1999 U.S. Open: A Look Back
By Lee Pace
A U.S. Open at Pinehurst seems old hat now. In about a year, the esteemed No. 2 course will be the venue for its fourth rendition of America’s national championship, following 1999 (won by Payne Stewart), 2005 (Michael Campbell) and 2014 (Martin Kaymer).
And after the 2024 competition, there are four more on the docket through 2047 as the USGA has tabbed Pinehurst No. 2 as an “anchor site” for the Open.
They found a shuttle bus transportation system that efficiently funneled spectators in and out of town from two remote parking lots. And there were lots and lots of people — there are seven million living within 100 miles of Pinehurst, a fact that championship staff noted with regularity in fending off the charge that Pinehurst was in the sticks. Golf fans from near and far scarfed up the available badges within 24 hours of their going on sale the previous summer. Corporate types shucked out big dollars during the height of late-1990s economic heyday and filled every clubhouse table and tent available.
And they found an atmosphere unique to Open venues — no big-city traffic and a small-town charm that certainly was what James Tufts and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted had in mind more than a century ago, when they created a replica New England village from the sandy wastelands of south-central North Carolina. By day, the townsfolk and visitors enjoyed the golf; by night, they congregated around the bars at the Pine Crest and Holly Inns or enjoyed lawn parties throughout the village.
“What’s struck me is how this community has absorbed the event, yet remained the same,” Pinehurst Inc. President Pat Corso said on the final day of the competition. “Anybody coming here I think gets the full impact and charm of the community. At many places that host major events, you don’t get the sense of the community at all. You’re tucked in some suburb or you’re in a neighborhood and it’s compacted and you don’t get a sense of, ‘Where are you?’ People didn’t just come to Pinehurst to a golf course for an event. They came here actually to share in the Pinehurst experience. I think that is pretty neat.”
Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace has written about golf in the Sandhills since the late 1980s and has authored a dozen books about the clubs, courses and people who have made it special over more than a century.
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