A Nicklaus Original, Reborn

Pinehurst No. 9: A Nicklaus Original, Reborn

Nearly four decades after Jack Nicklaus carved Pinehurst National from the Sandhills, the course has emerged from an eight-month renovation refreshed for its next chapter.

The beaming face of Jack Nicklaus leapt off the pages of sales collateral and advertisements in golf publications in 1987 when a new development called Pinehurst National sprung from the pine forests just east of the traffic circle between Pinehurst and Southern Pines. Nicklaus talked of winning on Pinehurst No. 2 as an amateur and later as a pro and how excited he was to be returning to the Sandhills to design a new golf course.

The club was riding the crest of the mid-to-late 1980s golf boom. Projects of this ilk popped up across the Carolinas, the Sunbelt and beyond as developers positioned themselves to take advantage of the game’s growing popularity and the middle-age wealth of the baby boom generation.

The course opened to great fanfare in April 1989. Over the next quarter of a century, however, its fortunes ebbed and flowed with the United States economy (it endured three recessions). The over-saturation of the golf real estate market put the crunch on many of these high-end developments, and in early 2014 it became clear to the club’s owners and Pinehurst Resort management that National would fit perfectly within the Pinehurst Resort family.

The idea was consummated in May 2014 when National was purchased by Pinehurst. The name changed from Pinehurst National to Pinehurst No. 9, with the course taking its position in the numerical listing of resort courses.

Caption: Pinehurst No. 9

“This gives us another course on the level of No. 4, 7 and 8,” said Don Padgett II, the Pinehurst president and COO at the time of the purchase. “The members now have access to our facilities, and our existing members and guests can play an outstanding golf course.”

Bob Farren, Pinehurst’s long-time director of golf course management, cited the long-held philosophy of Pinehurst’s owners, Robert Dedman Sr., who bought the resort in 1984 and ran it through his death in 2002, and then his son, Bob Jr.

“The Dedmans have always said, ‘For a deal to work, it has to be win-win-win,’” Farren says.

“This certainly was. It was good for the seller, it was good for Pinehurst, and it was good for the residents and members.”

The centerpiece to the community has always been the Nicklaus-designed golf course, which he said from the beginning was created as a symbolic tip-of-the-cap to one of his favorite courses in the world, the No. 2 course designed by Donald Ross.

Nicklaus designed the course immediately after having supervised the 1987 renovation of No. 2’s greens. It was during that project that Mike Sanders, the director of golf at Pinehurst, first approached Nicklaus about designing a course that Sanders and some investors envisioned on property just off Midland Road east of the Pinehurst traffic circle.

Caption: Pinehurst No. 9

“I felt strongly that a project combining Pinehurst, and what it represents in the game of golf, and Nicklaus, and what he represents both as a player and a designer, would be a natural situation,” said Sanders, who left his job at Pinehurst to lead the Pinehurst National management group.

Nicklaus moved only 185,000 cubic yards of earth in building the course — a very modest number by 1980s standards, which saw designers routinely moving mountains of dirt. It’s relatively forgiving off the tee but is demanding around the greens.

“This is the least amount of dirt we’ve ever moved,” Nicklaus said. “It’s one of the most natural-looking courses we’ve ever done. You get a piece of property like this, and your job is to complement it, to make the golf course look like it’s been here a long time.”

Nearly 40 years after it opened, No. 9 closed for eight months in 2026 for an overhaul of its irrigation and infrastructure and an agronomic update of its playing surfaces. The course reopened in August with the underpinnings of the course rebuilt, the greens converted to the ultradwarf Bermuda grass now on all Pinehurst courses and the bunkers recast to improve playability and drainage.

“Just by itself, repairing and redoing the irrigation system is a huge facelift and basically makes everything else around the course better,” says Kevin Robinson, Pinehurst’s golf course maintenance manager. “Now that the superintendent and his assistants aren’t worried about fixing a water leak here and there, or needing to dig something up, they can rightly focus on everything else about the golf course. That’s what I think players will come to see.”

Farren remembers being a neophyte on the Pinehurst maintenance crew in the late 1980s when the course opened and certainly had some “full-circle moments” this year as the course was renovated.

“I was struck by how well the golf course has stood up over nearly four decades,” he said.

Caption: Pinehurst No. 9

“There were only a few tweaks to the bunkers, but the golf course has stood the test of time. It was also interesting to watch the evolution of the real estate around it. The real estate sits softly around the golf corridors. The golf course fits well on the land and has served the property well.”

Among the highlights of the course are the four rock walls built by an Englishman named Charlie Batten, who Nicklaus brought over specifically for the new course. The greens of the par-3 ninth and par-4 18th holes are guarded by a lake, and Nicklaus used one abandoned quarry to great effect as a cross-hazard into the green on the par-4 11th. He also left the rough in its natural state — no grass under the trees.

“There are a lot of great golf courses in Pinehurst,” Nicklaus said. “Pinehurst No. 2 from a design standpoint has always been my favorite. I’m glad to be here and be a part of that.”

Lee Pace is a freelance golf writer who has written about Sandhills area golf for four decades and is the author of club histories about Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Forest Creek.

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