The Spring Thaw

“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." -- Donald Ross

Pinehurst was a rite of April for champion golfer Bill Campbell. After a winter in Huntington, W.Va., Campbell found the village and its environs quite therapeutic — as did his wife, Joan, who would routinely join him for the trip. They drove south each April, checked into the Holly Inn in the Village of Pinehurst and immersed themselves in the ambiance. Campbell, of course, played some golf as well, winning the North & South Amateur four times in the 1950s and into the ‘60s.

“The quiet was broken only by the soothing sounds of the church chimes, the whispering of the pine trees among the azaleas and dogwoods, and the sweet click of persimmon woods striking balata balls,” Campbell said. “We were especially fond of the Village Green — a lovely, peaceful haven where we shared a transcendental feeling.”

Campbell died in 2013 at the age of 90, but his spirit lives on, and he would particularly embrace spring of 2026 following the coldest, snowiest, iciest winter in some time in the Sandhills.

The Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen communities recorded a low temperature of 10 degrees in January and February, and on two days, the temperature never got above 35 degrees.

North Carolina was hit with an ice-storm on the fourth weekend of January and then one week later came heavy snowfall on Saturday Jan. 31 into the next morning. Area residents woke up to find The Putter Boy statue at Pinehurst covered with snow and the Payne Stewart statue with snow piled above his ankle. That picture postcard view of the 18th green at Mid Pines and the elegant old hotel in the backdrop was now covered with white. Red holly berries around town contrasted with the snowy accents.

And golfers were sidelined for 10 days.

It took Pinehurst maintenance workers 600 man-hours leading into the cold weather to cover the ultra-dwarf Bermuda putting surfaces of nine Pinehurst Resort courses (the No. 9 course is closed for a facelift, scheduled to re-open in August). In addition, the greens of Nos. 2, 4, 8 and 10 were covered with a layer of pine straw before the covers were laid down for extra protection.

“It’s a new day with all our golf courses with Bermuda greens,” says Bob Farren, director of golf course management at Pinehurst. “It’s a lot of work, and we have to keep a close eye on temperatures. But having to cover the greens a couple of times during the winter pales in comparison to the challenge of keeping bent grass greens alive during the summer months. We’ll take having Bermuda greens for the summer heat over some inconvenience in the winter.”

Golf package operators saw their phones ring and on-line traffic ramp up as the cold and snow took hold.

“With people being stuck in the house this winter, with not much else to do, we tend to get more calls/online quote requests when the weather is bad,” says Nikki Conforti of Maples Golf Packages, which books golfers into the Talamore and Mid South resorts. “They’re looking forward to the warmer months and going somewhere. And now that the PGA Tour season has kicked off, that usually has people itching to get out and play so they start to think about getting their group together to travel.”

And so this spring, more than ever, golfers are “Off for Pinehurst,” as depicted in the iconic poster from the 1920s that shows the Pinehurst “Golf Lad” in his floppy hat and golf bag slung over his shoulder amidst the well-dressed crowd at New York’s Grand Central Station.

It all happened because a man from Boston wanted to create a winter getaway within a day’s train ride of New England. James Tufts bought some 5,000 acres of arid land just west of Southern Pines in 1895, created a village and named it Pinehurst. He didn’t know much about golf, but three years into his operation he built nine holes, it was well-received and he expanded from there.

One trigger toward golf becoming the “Home of American Golf” was his hiring a Scotsman named Donald Ross in 1900 to run the golf operation. Ross grew up on the golf course in his hometown of Dornoch and was well-versed in agronomy, club making, teaching the game, organizing the caddies and playing the game himself. He found the sandy ground of Moore County similar to what he knew on the coast of Scotland and set off building golf courses in the image of his homeland.

“Pinehurst was absolutely the pioneer in American golf,” Ross said. “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.”

Today there are some 40 golf courses within a 15-mile radius of the Village of Pinehurst. Pinehurst No. 2 has hosted four U.S. Opens and four more are set through 2047. Pine Needles has also been the venue for four Women’s Opens. Six of Ross’s designs remain open and the inventory has been augmented by the finest modern designers, including Tom Doak (Pinehurst No. 10), Tom Fazio (Pinehurst No. 6 and No. 8 and Forest Creek North and South courses), Rees Jones (Talamore and Pinehurst No. 7), Gil Hanse (Pinehurst No. 4), Ellis Maples (Country Club of North Carolina Dogwood and Woodlake), Arnold Palmer (Mid South), Jack Nicklaus (Pinehurst No. 9), Jack Nicklaus II (Legacy) and the design team of Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (Dormie Club, No. 2 restoration in 2010-11 and the Pinehurst No. 11 course set to open in 2027).

Ben Hogan won his first professional tournament at Pinehurst in 1940. Nicklaus won as an amateur (the North & South in 1959), as a pro (Colgate Hall of Fame Classic in 1975) and watched as son Jackie won the North & South in 1985. Golfers spanning the 20th century from Walter Hagen to Payne Stewart have collected championships at Pinehurst.

In addition to the four U.S. Opens contested on No. 2, the course has been the venue for the 1936 PGA Championship, the 1951 Ryder Cup, the 1994 U.S. Senior Open, the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open and three U.S. Amateurs.

Caption: Pinehurst U.S. Open.

“Anybody who has been anybody has hit balls on this practice range,” former Pinehurst Director of Golf Don Padgett Sr. liked to say of the “Maniac Hill” practice facility.

It all leaves quite an impression.

“Walking out on the putting green, I wondered if Ben Hogan had stood in the same spot,” said 2002 Women’s North and South Amateur champion May Wood. “All the people I’d looked up to my entire life had been there. I know it sounds crazy, but playing No. 2, I could almost feel their presence still there — up in the wind, up in the trees. It helped me focus. It was great inspiration for me.”

And it’s made all the more attractive in 2026 with the promise of green grass and warm temperatures.

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.