The Architecture of Pinehurst No. 2 | 2024 U.S. Open Preview

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A preview of Pinehurst No. 2 with golf course architect Bill Coore who was responsible for restoring the Donald Ross course prior to the 2014 U.S. Open, and 2006 U.S. Open Champion Geoff Ogilvy.

Written by Garrett Morrison
Produced and edited by Cameron Hurdus
Footage by Andy Johnson, Cameron Hurdus, and Matt Rouches

A special thanks to Craig Disher for providing his 1943 aerials of holes 1, 7 17, 18, which Coore & Crenshaw utilized while restoring Pinehurst No. 2.

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Will Knights – https://twitter.com/WillKnightsTFE
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Matt Rouches – https://www.instagram.com/mattrouches

well when I think about Pinehurst and Pinehurst number two yes it does become very personal for me because I I grew up in North Carolina in high school if somebody had a car and somehow we could pull enough money together to buy the gas we would drive down to Pine particularly during the summer play golf all day often times 54 holes and then drive back at night it gradually crept into my understanding that at number two course it allowed you to play your game it didn’t dictate that you have to hit the ball massive yardage down the Fairway hit a lofted club onto the Grain in the air it would give you that option but it would also give you the option to play Down The Fairway and play Maybe much longer shots or even shorter shots but they could run onto the green so it provided this latitude while I don’t think I really understood it at the time it begin to creep in like why do I find this golf course more interesting than others I might be playing so it was that beginning sense of my awareness of what interesting Golf Course architecture was all all about [Music] I mean when I think about p number two I think brilliant golf course but scary to play it’s an incredible set of grain and it just seems they’re all upside down and the balls rolling off everywhere and um incredibly tough but beautiful I mean they’re all upside down sources basically but a lot of them are volcanoe like so they’ve come up and then there’s low bits in the middle so it they really look after good shots like really good shots get rewarded bad shots get really punished there’s a big difference between hitting the green and just missing the gr at number two they’re really not that small they just feel really small makes you tentative and unsure of yourself and it’s hard to put great swings on it cuz it feels like everything’s going to repel away from the target so it’s really a mental Challenge and that’s a hard head space to put confident swings on it I think not that driving range swing where you just go whoosh and it does you don’t care where it goes and they’re they’re your best swings we at the opposite end of that at number two and I think that’s what makes it so hard you could put someone’s ball at a perfect drive on every single hole and they still would miss five or six grain I mean the grain are that challenging even on holes that aren’t that long you just there just just disasters everywhere you mean you can have wedges into greens and just you’re focusing on okay I can’t miss it there I can’t miss it there and I can’t miss it there where can I actually hit this wedge to be in a good spot and when you move the pins at Pine like on any great CA what was a good spot yesterday for the right pin is now a bad spot for the new Left pin and it turns out as in most Great Courses the middle of the Fairway usually isn’t the best part usually the the best spot was sort of getting towards the sort of Sandy Wast on the edge I think the the wi grass the Sandy sort of wasteland the best player in the field usually finds a way out of that you can get really unlucky but if most of the time you’re going to be on something where you can do something and I think it’s a bit of a skill separator the guys who really have the shots and they’re patient and they make really smart decisions they have an opportunity to recover I just dislike rough because it puts everybody in the field in the same spot in that the best player in the field and a 12 handicapper really from long hack Out rough everybody can just hack a shot out the rough there’s no room to sort of separate and show your skills if you like I love the idea of hitting a really loose shot in an open like at number two and having hope that the ball’s going to be okay you know knowing that it’s dead as soon as you hit the t- shot that kind of sucks that’s a miserable feeling that 250 yd walk into the 6in rough but you know sort of pecking over the brow the Junes and trying to work oh have I got a shot have I not got a shot that’s kind of part of the fun of golf too and I think when you have setups like this that’s there and the randomness I think is just part of golf I mean golf is infinitely random really which is why we love it and I think ultimately that’s just more fun and it’s more fun for a spectator I imagine to watch crazy attempts at recovery shots rather than just hacking a 60 back to the Fairway also contrary to probably common opinion is the professional golfers very commonly don’t love chipping off Short Grass we’re so used to chipping out the rough what the average player finds really difficult is the rough we find really simple cuz we do it every week when you miss a green on a traditional bg2 setup it it just rolls over the green or it bounces over the green it stops like a foot over the back of the green the rough catches it and it keeps it next to the green and so short siding it is usually better than longsiding it so you’re best off to just go for the pin cuz a short little pitch out of the rough is much easier than one from the other side of the green but you get to something like number two and all of a sudden short siding it’s the worst possible space to be and there’s no catches me there’s no there’s no sort of buffer at the edge of the green if it’s going off the green it’s going off the green and who knows where it stops I mean it could end up in sand or under trees or in Pine straw or just a long way off in the grass you’re going to be standing on down slopes you’re going to be standing on up slopes ball above your feet ball below your feet so it it just creates this apprehension cuz you’re always concerned about or where this could end up we could hit great shots all day and you could shoot mid-60s at Pinos hitting great shots all day and it’s very doable but the head space that you end up playing that course in it’s very hard to do that because you’re playing timid you’re scared of you’re scared of the Miss yeah it’s a it’s a tough place to play Confident and I think we’re used to just being confident and I think um mentally is the biggest challenge because it’s just something we don’t see very often what’s the whole Piner number two that you think about the most oh Jee um that I think about the most um number one is so influenced um me personally when you you think about the width of the fairways okay surely I can hit that Fairway you get down there the green looks you know it looks daunting on the left because of the bunker there and you go oh that looks really difficult the other side to the right appears to be just totally benign just if well I’m not going to hit that bunker I’m going to miss to the right all day long just hit it over to the right you hit it over to the right if you’re not careful you’ll be in the bunker on the left from that chip shot and it’s it’s that idea of of just sort of luring the player or or presenting a situation that’s not so obvious I think the first is really I mean it’s a great first hole cuz it gets your field away it’s probably one of the more doile holes in the course um and then you get hit in the face of number two which is one of the hardest holes in the course like it’s a long second shot the green sits at a funny angle and there’s probably no disasters there but it’s just a really scary shot I mean four and five a great horse um people probably talk about them because theyve got the most drama in the land two really long holes sort of back to back one sort of feels like it’s downhill and one sort of feels like it’s Overhill definitely I remember some good players putting off the green on number eight a few times you know long putt up the hill is up up a little tier and the thing about all these greens cuz they’ve got all these edges and the USGA will be quite happy to put a pin within three or four of this thing that goes off down this big hill you hit it over the back of nine and the ball never stops and it goes out of bounds or something like it’s a really scary [Music] shot that little stretch 10 11 12 they seem to be sort of on the ground which is always so nice you play the first few holes there and it feels like they’ve just they’ve put a big pile of sand there and shaped of green and it’s just up above everything there’s a few in the middle there that it just feels like they’re just they just built Greens on the [Music] ground and then probably 15 is an incredibly hard graen to hit it’s like one of the hardest path frees in the world 16 was my favorite hole to play I think even though it’s probably the hotest s in the call the 17th first of all is a beautiful golf hole it’s just beautiful the shape of the green the orientation the angle the whole visual picture is is really really pretty and engaging but then the green itself is so demanding I mean it’s a it’s not a tiny green but all pen places gosh the front left the front right the center right the these pens are so have to be so precise but it’s the visuals it’s strategic and then the fact that it leads you right off the green literally walk off the back of the green you’re on the 18th T and you turn and yes the 18th hole is a demanding par for going slightly back up the hill but probably more than anything it’s again it’s the visuals and the setting of hitting over the sand hitting alongside or over that gigantic iconic bunker that sits out there that we’ve all seen in books that just frames the hole you have that you have the clubhouse in the background and the green setting up there if you look at the whole picture it’s just a combination of aesthetic Beauty angles and and challenge play close to me you’re going to have a big Advantage play over there you’re not those characteristics apply to almost all the holes or all the holes at pineer number two but I think they’re probably just in a much more visually dramatic setting at 1718 it’s one of the most beautiful places to look at I mean who doesn’t like Pond trees growing out of sand you know but it the the more you play it the more it sort of scares you which I think is really cool we were working at that time in Pinehurst or very near Pinehurst at a place called the dormy club so I’d gone over over one day from the dormy club and gone to just walk around number two I hadn’t seen it in years I could not have been more surprised I mean it was it it was grass everywhere there was no sand left there was almost no wire grass there were a couple of token areas the remnants of sand and wire grass but for the most part it was just grass and different heights of grass I’m going what what are we doing you went from we went from a golf course that had green height cut a fairway height cut and the rest of it was sand and Wire Grass now we got just grass everywhere when Bob deadmond the owner Pinehurst and Don pageant then president of Pinehurst called to see if we might restore number two course prior to the 2014 United States opens men’s and women’s it was anything but an immediate yes so Ben I went there and I remember our first comment restore it to what it became clear pretty quickly I think to Ben and to me and then it came with such great support with comments from the Pinehurst side saying we believe that the course that established pineur number two’s reputation existed primary from 1935 when Mr Ross redid the course up through some point in the later 1960s let’s go to the golf course that we all believed was the pine HST of its best self once we decided how do we get there and then two things happened that gave us the confidence to move forward one of those was there was a man named Craig disher he called one day just out of the blue and he goes Bill he goes do you and Ben have any really good aerial photographs of number two course that you’re wanting to restore and I go no we don’t he said the next time you uh you and B come come to town let’s let’s meet so we go to his town home and own the table he has 18 black and white 8 by 10 or 11 aerial photographs one of each hole taken on Christmas Day 1943 it was extraordinary you could see how the fairways staggered here left right that instead of the straight down the middle it did become you could see the bunkers you can see the you’d see people you know playing literally on Christmas Day so we had all that backup but then how to get it onto the ground the second thing that happened that set the whole road map put it all together I was out walking with Bob faren one day who’s been the longtime director of agronomy at Pinehurst and Bob looked at me and he goes bill you know he said I was here in the 1980s he said we put in a new irrigation system he said the mainline went right down next to Ross’s old Mainline for the quick coupler system I said can you flag the mainline that’s out here he said yes the next morning we walked out there and there’s field of grass but those flags went just and you just you stood there with a photograph you looked at the flags going done so with Bob’s flags and Craig disher’s aerial photographs and where in we’re done all we got to do now is match this stuff we stripped gosh I think it was I think it was 40 acres of turf off that golf course there was so much grass going out there I remember Bob deadmond specifically standing out there one day because he had said we need to do this and then he’s watching all this his golf course is disappearing in he just stood there one day and he goes well this is either the smartest thing I’ve ever done or the dumbest and I think there was serious question in his mind which it was you’ve reduced Turf so much what do you do with what’s out there how do you recapture that natural look of random not just wire grass but pine straw and other vegetation that might have more U uh naturally grown in those sand baren areas and how do you make that work and that was probably the biggest uh effort of all in the process what is a pineur number two green if we’re talking about the current greens they’re as most people know very crowned very domed they’re uh quite large and square footage an extraordinarily small and playable area and as they say at Pinehurst you don’t really count the number of greens you’ve hit you count the number you’ve visited cuz your ball gets on them temporarily before ending up off of it but those greens were not the ones that at least from some of the old photographs and things were not the ones that Mr Ross did in 1935 his screens were quite different the comment was made or the question was asked should we try to restore the original raw screens we just came to the ball Bel that first of all in the case of pineur we don’t know exactly what they would have been secondly again there’s no one alive who ever saw them and so if we were to go do this we’d be creating greens very very different than what everyone in the world thinks of as Pinehurst greens and quite frankly they would probably look more like some of our current green our work and we didn’t want that we just felt that’s not what we’re here [Music] for my understanding is that for this years the United States open the only uh I don’t know what you want to call it adaptation or or change to the course from 2014 is they’ve planted a few more Wire Grass plants and the sand out in the drive zone areas for the for the contestants they’re playing the golf course the way it was in 2014 the resort guests have been playing that Golf Course the way it was for the 2014 United States open they’ve been playing it now for it’ll be 10 years without changing the [Music] course if a tournament comes we for him to play the course the way it is not the tournament comes and the course becomes unrecognizable it’s a tight rope to walk but we hope there’s a way to to present these courses in such a way that they’re acceptable for everyday play and tournament play [Music]