Ross-Maples Legacy Reborn
By Lee Pace
Ross-Maples Legacy Reborn at Whispering Pines
Approximately one-third of the golf inventory of the Sandhills has the fingerprints of the legendary Scottish architect Donald Ross and his extended family tree of designers and construction workers.
Ross designed the No. 1 and 2 courses at Pinehurst Resort and the courses at Pine Needles, Mid Pines and Southern Pines Golf Club.
Ellis Maples worked as a young man on building several of those courses, and later as a designer in the late 1950s retooled Ross’s work on Pinehurst No. 3 and No. 5, leaving them essentially as Ross/Maples combos. He designed the Dogwood Course at the Country Club of North Carolina, 36 holes at the Country Club of Whispering Pines, 18 at Woodlake and 18 at Whispering Woods.
Ellis’s son Dan designed Longleaf Golf & Family Club and was noted as well for The Pit, a dramatic, cutting-edge layout from the 1980s that thrived for more than two decades before becoming a casualty of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-09.
The 36-hole facility was purchased in 2025 by Rolling Pines LLC and is led by Kelly Miller, who is also the chief executive in the ownership company of Pine Needles, Mid Pines and Southern Pines.
Miller had retained golf architect Kyle Franz to restore Ross courses at Pine Needles, Mid Pines and Southern Pines, so it was a natural extension of that relationship to have Franz handle the Whispering Pines renovation. The Pines Course closed early in 2026 and now is open for member and outside play.
“Kyle keeps doing great work,” Miller says. “He and his crew did an amazing job. I played a lot of golf at Whispering Pines back in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was always a fun course, a beautiful piece of property.”
Franz rebuilt all the greens and bunkers and adjusted some fairway widths and angles. The greens have been planted with Mini-Verde Bermuda, the same grass used on the parent company’s other three courses. Many of the natural sandy areas have been enhanced or restored, and cross-bunkers have been added in several fairways to enhance the physical and mental challenge. It resonates with the “Pinehurst look” — that blend of unkempt sand indigenous to the region accented with random wire grass and pine straw.
“The new course has a fantastic look,” he says. “It catches your eye driving down the road. You say, ‘Gosh, this looks like what Sandhills golf was when Donald Ross and Ellis Maples were building golf courses.’ The course is fair, fun, challenging and has some length to it. We’ve been overwhelmed with the positive feedback we’ve received. The word is getting out that we have something special here.”
Dean Kalles and his wife moved from outside of Seattle to North Carolina in 2014 to be close to their daughter, who lives in Carthage. They settled at Whispering Pines.
“Where we were as a club one year ago to where we are now is like walking in a dark room and turning on a light switch,” he says. “It’s that big a difference. I’m so excited about what the new owners have done with the Pines Course, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the River Course.”
The owners will continue enhancements in the coming months, as cart paths are being rebuilt, a restaurant is set to open, and villas are being restored to offer on-site lodging. Whispering Pines is a semi-private course and there will be ample availability for outside play. Miller said the course will be positioned at a price point below the rates at most Sandhills-area courses.
“There have been very few new golf courses built in Moore County in the last 20 years,” Miller says. “This is a chance to put some polish on two classic golf courses from an outstanding designer and make them available to the public at a reasonable price.”
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.
