How the Sandhills Helped Shape the World of Golf

Golf Pride is the long-established leader in golf grip manufacturing. The company was founded in 1949 in Akron and led the way in the transition from leather to rubber as the de facto material of choice for melding hands with a golf club. The company moved to Southern Pines in 1969 and in 2019 opened its Global Innovation Center on 10 acres of land at the entrance to Pinehurst No. 8.

“The Sandhills area is so incredibly unique,” says Golf Pride President Jamie Ledford. “I am not aware of any other place like it in the world. There is a huge concentration of equipment brands in Carlsbad, California. But there is something really unique about the Pinehurst-Southern Pines-Aberdeen area and it having such a massive commitment to golf and the game. The number of courses within a five-mile radius and the number of people traveling here every year is incredible. It’s a huge opportunity for us to tap into the entire world of golf right here.”

Since Pinehurst’s founding in 1895, there are any number of examples of how the community has been an incubator for the world of golf:

The Golf Resort

Golf was not part of James W. Tufts’ original vision for a wintertime escape a day’s train ride from the cold and snowy Northeast. But some guests brought their own golf clubs and balls and began hitting shots through the peach orchards, and Tufts took the cue and built the first course in 1898. Within two decades, the resort had 72 holes of golf and drew visitors from across the Eastern United States.

“Pinehurst was absolutely the pioneer in American golf,” said Donald Ross, the Scotsman who designed those first four courses. “While golf had been played in a few places before Pinehurst was established, it was right here on these Sandhills that the first great national movement in golf was started. Men came here, took a few golf lessons, bought a few clubs and went away determined to organize clubs.”

Caption: Donald Ross

Golf Schools

It began one day in 1959 as Pine Needles’ owners, Warren “Bullet” and LPGA golfer Peggy Kirk Bell, were lamenting the fact that a business group had pulled out of a major commitment to rent out the resort a month away. A friend suggested they organize a weekend golf school for women. And presto — the women’s golf school was born. They called it “Golfari” as a take-off on the idea of a week-long “safari into golf.”

Soon after in the 1970s, Golf Digest magazine was on a major initiative to take the pages of instruction in its magazine and turn them into real-life lessons at top golf resorts around the United States. In 1975, golf instructors Bob Toski, Jim Flick, Davis Love Jr., Peter Kostis, Lou Miller and Gary Wiren visited Pinehurst for spring and fall golf schools at the resort, beginning a decade-long commitment to Pinehurst.

Pinehurst launched its own golf schools in the 1980s, and today the Golf Advantage School at the resort and the Pine Needles Golfaris are alive and well, drawing golfers to the Sandhills and sending them home with lower handicaps.

Major Championships

As a means to draw top golfers to Pinehurst and generate national publicity for its long and difficult No. 2 course, Pinehurst launched the North & South Championships in 1901 — one for amateurs only and an open category for professionals starting a year later. The latter was considered a “major championship” in the early days of the pro golf tour, with Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead among its winners.

Since then, No. 2 has been the venue for three U.S. Amateurs, four U.S. Opens, one U.S. Women’s Open, one Ryder Cup and one U.S. Senior Open. Pine Needles has hosted four U.S. Women’s Opens. And there are plenty more major events in the offing with the USGA opening Golf House Pinehurst in 2024 and anointing Pinehurst as an “Anchor Site” for future championships.

Kids Golf

U.S. Kids began staging its World Championships in Pinehurst in 2006 and has evolved into a cornerstone of the community’s golf and hospitality calendar every July and early August. Its two cornerstone events bring 700-plus golfers aged 13-18 to the Sandhills and 1,500-plus aged six-to-12 the following week in what is billed as the largest golf event in the world. In 2015, U.S. Kids founder Dan Van Horn purchased Longleaf Golf Club and renamed it Longleaf Golf & Family Club. U.S. Kids headquarters is now located at the club halfway between Pinehurst and Southern Pines.

“We wanted to have a presence in the Pinehurst community,” Van Horn says. “We felt very welcome here, very supported by the community. The synergies around the Pinehurst/Southern Pines area as a golf capital, a golf mecca have been important to us. It seemed like a great place to layer in more of the idea of kids golf, family golf.”

Golf Administration

One driving force in the evolution of the Carolinas Golf Association was Richard Tufts, a member of Pinehurst’s founding and ownership family. From 1926-65, he served many roles from director to secretary-treasurer. The CGA was headquartered in Pinehurst in the mid-1900s and established a permanent home in the Sandhills in the 1980s. It opened its Carolinas Golf House on land across from Pine Needles Lodge in 2014.

The USGA announced in September 2020 that it would establish a second headquarters called Golf House Pinehurst as an adjunct to its Far Hills, N.J., headquarters. The $36 million project included a Research and Test Center, an innovation hub, offices for staff members and the relocation of the World Golf Hall of Fame from its previous home in St. Augustine, Fla. The new facility opened in time for the 2024 U.S. Open.

“There is no better place for the USGA to plant new roots than the Home of American Golf,” said Mike Davis, at the time the CEO of the USGA.

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.