Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a bride egg
Speaker 1: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida Egg, fridagggg Frida
Speaker 1: Egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off
Speaker 1: of the hump course. Welcome to the Friday Egg Golf Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about the history
Speaker 1: of the Pinehurst Resort and the Pinehurst Number two golf course.
Speaker 1: As you probably know, the US Open is going to
Speaker 1: be held at Pinehurst Number two in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: so I thought now would be a good time to
Speaker 1: start discussing this extremely fascinating golf course. My guest is
Speaker 1: Lee Pace. Lee is a prolific author who specializes in
Speaker 1: the history of golf clubs and golf course architecture. He
Speaker 1: has written multiple books about Pinehurst, including The Golden Age
Speaker 1: of Pinehurst, which was first published in twenty twelve. So
Speaker 1: if it's the history of Pinehurst that you want to
Speaker 1: talk about, Lee Pace is your guy. This episode, by
Speaker 1: the way, is the sixth installment of our Great Courses series.
Speaker 1: We've also done episodes on Augusta, National Royal Melbourne, the
Speaker 1: Old Course, National Golf Links and Sunningdale, so I encourage
Speaker 1: you to check those out as well. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of this kind of deep dive into golf
Speaker 1: history and golf course design, I can just about guarantee
Speaker 1: that you would enjoy what we're doing in Club TFE.
Speaker 1: Club TFE is Frida Egg Golf's membership. It's one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty dollars a year and with that you get
Speaker 1: a lot of benefits, including early access to Fridagg Golf
Speaker 1: events and an ongoing discount in the pro shop. But
Speaker 1: we're especially proud of the exclusive content that we're offering
Speaker 1: in CLUBTFE on the member site. This includes course profiles,
Speaker 1: which have in depth analyzes of great golf courses, along
Speaker 1: with beautiful photo tours and illustrations. We also have regular
Speaker 1: features like Design Notebook and Tour Guide which keep you
Speaker 1: up with what's going on in the worlds of golf,
Speaker 1: architecture and professional golf, respectively. We think this is a
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Speaker 1: and the reason we're able to do it is because
Speaker 1: of support from our members. As my colleague Brendan poor
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get to Lee Pace. Lee Pace, welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2: Oh great to be here, Garrett, heard you often and
Speaker 2: look forward to talking about Pinehurst.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start by talking about the founding
Speaker 1: of Pinehurst, just going right to the beginning. I've heard
Speaker 1: you say before, and I've seen you right before, that
Speaker 1: the appearance of a resort in this setting in the
Speaker 1: sand hills of North Carolina was kind of a fluke.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: Well, I do quite a number of after dinner talks
Speaker 2: in and around Pinehurst, and I like to start by saying,
Speaker 2: you know, this is the accidental resort or the coincidental resort,
Speaker 2: depending on how you parse accident and coincident. But there
Speaker 2: is not one good reason for Pinehurst to be here,
Speaker 2: for it to exist, absolutely none. You can parse it
Speaker 2: till doomsday and not come up with a good reason
Speaker 2: for it. It was just a series of coincidences of
Speaker 2: happenstance that had made it all occur. Golf was not
Speaker 2: part of the original equation dating back to the mid
Speaker 2: eighteen nineties when James Tufts, who was from Boston, wanted
Speaker 2: to create a wintertime health resort for people like himself
Speaker 2: who were frail of health, and he was actually conceived
Speaker 2: as a sanitarium for consumptives, and golf was not a
Speaker 2: part of the equation. The truth is that Kiowa has
Speaker 2: more stake in being Pinehurst than Pinehurst does because Kia
Speaker 2: was was just down the coast from Charleston, where there
Speaker 2: is documented proof that golf clubs arrived in the Bay
Speaker 2: of Charleston in seventeen thirty nine, and there was a
Speaker 2: golf club in Charleston by seventeen eighty six. Of course
Speaker 2: they didn't exist, but so something a golf resort along
Speaker 2: the sea in the eighteen hundreds. You could understand bob
Speaker 2: or if it was in an urban area, or if
Speaker 2: it was alonger River, or if it had happened in Asheville,
Speaker 2: which was a summertime escape from all the heat in
Speaker 2: the South. You could understand that. But James Tuff's happened
Speaker 2: to learn about five thousand acres in this arid area
Speaker 2: of North Carolina that was not close to anything. And
Speaker 2: in fact, if you look at some of the photos
Speaker 2: in the Carolina Hotel of the early days of Pinehurst,
Speaker 2: it was but ugly. I mean, there was nothing attractive, nothing,
Speaker 2: no esthetics at all. But this is where he decided
Speaker 2: to create a new England style village. Imported the many
Speaker 2: of the plants, the grass, built the village and it
Speaker 2: was only two years into it that when some of
Speaker 2: his guests started bringing their own golf clubs and balls
Speaker 2: and started hitting balls throughout the dairy fields and the
Speaker 2: peach orchards that the idea for golf was originally conceived.
Speaker 2: So that's just one of the coincidences and one of
Speaker 2: the pieces of happen stamps. And then of course Donald
Speaker 2: Ross's arrival was yet enough.
Speaker 1: Who was James Walker Tufts.
Speaker 2: He was a man who made his fortune in the
Speaker 2: apothecary business. He created the Soda Fountain Soda Fountain syrups
Speaker 2: that spread throughout the eastern part of the United States
Speaker 2: and across the country back in the day when the
Speaker 2: apothecary shop and the drug store were part and parcel
Speaker 2: of every town in America. And he was, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: he was not in the best of health, and by
Speaker 2: his sixties he was more into philanthropy and conceived the
Speaker 2: idea of a health resort far away from New England.
Speaker 2: At the time, Henry Flagler had not yet developed the
Speaker 2: east coast of Florida, so Florida was not a destination
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen hundreds. So North Carolina just happened
Speaker 2: to be about a day's train ride from New England.
Speaker 2: So that's one of the reasons that it was within reach.
Speaker 1: So this resort was initially conceived as a health retreat.
Speaker 1: It evolved away from that, partly presumably because if you
Speaker 1: have a resort for people who are consumptives or who
Speaker 1: have tuberculosis, it might quickly become a kind of super spreader.
Speaker 1: Event once I sort of learned more about those diseases.
Speaker 2: And I don't think he understood that when he originally
Speaker 2: conceived the idea, And so they had to make a
Speaker 2: pirouet of one hundred and eighty degrees away from that,
Speaker 2: and mister Tuff's lived in Boston, and which happened to
Speaker 2: be the city that Donald Ross immigrated to when he
Speaker 2: came to America in eighteen ninety nine. And that was
Speaker 2: another coincidence that mister Ross was in Dornock, Scotland, work
Speaker 2: in the golf shop at at Dornot Golf Club, when
Speaker 2: a Harvard professor named Robert Wilson got to meet him
Speaker 2: and know him and said something to the effective, young man,
Speaker 2: if you ever should decide to come to America, look
Speaker 2: me up. There is opportunity for a young man who
Speaker 2: knows golf in this country. Because golf was in its
Speaker 2: infancy in the late eighteen hundreds, and Donald Ross did
Speaker 2: not come to America as a golf course architect. Came
Speaker 2: there were not specialists in the golf business at the time.
Speaker 2: One person could be the clubmaker and the caddymaster, and
Speaker 2: the event organizer, and the instructor and the greenkeeper and
Speaker 2: the agronomous. He did it all, and he learned those
Speaker 2: skills under old Tom Morris at Saint Andrew's doing an internship,
Speaker 2: and brought his skills back to Dornock where he was
Speaker 2: running the golf shop, and so Robert Wilson suggested, there's
Speaker 2: opportunity in America. And then Donald Ross, which is one
Speaker 2: of many young Scottish golf golf professionals, golf agronomous greenkeepers
Speaker 2: who came to America seeking a niche and an opportunity
Speaker 2: in a sport that was just starting to get some roots.
Speaker 1: Could you say a little more about how golf came
Speaker 1: to Pinehurst? You mentioned this briefly earlier, but how golf
Speaker 1: arrived at the resort. It wasn't initially part of Pinehurst.
Speaker 1: And then what the earliest iterations of golf courses at
Speaker 1: Pinehurst looked like before Donald Ross arrived.
Speaker 2: They were very crude. As I mentioned, some of the
Speaker 2: guests brought their own golf clubs and balls and sort
Speaker 2: of hit them across the dairy fields. And James Tuff
Speaker 2: so well, I want if there's some opportunity for golf,
Speaker 2: and he happened to pose that question to others in
Speaker 2: his circle, and one man in particular, the manager of
Speaker 2: the Holly Inn, who his name was Alan Treadway. And
Speaker 2: the Holly Inn was the first hotel property in Pinehurst
Speaker 2: that opened in eighteen ninety five, mister Treadway said, no,
Speaker 2: golf's just a fad. Save your money, don't waste it
Speaker 2: on golf. But fortunately mister Tuff's thought, well, maybe this
Speaker 2: is an opportunity, and he happened to know a physician
Speaker 2: in Southern Pines who played golf, who had been to
Speaker 2: Saint Andrews. Was not a golf course architect, but he
Speaker 2: knew more golf than anybody in the town did. So
Speaker 2: he asked this physician to help him lay out a
Speaker 2: golf course and that's what became the first nine hole
Speaker 2: and then eighteen hole course that was laid out in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety eight, and that was on ground that was
Speaker 2: to the south of the clubhouse as it exists today,
Speaker 2: and that is area where the Cradle golf course, the
Speaker 2: nine hole appendage golf course that was built in twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen is located now. And why it was called the
Speaker 2: Cradle because it was routed on land on which the
Speaker 2: original nine and then eighteen hole course at Pinehurst was located.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure it was very crude. There was no
Speaker 2: grass on the greens. They were used a people call
Speaker 2: them sand greens, but that's really a bit of a misnomer.
Speaker 2: They were more clay than they were sand. They were
Speaker 2: a clay base with sand mixed in. They were flat,
Speaker 2: the hole was generally just in the middle of it.
Speaker 2: The keeyen areas were built up that the caddy would
Speaker 2: actually take a little bit of sand, put some water
Speaker 2: on it, and build up a little artificial ty for
Speaker 2: a golfer to purcha his ball on. And so they
Speaker 2: were very crude and very rudimentary, but no more than
Speaker 2: two thousand yards for nine holes. But that's where they
Speaker 2: first started to play golf.
Speaker 1: So then Donald Ross arrives and he's not yet the
Speaker 1: Donald Ross that we know. Now, this is early in
Speaker 1: his American career. What did Donald Ross do with the
Speaker 1: golf courses at Pinehurst, say, just during the first couple
Speaker 1: of decades of the twentieth century, just a high level
Speaker 1: summary his overall kind of development of those first few
Speaker 1: courses at Pinehurst.
Speaker 2: Well, there were two key elements to Donald Ross's arrival
Speaker 2: in Pinehurst in December of nineteen hundred. Number one is
Speaker 2: he found the sandy soil which reminded him of Dornock
Speaker 2: and was reminiscent of his home. James Tuffs had found
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst, near where I live in the Triangle area
Speaker 2: of North Carolina, the Raleig Durham Chapel Hill area where
Speaker 2: we have red clay. I don't think the ground would
Speaker 2: have been as appealing to mister Ross. He may not
Speaker 2: have lasted, it may not have interested him, but he
Speaker 2: found the sandy soil that was very good for designing
Speaker 2: golf courses for drainage. Here in Chapel Hill we can
Speaker 2: have a heavy rain and it's water logged for a
Speaker 2: number of hours, But sixty minutes to the south in
Speaker 2: the sand Hills area, it's sandy in the water drains.
Speaker 2: And also that area of North Carolina has a very
Speaker 2: rich Scottish heritage. Many natives of Scotland immigrated through Wilmington
Speaker 2: in the seventeen hundreds. In the early eighteen hundreds. Just
Speaker 2: next door to Pinehurst is a town called Aberdeen. There
Speaker 2: is a county just south of Moore County called Scotland County.
Speaker 2: There are many roads in Pinehurst called mcass goal in
Speaker 2: McKenzie and MacDonald and Dundee. So I think the sandy
Speaker 2: ground and the Scottish heritage probably made mister Ross feel
Speaker 2: very comfortable in the area. So he just he started
Speaker 2: designing golf holes in what he knew from Scotland and
Speaker 2: starting with a place to put a green and then
Speaker 2: building back from there. And so he rebuilt the number
Speaker 2: one course by nineteen oh one, he built eighteen holes
Speaker 2: of Number two by nineteen oh seven. He built a
Speaker 2: third course in nineteen eleven, and then a fourth course
Speaker 2: in nineteen nineteen. So those were the four core courses
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst Country Club that emanated from the main clubhouse.
Speaker 2: They all were built on sandy ground, They all had
Speaker 2: san clay greens. The wiregrass, which is indigenous to Moore
Speaker 2: County and the sand Hills area of North Carolina, reminded
Speaker 2: him of the and the love grass of Pinehurst. So
Speaker 2: the gulf that he built was what he knew from
Speaker 2: Scotland and it was his American imitation of the courses
Speaker 2: he knew from Dornoch, from Saint Andrews, from Carnousti and
Speaker 2: the other places in Scotland.
Speaker 1: So zeroing in on the number two course, what did
Speaker 1: the initial iteration of that layout look like in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh seven.
Speaker 2: There are eleven holes still remaining on number two that
Speaker 2: are the same number and in the same general location
Speaker 2: as that original course in nineteen oh seven. The first
Speaker 2: and second holes are still one in two and they're
Speaker 2: the exact same spot, and eleven through eighteen or the
Speaker 2: same numbers and are also in the same spots. Some
Speaker 2: of them have been lengthened some but the greens, the pars,
Speaker 2: the configuration are pretty much the same as they were now.
Speaker 2: Those first greens were flat. He did not build grass
Speaker 2: greens until nineteen thirty four, thirty five, thirty six, when
Speaker 2: technology had evolved and he and Frank Maples, who was
Speaker 2: the construction superintendent and the green superintendent, had developed ways
Speaker 2: to build bermuda grass greens that could survive the winters.
Speaker 2: And remember Pinehurst was a wintertime resort for the first
Speaker 2: seventy five years of its existence, so they had to
Speaker 2: build a grass that was hardy enough to survive the
Speaker 2: winter and all the traffic that it was getting. And
Speaker 2: it took until the mid thirties before they could do that.
Speaker 2: But it is interesting that eleven of those holes are
Speaker 2: the exact same spot as they were. He added two
Speaker 2: more holes in nineteen thirty five, and yet two more
Speaker 2: holes in nineteen thirty five, I'm sorry, nineteen twenty three
Speaker 2: and nineteen thirty five thirty five when he rebuilt the greens,
Speaker 2: built the green complexes that we know today, and added
Speaker 2: two more holes. Then it became to the routing and
Speaker 2: the configuration that we know.
Speaker 1: Today, going back to that nineteen oh seven course, or
Speaker 1: even the course that maybe existed through the teens, what
Speaker 1: was the esthetic character of the built features on this course.
Speaker 1: I've seen early pictures of Pinehurst where the courses look
Speaker 1: quite different than they do now, or than they did
Speaker 1: in the in the thirties and forties, So am i
Speaker 1: right that number two looked quite a bit different in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven than what we're familiar with today.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, there was no drainage or there was no irrigation,
Speaker 2: so whatever grass grew was all watered by by Mother Nature.
Speaker 2: Was not until the mid thirties when they redid the greens,
Speaker 2: or built the greens, i should say, and he built
Speaker 2: the final two holes, that they laid a single line
Speaker 2: irrigation system down the middle of each fairway. So it
Speaker 2: was not until the mid thirties that there was actually
Speaker 2: irrigation on the golf course. So the only parts of
Speaker 2: the course that were maintained were the tees, fairways, and greens.
Speaker 2: There was no ornamental flowers, there was no raking of
Speaker 2: the bunkers. It was all very haphazard. And part of
Speaker 2: this look was some of the look that they wanted
Speaker 2: to go back and retrieve when they did the core
Speaker 2: Crenshaw restoration in ten twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: But it was.
Speaker 2: Very unkempt. It was very natural looking. I've got to
Speaker 2: imagine it looked very much like Royal Dornok looked at
Speaker 2: the time. We have seen early photographs and postcards from
Speaker 2: the early nineteen hundreds, and it just had a very raw,
Speaker 2: natural look. It reflected the sand hills of North Carolina.
Speaker 2: There was no lush bermuda grass. There was just a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of brown, a lot of sage,
Speaker 2: a lot of shades of tan, and there wasn't a
Speaker 2: whole lot of green color at the time.
Speaker 1: So in the early years of the Number two course,
Speaker 1: how did players receive it, especially high profile players? What
Speaker 1: did they say about the course? What was their assessment
Speaker 1: of it?
Speaker 2: I think because of the length of it, I mean
Speaker 2: it played close to seven thousand yards going back to
Speaker 2: the when it first came to its final configuration in
Speaker 2: the mid thirties, I think the length was very stern,
Speaker 2: whereas the other Pinehers courses were shorter and geared more
Speaker 2: toward the resort golfer of the club golfer. The Toughs
Speaker 2: family recognized in the early days that a way for
Speaker 2: them to get good publicity was to hold competitions that
Speaker 2: would draw golfers from across the United States, and that's
Speaker 2: what launched the North and South Championships that started in
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred. They had one for amateurs which still exists
Speaker 2: and has been conducted every year since one hundred and
Speaker 2: what thirty years now. Of the North and South Amateur
Speaker 2: has never been suspended during any of the wars. And
Speaker 2: then there was the North and South Open. There was
Speaker 2: for professionals as well as amateurs. That was conceived in
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred and lasted for fifty years until nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2: And that's where the Sam Snead's the Walter Hagens. Donald
Speaker 2: Ross was a professional, so he entered it. He won.
Speaker 2: So many of the good players, Tommy Armor, Walter Travers,
Speaker 2: Francis we met. All of these players came to Pinehurst.
Speaker 2: They love the golf course, they love the strategy, they
Speaker 2: love how there was an equal balance of left to
Speaker 2: right holes right to left. There were short holes, long
Speaker 2: holes you had to play in your shots around the bunkers.
Speaker 2: You could play run up shots onto the greens. It
Speaker 2: was a total test. Ross believed that the long iron
Speaker 2: was the ultimate test of a good player. How well
Speaker 2: could you hit a four and three and two iron
Speaker 2: into a green, which is why he had many at
Speaker 2: the time, very long par fours, like four hundred and
Speaker 2: forty four hundred and fifty yard par fours. So it
Speaker 2: was a complete test, and it got a lot of
Speaker 2: good publicity, a lot of good reviews, and words spread
Speaker 2: across the country, and so it grew, as it does today,
Speaker 2: thousands of golfers who wanted to play on this very challenging,
Speaker 2: difficult golf course.
Speaker 1: Were there any particular holes at Pinehurst Number two in
Speaker 1: this era of the course that stood out as the
Speaker 1: holes that people would talk about as the best holes
Speaker 1: on the course.
Speaker 2: One of the things, Garrett, that has stood out about
Speaker 2: number two over the years is there doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: have been a consensus of signature holes.
Speaker 1: That's why I ask it's kind of funny that way.
Speaker 1: It's the way that we talk about Pineers Number two
Speaker 1: now is as sort of a hole as opposed to
Speaker 1: a couple of representative holes.
Speaker 2: The signature feature certainly is the know what are called
Speaker 2: the upside the inverted saucer greens or the upside down
Speaker 2: walk shaped, which is the convex shape with the center
Speaker 2: elevated and the fall offs around the edges. The greens
Speaker 2: might be seven thousand yards in square footage, but maybe
Speaker 2: only thirty five hundred of them. Is the center part
Speaker 2: of the green that will actually hold a golf ball,
Speaker 2: You know, so many of them you hit the edges,
Speaker 2: So it's the green complexes. And then in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: five when Donald Ross built the green complexes as they
Speaker 2: exist today. He also, in addition to long irons, he
Speaker 2: also believed that chipping was one of the key tests
Speaker 2: of a good golf course and making recovery shots. He
Speaker 2: wanted the golfer to have choices to be able to
Speaker 2: putt from off the putting surface, to hit a bump
Speaker 2: and run, or if they wanted to in a more
Speaker 2: elevated shot that would stop quickly. He would have those options.
Speaker 2: So he developed all these dips and swales and hollows
Speaker 2: around the golf course, around the greens that where the
Speaker 2: ball would take off and run and you would never
Speaker 2: know how far it might go. And so this has
Speaker 2: been one feature that is totally different from most US
Speaker 2: Open courses that have heavy bermuda rough upright around the
Speaker 2: greens that if you miss the green you pull out
Speaker 2: a log wedge and hack it out and you know,
Speaker 2: try and get as much club on the ball as
Speaker 2: you can. Now you have choices as to and that's
Speaker 2: part of the strategy is to figure out what is
Speaker 2: the best shot for this particular hole. So, to answer
Speaker 2: your question, no real signature holes, but there is certainly
Speaker 2: a signature feature.
Speaker 1: Well, the green have become the signature feature. But there
Speaker 1: is some doubt, is there not about where this style
Speaker 1: of green came from. If you look at vintage photographs
Speaker 1: of Pinehurst number two, the greens don't necessarily have so
Speaker 1: strongly as they do now that inverted saucer or turtleback character.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit more at grade. And so how
Speaker 1: did the Pinehurst number two greens evolve into the shapes
Speaker 1: that they still have today.
Speaker 2: Pete Die was stationed at Ford Bragg in World War
Speaker 2: two and he came over and played Pinehurst. You know,
Speaker 2: he liked to joke more than the Good Lord should
Speaker 2: have allowed him to be. He didn't actually see combat
Speaker 2: in the war, but he was. He was at Ford
Speaker 2: Bragg and one of his jobs was to drive his
Speaker 2: sergeant over to Pinehurst and they played quite a bit
Speaker 2: of golf, and he remembers the shape and the and
Speaker 2: the levels of the greens, and up until his death
Speaker 2: he was adamant that those greens grew in size because
Speaker 2: of top dressing over many many years. Unfortunately, people who
Speaker 2: knew those greens back in the day there aren't many
Speaker 2: of them left, so it's hard to say. But if
Speaker 2: you do look at photographs from the nineteen seventies from
Speaker 2: Golf World, from when the tour was through, there is
Speaker 2: that elevation to most of the greens, and the players
Speaker 2: of that era do talk about that. So some of
Speaker 2: this crowning of the greens grew organically when Richard Tuffs,
Speaker 2: who was the grandson founder James Tuffs and was the
Speaker 2: president of the USGA in the mid nineteen fifties, was
Speaker 2: a giant in golf administration. If the greens got away,
Speaker 2: they got a ray under his watch, so to speak.
Speaker 2: So Donald Ross was rich Tuft's godfather, and they had
Speaker 2: a very close relationship. They were very close. I don't
Speaker 2: think Richard Tufts would have let anything happened to number
Speaker 2: two to get too far away from what Donald what
Speaker 2: he thought would have been Donald Ross's original intent.
Speaker 1: Well, another subject when it comes to the greens is
Speaker 1: sand greens versus bermuda grass greens. You've already sort of
Speaker 1: covered this, but I'm always curious, you know, what what
Speaker 1: was it like to play on the original sand or
Speaker 1: as you as you put it, clay greens earlier in
Speaker 1: the course's life. What were those greens like and how
Speaker 1: did people go about, you know, negotiating them.
Speaker 2: I guess they were very much like going to a
Speaker 2: putt putt golf course where you put on a hard
Speaker 2: surface that doesn't have a lot of breaker, a lot
Speaker 2: of undulation. We have heard, read written accounts and seen
Speaker 2: photographs of the caddies pulling its kind of a carpet
Speaker 2: like structure. When their group would leave the green, they
Speaker 2: would sort of rake this carpet like structure across the
Speaker 2: greens to smooth them out and smooth across any footprints,
Speaker 2: and then they would dust the clay surface with a
Speaker 2: layer of sand so that it would give the green
Speaker 2: a little bit of structure and a little bit of
Speaker 2: substance to it and not make it as hard as
Speaker 2: putting directly on clay. So it was not as hard
Speaker 2: as cement, but very firm, and the layer of sand
Speaker 2: gave it a little bit of texture and slow them
Speaker 2: down a little bit. I can't imagine that there was
Speaker 2: a lot of break to them. Of course, the steamy
Speaker 2: was used at the time, so you could you know,
Speaker 2: you could knock your opponent's ball away from the green
Speaker 2: with your ball, So it was obviously a very different
Speaker 2: game that they played until the nineteen thirties when Bermuda
Speaker 2: greens were installed, and that Bermuda, I have to imagine,
Speaker 2: was very slow. I mean, I mean, if you look
Speaker 2: at the putting styles, mini putters had a little bit
Speaker 2: of loft on them back in the day because they
Speaker 2: need a little bit of elevation to get the ball rolling.
Speaker 2: They were a very risty stroke at the time, so
Speaker 2: the combination of the loft and the risty stroke got
Speaker 2: the ball elevated and got it rolling. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: until our rabid thirst for fast greens has evolved over
Speaker 2: the last thirty or forty years that agronomic technology has
Speaker 2: evolved and they're able to get just these incredibly fast greens.
Speaker 2: I'd imagine that the North and South Open in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty one and the Ryder Cup in nineteen fifty one
Speaker 2: were played on very bumpy greens that might have rolled
Speaker 2: at the seven or eight, and they are going to
Speaker 2: be picture perfect and roll at eleven, twelve thirteen next
Speaker 2: week at Pinehurst for the US Open.
Speaker 1: It's a very different game.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Another thing about the sand green to Bermuda grass green
Speaker 1: transition is that it also brought the art of green
Speaker 1: contouring to the course. It sounds like because it from
Speaker 1: my understanding, the sand greens were fairly simple. They had
Speaker 1: to be fairly simple in terms of contour. But then
Speaker 1: when you start putting grass on putting surfaces, then you
Speaker 1: can get into more of this intentional contouring from an
Speaker 1: architect that we see in Pinehurst Green. So truly, the
Speaker 1: greens that we're familiar with now really started their life
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen thirties when they were able to
Speaker 1: introduce grass onto the putting surfaces.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the green surfaces and the hollows and the swales
Speaker 2: and the undulations around them. Those have all been there
Speaker 2: since nineteen thirty five.
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Speaker 1: code Frida Egg. So, Lee, you were there to document
Speaker 1: Corn Crenshaw's restoration of Pinehurst Number two in what was
Speaker 1: it twenty ten, twenty eleven right around there.
Speaker 2: It started in February of twenty ten. Some of the
Speaker 2: work was done while the course was open. They shut
Speaker 2: the course down in the fall of twenty ten and
Speaker 2: reopened it in March of twenty eleven. So it was
Speaker 2: essentially a fifteen sixteen month project of all hands on
Speaker 2: deck and a lot of work.
Speaker 1: What was the biggest surprise for you in seeing how
Speaker 1: that project unfolded?
Speaker 2: First, Garrett was just getting an understanding of what they
Speaker 2: were doing, how they were going to do it, the
Speaker 2: reasons for it.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful to Ben and Bill for allowing me
Speaker 2: the access that they gave me while they were doing
Speaker 2: this work. It started in February two thousand and ten
Speaker 2: and they started on the eleventh hole. At the time,
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of understanding about what this project
Speaker 2: was all about. We were still twenty ten, we were
Speaker 2: still coming out of the Great Recession. There were rumors
Speaker 2: that Pinehurst was having some financial difficulties, which it was not.
Speaker 2: They had closed the manor in, they had laid some
Speaker 2: people off, they had reduced some staff, they had stepped
Speaker 2: back in a lot of regards, just like every business
Speaker 2: had two thousand and nine twenty ten because of the
Speaker 2: Great Recession. But they wanted to start as far away
Speaker 2: from the main clubhouse as they could with the word
Speaker 2: just so as kind of keep it quiet to evolve.
Speaker 2: And the eleventh hole, the tea of the eleventh hole
Speaker 2: is probably as far away from the clubhouse as any
Speaker 2: hole on the golf course. So I can remember this
Speaker 2: February morning when it was Bill cor Ben Crenshaw and
Speaker 2: their chief lieutenant, a man named Toby Cobb who was
Speaker 2: on the hole, and they were literally starting this process.
Speaker 2: And they stood back on the eleventh tee and they
Speaker 2: looked down the fairway and Bill Krr looked down and
Speaker 2: he pointed at all of the strict delineations that he
Speaker 2: saw of organized grass, of different elements of the hole
Speaker 2: that you could see. You could see, you could see
Speaker 2: the woods on the right, you could see the hardpan sand,
Speaker 2: you could see the thick roff, you could see the
Speaker 2: intermediate cut of rough. You could see the fairways, you
Speaker 2: could see the first cut on the left side, you
Speaker 2: could see the thicker roff. Then you could see the hardpan.
Speaker 2: Then you can see the woods. He said, this is
Speaker 2: too organized. This looks like somebody sat down and drew
Speaker 2: this up on a cat. This is not. And a
Speaker 2: key element Garrett of the Bill Core part of this
Speaker 2: restoration story was Bill knew the golf course intimately from
Speaker 2: having grown up in nearby Davidson County in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, and he could remember coming to Pinehurst
Speaker 2: on summer days with some friends, some hometown friends, and
Speaker 2: there was nobody at playing in Pinehurst at the time
Speaker 2: because it was essentially closed in the summer, so for
Speaker 2: a dollar fifty they could get a ticket and they
Speaker 2: could play Number two all day long. So he knew
Speaker 2: what it was like prior to the era of it
Speaker 2: being greened over, and so he said, this is not
Speaker 2: what made Pinehurst great, was all this structure and all
Speaker 2: this green. So he said, essentially, we're going to ugly
Speaker 2: the place up. We're going to make it look less
Speaker 2: esthetically perfect. He counted seven, no, he counted six different
Speaker 2: layers of grass heights, from the greens to the tees,
Speaker 2: to the fairways, to the various cuts of rough, and
Speaker 2: he said, there should only be two cuts of grass
Speaker 2: on here, the greens and teas and the fairways. The
Speaker 2: rest of it. We're just going to let mother nature
Speaker 2: whole court. They then stripped out hundreds of acres of
Speaker 2: bermuda rough, and they actually gave the bermuda side to
Speaker 2: parks and school systems in the area, and they just
Speaker 2: took it back to the native hardpan sand. They also
Speaker 2: found wiregrass from a variety of sources. Some of it
Speaker 2: they bought, some of they imported from the countryside. And
Speaker 2: Bill spent a considerable amount of time talking to the
Speaker 2: construction staffs on the art of planting wiregrass in a
Speaker 2: haphazard fashion that if you think about it, you know,
Speaker 2: the organized parts of our grain, of our brain want
Speaker 2: to plant seedlings or saplings in an organized fashion, in
Speaker 2: straight rows or in ice patterns. And I can remember
Speaker 2: he was on the there was a hillside facing the
Speaker 2: tenth tee of the back tee, which it stretches us
Speaker 2: out to six hundred yards, and there's quite a slope.
Speaker 2: You go down a slope and up the slope where
Speaker 2: you get to the main fairway, and he talked to
Speaker 2: the construction people about planting the wiregrass in a haphazard
Speaker 2: fashion along this slope so that it didn't look like
Speaker 2: it was planted by a machine or somebody who was
Speaker 2: thinking in an organized format. And it was the same
Speaker 2: thing with the edges of the fairway. So they went
Speaker 2: in and they removed the triple row irrigation, went back
Speaker 2: to the single row irrigation that they knew had been
Speaker 2: there through the mid nineteen fifties, and so they knew
Speaker 2: that the water would only be thrown roughly thirty to
Speaker 2: thirty five yards to the left and right of that
Speaker 2: single row irrigation. So all of these steps went into
Speaker 2: putting the golf course back to where it was originally.
Speaker 1: You know, something that strikes me about this restoration is
Speaker 1: how radical it was. I mean, truly they went all out.
Speaker 1: And you know, Bill and Ben are so polite and
Speaker 1: such good diplomats that they don't necessarily come across as
Speaker 1: rabble rousers, right, but this was quite the statement to
Speaker 1: take the course back to this vintage. Look. I wonder
Speaker 1: if there was any shock for you when you first
Speaker 1: saw what this course was going to look like after
Speaker 1: Bill and Ben were done with it. Was there any
Speaker 1: shock for you, Oh my god, they're really going for this?
Speaker 2: Not really any shock once I and I understood pretty
Speaker 2: quickly from those first couple of days what they were
Speaker 2: trying to do, why they were trying to do it,
Speaker 2: the tools they had at their disposal, and I realized
Speaker 2: this was a fascinating story to be able to watch this.
Speaker 2: But I knew that it would be shocking to the members,
Speaker 2: to the resort guest, to the general public, because you know,
Speaker 2: who wants to make a golf course look less pretty?
Speaker 2: But what they were doing was taking it back to
Speaker 2: what made it so great and what had made it
Speaker 2: so natural back from the early days, and in Pinehurst
Speaker 2: fell prey to many other golf courses of just this
Speaker 2: subliminal desire to make it look green, you know. And
Speaker 2: Ben Crenshaw, I promise you holds Augusta National in high reverence,
Speaker 2: having won one of the Masters there, and he still
Speaker 2: hosts the champions dinner. I mean, he revers the place
Speaker 2: and the spirit and the and the traditions of the Masters.
Speaker 2: But he and I and Bill both will tell you
Speaker 2: that the Masters and Augusta in a sense do the
Speaker 2: game of off a disservice because the golf course is
Speaker 2: so perfect, it is so great, it is so manicured,
Speaker 2: and this one idyllic weekend every April, the entire golf
Speaker 2: world stops what it's doing. It sits and watches in reverence,
Speaker 2: you know, to this cathedral of golf in Augusta, Georgia,
Speaker 2: and they say, well, isn't this what golf is all about?
Speaker 2: You know, this perfection, not realizing that this kind of
Speaker 2: green perfection is beyond the accessibility and the financial ability
Speaker 2: of most golf clubs, in most resorts, and this demand
Speaker 2: for perfect green is just not really realistic in the
Speaker 2: game of golf. That's why, And that's Pinehurst was as
Speaker 2: guilty as anybody else of let's make this green and pretty.
Speaker 2: Let's be green and pretty. And Ben Crenshaw had a
Speaker 2: just at a great comparison you liked to use with
Speaker 2: the fairways. They looked like bowling alleys. They have become
Speaker 2: so straight, so edged, and the fairways were the edges
Speaker 2: were so green, but they looked nothing like the old
Speaker 2: pictures of Pinehurst. So that's why they they took them
Speaker 2: back and said, all right, it's not going to be
Speaker 2: as pretty, but we wanted we want to recapture what
Speaker 2: had been here many years before.
Speaker 1: When you finally got to play the course after it
Speaker 1: was restored, what most impressed you about the renewed or
Speaker 1: refreshed playing experience there?
Speaker 2: Number one was how firm it played. You know, there
Speaker 2: was it was not as thick and lush as it
Speaker 2: had been. And you know, there's kind of a distance
Speaker 2: is sort of a double edged sword. I mean, if
Speaker 2: if you hit it thirty yards more right down the
Speaker 2: middle of the fairway, that's great, but it'll also get
Speaker 2: you into trouble a little bit quicker. And so when
Speaker 2: you hit a ball off the fairway before you knew
Speaker 2: exactly what kind of lie you were going to get,
Speaker 2: what kind of shot you were going to hit, Because
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, if you were on a tee
Speaker 2: and you pulled it a little bit in the rough,
Speaker 2: you could just, you know, grab an eight iron from
Speaker 2: the caddy and say, well, that's the best I can do.
Speaker 2: Is I'm just going to hack it out and hit
Speaker 2: it as far down the fairway as I can. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, you've got two hundred some odd yards of
Speaker 2: mystery waiting. Well what kind of lie am I going
Speaker 2: to get? Am I going to get lucky? And am
Speaker 2: I going to be in a nice clean area of
Speaker 2: hard pan sand? And particularly for the pros, hitting the
Speaker 2: ball off hard pan sand is not difficult at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's easy for them. You know, they
Speaker 2: just compressed the ball and pick it right up off
Speaker 2: the sand. Or am I going to be steamied by
Speaker 2: a tough to wiregrass? And is my ball going to
Speaker 2: be sitting in a tough to wiregrass and I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to kind of catch it three inches off
Speaker 2: the ground. There's just all kinds of variables to it.
Speaker 2: So that's number one. And then the width of the
Speaker 2: fairways was just much different than the fairways had gone
Speaker 2: from roughly twenty three to twenty five yards of width
Speaker 2: to now they were thirty five to forty yards wide,
Speaker 2: so you had some room that you could if the
Speaker 2: pen was on the right side of of a green,
Speaker 2: you could aim to the left side to get a
Speaker 2: little bit of a better angle, and vice versa, so
Speaker 2: you could work the angles a little bit better. And
Speaker 2: that so the combination of the taught fairways, the width,
Speaker 2: and the mystery of the wiregrass, those were the key
Speaker 2: things that were different about it right off the bat.
Speaker 1: Something that really impresses me about the course as it
Speaker 1: is now is, yes, it's width the fairway with but
Speaker 1: in the landing zones for drives, those fairways are often
Speaker 1: moving in really unexpected ways, like jogging one direction or another,
Speaker 1: or there's a tilt in the landing zone, like it
Speaker 1: tilts from right to left or left to right, so
Speaker 1: that although the course is wide, a lot of the
Speaker 1: drives are pretty difficult or demand that you kind of
Speaker 1: choose a line right. And I would imagine that's something
Speaker 1: that the course got back with the restoration, because before
Speaker 1: that a lot of those whole corridors had kind of
Speaker 1: straightened out.
Speaker 2: I guess they had straightened out and they had narrowed up.
Speaker 2: So that absolutely what Donna Ross was so good about
Speaker 2: was working the angles and you know, going left to right,
Speaker 2: right to left, you know, sometimes two directions on one hole.
Speaker 2: And so given that with and Ad the taught fairways
Speaker 2: to it. Also, twenty fourteen was a little drier than normal.
Speaker 2: We've had more of an average springs, so I don't
Speaker 2: think the course will play quite as firm as it
Speaker 2: did in twenty fifteen, but the width will certainly be
Speaker 2: different than the than the course was in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five. So that's certainly an element of the of
Speaker 2: the presentation that will be fun to watch next week.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to pick out a couple of holes
Speaker 1: and maybe just discuss each in a little more depth,
Speaker 1: maybe starting with the first hole. What are some of
Speaker 1: the features of the first hole that you think people
Speaker 1: should pay attention to?
Speaker 2: Well, number one, you've got plenty of room to drive
Speaker 2: the ball. You know, it's it's it's a wide fairway.
Speaker 2: The right side of the fairway is the best. Look
Speaker 2: at the green. The green represents so many in that
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's set at an angle. You know,
Speaker 2: it runs kind of from front right to back left,
Speaker 2: so it's not it's not round, and right from the
Speaker 2: very start you're going to find that if you do
Speaker 2: not lay your ball on the crew to the center
Speaker 2: of the green, it's going to leak into a bunker
Speaker 2: front left, or it's going to go over in one
Speaker 2: of the hollows to the right. And if you miss
Speaker 2: it to the right, you're going to be faced with
Speaker 2: that decision, which is the ultimate decision for the good golfer.
Speaker 2: And one thing that Martin Kaimer did so well in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen was he pretty much said, at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the week, I'm going to putt from all the
Speaker 2: fairways or off the greens. And so he judged his speed,
Speaker 2: he judged his cadence of the putt, and he hit
Speaker 2: him just right going up those slopes and got the
Speaker 2: ball to die near the hole. So, but many other
Speaker 2: people just aren't aren't comfortable with that, so they'll hit
Speaker 2: a seven iron into the edge of the of the
Speaker 2: green there on the right of number one, hit it
Speaker 2: into the upslope and then let it a little run out.
Speaker 2: So that first hole you're going to get you know,
Speaker 2: you're going to be hitting a short iron end of
Speaker 2: the green, so it's not a particularly difficult hole. But
Speaker 2: then the second hole is a much much longer hole,
Speaker 2: you know, although even though it was designed to be
Speaker 2: a drive and a long iron, the players today will
Speaker 2: hit driver nine irons into the second hole.
Speaker 1: Four and five. These holes have a pretty interesting history.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could tell me, first of all, how did
Speaker 1: they get added to the routing of the course, because
Speaker 1: they were, you know, during Donald Ross's lifetime. I believe
Speaker 1: the latest addition to the course.
Speaker 2: Correct four and five used to be the first and
Speaker 2: ninth hole of what was the Number five course, which
Speaker 2: was not a full eighteen hole course at the time.
Speaker 2: It was really just a nine hole course that was
Speaker 2: mostly restricted to employees. And some of the holes now
Speaker 2: are routed where Pinehurst Number seven is. And in fact,
Speaker 2: Rhys Jones, when he was building Number seven in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, found some old abandoned bunkers that had been
Speaker 2: on these nine holes and left them pretty much. They
Speaker 2: weren't intact, but he rebuilt them and made them a
Speaker 2: part of the Number seven course. But in any event,
Speaker 2: mister Ross built what is now the fourth hole and
Speaker 2: the fifth hole. The fourth hole was originally a par
Speaker 2: four and the fifth hole was originally a par five,
Speaker 2: and that's how they were played in the late forties,
Speaker 2: and for the nineteen fifty one Ryder Cup they were
Speaker 2: later flopped to the fourth hole becoming a par five
Speaker 2: and the fourth hole, I'm sorry, the fifth hole becoming
Speaker 2: a par four, and that's how they were played for
Speaker 2: the nineteen ninety nine US Open. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: I believe they run a parallel to each other. Four
Speaker 2: goes out, five comes back, and the land to the
Speaker 2: far end of the fourth green and the fifty that
Speaker 2: actually was where the original World Golf Hall of Fame
Speaker 2: was positioned, and it was first open in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: It's been since tore down and now, of course interesting
Speaker 2: what goes around comes around, and the Hall of Fame
Speaker 2: has gone to Florida and now it's come back to Pinehurst,
Speaker 2: but it's much closer to the resort clubhouse. But anyway,
Speaker 2: to get back to the iteration, now, number four is
Speaker 2: long par four, five is a short par five. Mike
Speaker 2: Davis made the change going into the twenty fourteen US
Speaker 2: Open because he went back to the original design of
Speaker 2: it and felt that the green of the fifth hole
Speaker 2: was better designed to receive the short iron shot for
Speaker 2: a par five approach than it was to receive a
Speaker 2: long iron approach off of a hanging downhill right to
Speaker 2: left lie in the fairway of the fifth hole.
Speaker 1: Yes, and if you look at the holes now, it
Speaker 1: seems pretty clear that the second shot on the fifth hole,
Speaker 1: now playing as a par five, is very interesting because
Speaker 1: you have that option to lay up or to go
Speaker 1: for it. It's not assumed that you're going to go
Speaker 1: for it. If it were a part four, then that
Speaker 1: would be the assumption. But once you start to look
Speaker 1: at the layup option, it is pretty interesting because you
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out with that layup exactly where
Speaker 1: to put yourself so that you can best approach that
Speaker 1: green with your short third shot. So I think it's
Speaker 1: become a more interesting hole. But in order to pull
Speaker 1: that off, they had to move the tea quite a
Speaker 1: bit back right.
Speaker 2: They did build a new te and in fact, if
Speaker 2: the Hall of Fame had still been there, they would
Speaker 2: not been able to have accessed that lay on dog
Speaker 2: where they build a new tea. But you're right, That
Speaker 2: second shot is an interesting one because the fair way
Speaker 2: does can't severely from right to left, and you can
Speaker 2: play what you think is a safe shot up to
Speaker 2: the right and it can catch that fairway. And with
Speaker 2: a firm fairway, you can roll down into a bunker
Speaker 2: or down into the waste area down to the left,
Speaker 2: and then you can have a very challenging shot coming
Speaker 2: off the hardpan sand or out of the bunker up
Speaker 2: the hill to a very difficult green.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great hole. Next hole I'd like to
Speaker 1: zero in on. I mean there we could go hole
Speaker 1: by hole and there would be something interesting to say
Speaker 1: about each one. But I suppose skipping to number nine,
Speaker 1: the par three. What stands out to you about this hole?
Speaker 2: The shallowness of the green, how wide it is, and
Speaker 2: how you have got to really nail the distance on it.
Speaker 2: Number one. One of the great hole locations on the
Speaker 2: golf course is that far left location, just over the
Speaker 2: bunker on the left, where you know, if you don't
Speaker 2: take enough club you're in the bunker, a dark uphill,
Speaker 2: got not a lot of room to work with. If
Speaker 2: you've got too much, then you go over the green
Speaker 2: down toward the road that borders the number the course
Speaker 2: seven neighborhood and the far far edge of the number
Speaker 2: two course. You know, one of the great things about
Speaker 2: Number two is that it doesn't come back to the
Speaker 2: clubhouse and so the number nine Green is as far
Speaker 2: away from the clubhouse as you can get, and it's
Speaker 2: on the edge of the property for the Number seven course.
Speaker 2: But it's an absolutely gorgeous hole and it really stood
Speaker 2: out as one of the holes that contrasted the most
Speaker 2: when you took before and after photos of before the restoration.
Speaker 2: You know that Bill Corey used to call the bunkers
Speaker 2: Tidley Wings bunkers because they were just round and perfect
Speaker 2: in shape, and they put the bunkers back into you know,
Speaker 2: and one of the resources I didn't mention earlier was
Speaker 2: that they were able to locate some aerial photography from
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties that showed the shape of the bunkers
Speaker 2: and that and the shape of the fairways, and so
Speaker 2: they were able to use those as reference points. So
Speaker 2: in my book The Golden Age of Pinehurst that chronicled
Speaker 2: this restoration and the evolution of the golf course, you know,
Speaker 2: we've got several series of before and after pitchers and
Speaker 2: one of the best sets is of the ninth hole
Speaker 2: and just how neat and organized and non Pinehurst it
Speaker 2: looked before the restoration, and then how much it harkened
Speaker 2: back to the early days of Pinehurst. And there's a
Speaker 2: great photo of Donald Ross hitting a shot off the
Speaker 2: ninth hole to the green, And what Core and Crunchhaw
Speaker 2: I think did was was very much in sympathy and
Speaker 2: in accuracy to what the course, what that hole looked
Speaker 2: like when Donald Ross played it many years ago.
Speaker 1: You know something else that's notable about number nine, as
Speaker 1: well as numbers four and five, is the movement of
Speaker 1: the land on all three of those holes. I think
Speaker 1: that people's impression when they see Pinehurst on TV is
Speaker 1: that it's mostly flat, but when you're there, that's really
Speaker 1: not the impression you get, right.
Speaker 2: No, there's some interesting subtle movement of the ground there.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite features on the whole course is
Speaker 2: on the tenth hole, about eighty to one hundred yards
Speaker 2: from the fairway is just a little dip in the fairway.
Speaker 2: I've asked people, why do you think it's there? And
Speaker 2: if you look at old maps, the tenth hole it
Speaker 2: used to be the seventh and then later it was
Speaker 2: the eighth hole, and the green was much further up.
Speaker 2: It was not nearly as long as a whole, So
Speaker 2: I believe that little swale was in front of where
Speaker 2: the old green was. Before the tenth hole was stretched
Speaker 2: out and became a par five, there used to be
Speaker 2: you used to play what is now the tenth hole.
Speaker 2: Then you would veer off into At one point there
Speaker 2: were two holes. At another point there were three holes
Speaker 2: that ran down in an area where the number four
Speaker 2: course is. Then you came back and picked up on
Speaker 2: the eleventh hole, which is why, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: eleven through eighteen or in the same spot as they
Speaker 2: always have been. The tenth hole was always there, but
Speaker 2: it was different numbers and it was a shorter hole
Speaker 2: at one point. So I've gotten away from your question.
Speaker 2: We got to talk about that little swale on the
Speaker 2: tenth hole, but that's just one of the neat need
Speaker 2: little things of the golf course that it is. It's
Speaker 2: gentle typography, but there is some interesting movement on there.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: I love that observation about ten because I did notice
Speaker 1: that little contour right in basically the layup zone for
Speaker 1: the par five tenth hole, and so it sounds like
Speaker 1: if the green were more up against that contour long ago,
Speaker 1: that it would have been more of a value of
Speaker 1: sin type of situation right in front of the green.
Speaker 1: But now I think the way that it functions is
Speaker 1: so interesting because that swale is basically right where the
Speaker 1: safest layup is on the hole. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: playing a layup shot on your second shot on the
Speaker 1: tenth hole, then the best place to be if you're
Speaker 1: a conservative player is essentially right in the middle of
Speaker 1: that swale, because there aren't really many other hazards super
Speaker 1: close to it. But because that swale is there, you
Speaker 1: got to start thinking, okay, am I okay with being
Speaker 1: down below? Or do I kind of want to be
Speaker 1: a little more short of it, but then my shot
Speaker 1: is a bit longer, Or do I want to try
Speaker 1: to get past it but that's a little risk gear
Speaker 1: And so it just kind of messes with your head
Speaker 1: a little bit. And I've seen Coren Crenshaw do that
Speaker 1: on a lot of their par fives, on their own
Speaker 1: original designs, where these they put these funky little contours
Speaker 1: right in a layup zone just to give the player
Speaker 1: something else to think about and well.
Speaker 2: And another of the topo features that have interested there
Speaker 2: or the ground elements is the thirteenth Green, which sits
Speaker 2: up on the rise, and that's actually on an area
Speaker 2: that's an extension of the practice range which was called
Speaker 2: Maniac Hill. So there's a reason for that hill to
Speaker 2: be there. You know, if you walk to the right,
Speaker 2: if you walk off to the right and beyond the
Speaker 2: thirteenth Green, you're essentially on the same level where the
Speaker 2: practice tea in area is not the practice tee that's
Speaker 2: used for the US Open, but for the resort and club.
Speaker 2: And it got his name from Maniac Hill just because
Speaker 2: of all the golf maniacs that used to be balls
Speaker 2: beat balls off of it. From you're back in the
Speaker 2: first part of the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I love that Maniac Hill. So getting to the end
Speaker 1: of the course sixteen through eighteen, such a great sequence
Speaker 1: of holes, what do you think is notable there in
Speaker 1: that one two three finish?
Speaker 2: Well, let's make it one two, three four finish and
Speaker 2: go back to fifteen because fifteen is just a bear
Speaker 2: of a par three with that green.
Speaker 1: It's so hard.
Speaker 2: The fifteenth Green to me is the epitome of the
Speaker 2: inverted saucer green, it just sits perched up there. You're
Speaker 2: hitting a long iron into it. It's just very difficult
Speaker 2: to hold. And then sixteen, you know, for us Mere
Speaker 2: Mortals is a great par five. I mean, I love
Speaker 2: it as a par five. It's always been a par four.
Speaker 2: For the US Open. Payne Steward made a great long
Speaker 2: par saving put there in the final round of the
Speaker 2: ninety nine Open.
Speaker 1: The has the.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth hole has the one water feature on the entire course,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't designed to be that way. It just
Speaker 2: the lake or the pond in front of the tee
Speaker 2: was originally just a depression that was not particularly attractive looking,
Speaker 2: so they in the early days they just filled it
Speaker 2: up with water so it would look a little bit nicer.
Speaker 2: But that's the only you know, one of the greatest
Speaker 2: golf courses in the country, and water does not come
Speaker 2: into play at all for anybody unless you just cold
Speaker 2: top a tea shot. They're on the sixteenth hole and sixteen,
Speaker 2: seventeen and eighteen running three different directions. One goes west,
Speaker 2: seventeen comes back in the opposite direction, and then eighteen
Speaker 2: goes up up the hill and in the setting with
Speaker 2: what they have done at Pinehurst over the last ten
Speaker 2: to twelve years. They built up a restaurant and a
Speaker 2: watering hole called the Deuce that is right behind the green.
Speaker 2: Used to there was it was a retail shop right
Speaker 2: behind the green, so there was no traffic, there was
Speaker 2: no there was no nothing back there. They would occasionally
Speaker 2: wheel out a portable bar and open it up on
Speaker 2: the terrace behind the green. But ten twelve years ago,
Speaker 2: I can't remember exactly when they built the Deuce, which
Speaker 2: is what they call the bar and the restaurant there,
Speaker 2: and they've got a lot of seating there out in
Speaker 2: the bar, and so any afternoon you've got fifty two
Speaker 2: one hundred people out eating, drinking and watching players come
Speaker 2: through on the eighteenth greens. So no matter who you are,
Speaker 2: you have got a gallery on the eighteenth hole of
Speaker 2: number two. And you can also over to the members
Speaker 2: club to the right. You've got the resort guests on
Speaker 2: one side, you've got the members on the other side.
Speaker 2: So all of them are sort of sitting there enjoying themselves,
Speaker 2: having a libation late in the day, and they will
Speaker 2: give you an applause or they will give you raspberries
Speaker 2: if you chunk a chip from the back. So it
Speaker 2: adds an entirely new element to that play number eighteen
Speaker 2: of number two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the people who were there on the day that
Speaker 1: I played the course a little while ago were pretty
Speaker 1: amused by my adventures on and around that green, so
Speaker 1: that is definitely a part of the challenge now. So Lee,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.
Speaker 1: Lots of fascinating detail there. You are a prolific author,
Speaker 1: and I know you must have some things coming out
Speaker 1: around the twenty twenty four US Open at Pinehurst. So
Speaker 1: what should people look for from you?
Speaker 2: Well, my most recent book, Garren, thanks for asking, is
Speaker 2: called Good Walks. It is a book I love to
Speaker 2: walk when I play golf, and Pinehurst number two is
Speaker 2: one of the ultimate walking golf courses. One thing I
Speaker 2: should mention is that years back, Pinehurst management, if you
Speaker 2: played Number two you either had to take a caddy,
Speaker 2: which is a great experience, or if you drove a cart,
Speaker 2: you had to keep your carts to the extremities of
Speaker 2: the fairways. They still restrict carts, they don't allow them
Speaker 2: on the fairways of number two, but now they allow
Speaker 2: you to walk and carry your own bag. They even
Speaker 2: allow you to take pool cards, which they used to not.
Speaker 2: So now if you want to play Number two or
Speaker 2: any of the courses at Pinehurst, you can go by
Speaker 2: any means of transportation you want, which is just the
Speaker 2: way the game is meant to be played. So anyway,
Speaker 2: I wrote a book about playing eighteen of the great
Speaker 2: courses in the Carolinas that have walking cultures, that have
Speaker 2: a well walking climate to them, that are walkable and
Speaker 2: have a great story. And we did a nice coffee
Speaker 2: table book with the University of North Carolina Press. So
Speaker 2: that's my latest book and you can find it online anywhere.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Lee.
Speaker 2: Good enjoy the Chad, Garrett Lafordason and Pinehurst again soon absolutely.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Golf podcast was produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. If you'd like to do
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