Golf Resort and Villas featuring a stunning, hilly Rees Jones design where home grown
lamas turn caddy on select days of the year.
Maples also designed The Pit, sculpted from a sand quarry, while Palmer's stamp is on The Carolina
with its dramatic elevation changes and wetlands, and MidSouth Golf Club,
formerly Planation Golf Club.
Legacy, in Aberdeen, was designed by Jack
Nicklaus II and hosted the 2000 US Women's Public
Links Championship. National Golf Club is a
Jack Nicklaus signature design and a brute of a golf
course that has hosted Open qualifiers among other tournaments.
Aside from golf, the Sandhills region is best known as an equestrian and pottery center. The Pinehurst
Harness Track hosts polo matches, harness races and carriage competitions throughout the year. The
Carolina Horse Park hosts horse trials and the nationally-known Stoneybrook Steeplechase Festival each
April. Also through the year, Olympic equestrian training and events are scheduled.
Well before golf was established in Pinehurst, potters from Britain settled in the northern part of
Moore County where they found ideal pottery clay along the area's creek beds. Drive along Hwy. 705
between Robbins and Seagrove, just north of Pinehurst, and you will still see artists at work at their
potters' wheels. Their wares are available for sale at local shops.
It's fitting that the sandhills is also a center for gun enthusiasts. Legendary sharpshooter Annie
Oakley came here in 1916 to give shooting exhibitions and teach marksmanship at the Pinehurst Gun Club.
Oakley was also an avid fox hunter, a sport popularized in 1914 when James and Jackson Body formed the
private Moore County Hounds. Every year at Thanksgiving, the club still launches the hunt season with a
holiday hunt involving members and their guests.
For fans of early American letters, there is the Weymouth Cultural Center. Around 1900, James Boyd, a
Pennsylvania steel and railroad magnate and grandfather of James and Jackson, bought 1200 acres and
built a home, naming the estate Weymouth because it reminded him of Weymouth, England. In 1920, grandson
James had the house redesigned and enlarged by New York architect Aymar Embray II, Princeton University's
official architect who designed Mid Pines and several other buildings in Pinehurst and Southern Pines.
A writer, James wrote his most famous novel, Drums, at Weymouth, and in the 20's and 30's he and his
wife Katherine Lamont Boyd hosted lavish parties for their guests who included literary friends F. Scott
FitzGerald, Thomas Wolfe and Sherwood Anderson. In 1963, Katherine donated a tract to the state which
became the Weymouth Woods Nature Preserve. In 1979, 5 years after her death, The Friends of Weymouth,
which was chartered as a nonprofit corporation, bought the estate and grounds, establishing Weymouth
as a cultural center. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
As for Pinehurst's atmosphere, it can perhaps be summed up by white cotton, a mint julep on the
verandah, a fabulous round of golf, a stroll along a shady lane or a drive through spectacular
horse country. With the exception of a few signs in Aberdeen, the region is entirely without neon
signs. Instead, you will encounter a southern charm and slow pace reminiscent of a time gone by.
Thanks to wise growth policies where development is compatible with environmental preservation,
Pinehurst today is not much different from when Tufts arrived here over 100 years ago. In this land
of fresh air, Tufts' dream lives on at the Home of American Golf.
Pinehurst Golf Articles
