Golf History Abounds in Pinehurst

By Lee Pace

The Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame is just one of several interesting venues in the Sandhills for golf history buffs.

The lobby of the Carolina Hotel, the anchor of the sprawling Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, is open to the public and chock full after a recent renovation of interesting visual elements — from vintage photos dating back more than a century to a timeline of significant golf milestones at the resort. The Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame is located to the east of the central building on the way to the Grand Ballroom.

Caption: Rendering of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Another notable display can be found in the Resort Clubhouse a half a mile away. From the front entry back to the golf shop and The Deuce Restaurant is a display that includes nameplates for winners of the North & South Amateur (from Jack Nicklaus to Bill Campbell) and a case featuring trophies of every major championship held at Pinehurst — the PGA Championship (1936), the Ryder Cup Matches (1951), the U.S. Amateur (1962, 2008 and 2019), the U.S. Women’s Amateur (1989), the U.S. Senior Open (1994), the U.S. Open (1999, 2005, 2014 and 2024) and the U.S. Women’s Open (2014). The resort purchased replica trophies of each event in the late 1990s at significant cost and there is a not a facility open to the public with as grand an array of trophies.

Caption: Given Library – Tufts Archive

The history of Pinehurst is on display across the resort’s grounds, but for a comprehensive account of everything that took this special place from its origins in 1895 to today, the Tufts Archives is unmatched. Located within The Given Library across from The Holly Inn, this collection houses original maps of Donald Ross’s course designs, photos of Pinehurst Village in its earliest days and much more. Even James W. Tufts’ original marble and silver 19th century soda fountain is on display alongside more than 125,000 historic photographs of the area.

The USGA Experience Building opened in the spring and summer of 2024 as part of the USGA’s new satellite headquarters, Golf House Pinehurst. The bottom floor features the USGA Experience and its myriads of championships, museum galleries and a Science of Golf display. On the second floor is the World Golf Hall of Fame, relocated after two decades in Florida. The Hall of Fame is organized around lockers assigned to 164 members and feature personal memorabilia stored behind plexiglass walls — from Johnny Miller’s clubs used in shooting a final-round 63 in the 1973 Open at Oakmont to Jack Nicklaus’s MacGregor bag from the 1965 Masters.

Caption: USGA Golf House Pinehurst

And four miles down Midland Road is the Xan Law Jr. Hall of History, which is contained within the CGA headquarters building in Southern Pines. The CGA, which celebrated its centennial in 2009, opened Carolinas Golf House in 2014 across Ridge Road from Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club and set aside 1,500 square feet for a museum that opened four years later. The collection of Carolinas-oriented memorabilia is named in honor of the Charlotte businessman and avid golfer who died in 2016 shortly after a watershed fundraising dinner that gave the museum an important underwriting base.

“Golf, like life, is a puzzle to be worked on but never solved,” Law said that evening.

Read about Eger, Padgett Join Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame