The Secret Details of Pinehurst No. 2 | Golf Digest

Fly high above Pinehurst Resort, the most famous golf resort in the world and host of the 2024 U.S. Open. Narrated by our very own Shane Ryan, you’ll learn about the course, the buildings and the things you’ve never noticed about Pinehurst.

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what you see here are the Sand Hills of North Carolina where you’ll find a vast Forest of long leaf and lob lli Pines and dry sandy soil the sand is here because millions of years ago this used to be a vast shallow sea with sand and clay deposited by ancient rivers that carried runoff from the mountains but what all that sand meant for human beings is that the land could not be farmed in the otherwise fertile Carolina coastal plane this was the one place nobody wanted what do you do with land like this well if you’re James Walker toughs you buy it on the cheap and you make a resort and then you bring in the designer Donald Ross and within just a few years he turns it into one of America’s greatest golf destinations Pinehurst the host of this year’s US Open it has gone from the place nobody wanted to the place everybody wants to be we start our tour with number two the pearl of the resort designed by Ross had opened in 1907 to almost instant Acclaim and featured the trademark turtleback greens that have now tortured players for more than 100 years the essential character of number two in its early days reflected the Sand Hills but over time this got lost as endless gallons of water were used to create something Greener something less native in its place and that course the very green one was the one that hosted the US Open in 1999 in 2005 but for the 2014 open Ben kensaw and Bill core were hired to return it to its former State they used old aerial photographs for design they imported more than 80,000 clumps of wire grass to replace the Bermuda grass rough and in the process they saved literal tons of water and made it a sand hills course again many people loved it maybe even most people but among those who didn’t was Donald Trump who in 2014 tweeted I’d bet the horrible look of Pinehurst translates in poor television ratings today Pinehurst has 10 courses the first was designed in 1897 by Leroy Culver and the last number 10 is a Tom do design that opened in April of this past year on a plot of 900 Acres 3 miles to the south of the main Resort complete with artificial Dunes created when the land was a literal sand mine in the Years between number one and number 10 courses 2 through four were designed by Ross number five was designed by Protege Ellis Maples numberers six and eight were designed by Tom fio and number seven came from Rees Jones the odd man out here is a course designed by Jack Nicholas called Pinehurst National built independent of the resort in 1989 but which was bought by Pinehurst in 2014 and rebranded as Pinehurst number n not a bad way to add another famous designer to your roster Gil Hans is in the Pinehurst mix too but not as a designer of an 18-hole chor in fact h built the Cradle the nine-hole short course just Southwest of the clubhouse that opened in 2017 the name refers to Pine her’s status as the so-called cradle of American Golf and here you can sip a cocktail or a beer and you can even play barefoot it’s like you’ve just had a great meal playing one of the main courses and now you want a nice light dessert not far from the cradle on your way East to number two there’s a 12th course thistle Dew and it’s the smallest of all this is a putting course not to be confused use are they putting green the difference is it’s an actual 18-hole Affair it’s surprisingly vast built in 2012 but you only need one Club the putter the name sounds a little bit Scottish with thistle maybe there’s some West Asian influence with the do dhu but no this is neither this is a pun years ago when a Pinehurst man named James Barber built the first ever miniature golf course at his home he finished he looked at the product and he said this will do the name stuck this will do all around the Cradle in number two and the clubhouse and thisle you can’t miss the statues overlooking the 18th Green in front of the clubhouse is the famous Payne Stewart statue he was the winner here in 1999 and the statue captures him in his iconic moment of Celebration fist thrown out leg bent back in the air as he hit the 15ot putt that beat Phil Mickelson and won him his second US Open less than 6 months later Stuart died in a plane that eventually crashed in South Dakota and that makes this moment all the more poignant in his life and in the history of Pinehurst walk back Southwest along the clubhouse facade and you’ll come to the putter boy statue and the origins of this one are interesting he comes from old marketing material in the original days of the resort a character called the golf lad was used in ads and calendars eventually that was replaced but in 1912 a sculptor named Lucy Richard based her bronze statuette on that golf lad and the long putter he’s holding was meant to be a kind of sundal hence the original name sundal boy for one reason or another in the’ 70s that changed to putter boy and it was actually kept in the World Golf Hall of Fame from 78 to 90 before being restored to its place of prominence the putter boy or the golf lad whatever you want to call him he made his return in graphic form for the logo of the 99 and 05 opens and in 14 there was a lovely adjustment made to show him holding the US Open trophy just like Payne Stewart had when he won in ’99 putter boy is back again this year and he’s holding the number two flag there’s a third statue that’s far less famous than the first two it’s the statue of Donald Ross and Richard tuus which is now behind the 18th green at number two because they’ve moved the Payne Stewart statue to The Spectator entrance Ross of course the architect he was with Pinehurst for more than 50 years and one interesting little piece of history with him is that he was primed to be the designer and builder of Augusta National but Bobby Jones passed him up for alist Mackenzie at the last minute and Ross dealt with that Heartbreak by redesigning number two into its great current form and Richard tuus was the grandson of the founder James Walker tuus he became USGA president eventually and he ran the roost until the family sold the course to the Diamond Head Corporation in the 70s after a controversial 10-year run where they ran up millions of dollars of debt Club core would take over and restore Pinehurst to its former glory the fourth statue you can find on the grounds is of Club cor’s founder Robert H deadmond by the way you may have noticed that Pinehurst has a great way with naming things this will do in the cradle and putter boy other than their courses which are just numbers but this particular strength extends to the driving range which they call Maniac Hill the origin of that goes back to the players in the north south Championship who would pound balls into Oblivion on the Range trying to get ready Maniac Hill it’s got a certain ring to it golf is not the only sporting facility at Pinehurst between the West entrance of the clubhouse and the parking lot visitors cannot miss the bright green Lawn Bowling court and the three croquet courts and this isn’t just some novelty they’ve hosted championships in both games and they actually have a croquet Pro on staff if you wanted you could call up right now and schedule a croquet lesson they also have tennis facilities and they even have a livery stables and a harness track now we get to the buildings of Pinehurst and we have to start with the clubhouse at one Carolina Vista Drive the outside has this sweeping Veranda part of it overlooks number two if you ever play there in the afternoon you’ll have an audience as you complete the 18th hole inside is the Donald Ross Grill in a beautiful wooden bar called the deuce and at the deuce one of the great prizes for anyone playing number two is a commemorative coin that you can only get if you make a two at any hole on the course elsewhere in the clubhouse are a plethora of trophies from past tournaments and plaques listing the winners of the North and South amateur events going back to the early 1900s you can also see the sleeves pay Stewart cut off his shirt to make a vest in ’99 and an interesting feature that was just added this year is a tunnel that leads directly from the locker room in the clubhouse right to the first te at number two the resort is not the only Clubhouse now there are separate clubhouses at number eight and one at number nine which are far enough from the main action that they Merit their own building a halfway house that serves courses number two and number four that’s called the nest and it was built to look like the original Pinehurst Resort Clubhouse over here is the dorna cottage that’s the home Donald Ross designed and lived in he named it after the Scottish town of his birth and today special guests of the resort can stay there a little less exclusive but no less impressive is the Carolina hotel which among other things has what some have called the best breakfast in golf true Southern Cuisine and there’s even a Pianist playing in the dining room up here is the mayor Inn recently renovated inside that they have the North and South South bar and speaking of drink just a few steps away is the Pinehurst Brewing Company which is on the site of an old abandoned Steam Plant they make their own craft beers and this place is owned by The Resort but unlike everything else there there is a conscious choice not to have a totally Resort feel to it it’s in the village and they want the vibe to be very different they want it to work for tourists and for locals now you get into the village it is very quaint very tourist oriented great difference between here the Masters is that while there’s basically a wall between Augusta National and the city here the village seems like an extension it’s integrated much better you have places like the Pine Crest in where you can go try to chip a ball into a fireplace at the bar you’ve got a couple bookstores wine shops art galleries places like that and through it all through the resorts the courses The Village everywhere you look that name Pinehurst it doesn’t exist by accident Hurst is an Old English word meaning forest and the pine trees here are everywhere in fact you can still experience what the very first European explorers noticed which is that the upper reaches of the Longleaf Pines when the wind’s blowing create a pleasant sound that’s like the waves of the ocean but far off remote as if the trees hold a distant memory from the time millions of years ago before golf before the Sand Hills before the pine Barons when the land itself was a great sea