Walking The Sandmines

Walking The Sandmines with Bill Coore

Over the last year, Bill Coore and his design partner Ben Crenshaw have etched golf holes from landscapes in the Bahamas, Montana, Colorado and Northern Michigan. They’ve also been in Pinehurst, working the land four miles south of the village for the new No. 11 course.

Coore and Crenshaw are now four decades into their architecture business. Coore, a North Carolina native who came up through the business in course construction, and Crenshaw, a Texan who burst onto the PGA Tour in 1973 and has won two Masters and a total of 30 pro tournaments, have combined for a modest but high-quality portfolio of some three dozen courses.

They could have generated a lot more work but are uber-choosy in taking on clients because of Coore’s insistence on being in the field constantly and having hands-on input on the evolution of every hole. There are only so many hours in the day and Coore can be only one place at one time.

He turned 80 in December, and Crenshaw is 74.

“As long as I’m physically able and people want you to do their work, I’ll keep doing it,” Coore says on a recent four-hour stroll around the No. 11 course. “Fortunately, we’re still in demand. If you have interesting sites, you are constantly motivated and excited to work them. Feel like a kid out here playing in the dirt.”

Coore arrived at the Pinehurst job site early one April Saturday morning after spending the week finalizing the design of the greens along with chief associate Ryan Farrow. There was no golf cart left for him by Pinehurst staff as they knew he didn’t need or want one.

Credit: Pinehurst Resort

“I try not to get into a golf cart,” Coore says. “I like to walk and feel the land with my feet. You can see things and sense things going slowly and walking that you might otherwise miss. You see and feel the details better. Someone once said that I’m a plodder. That’s probably right. On a great piece of land, you can do it more justice on foot.”

Coore spent considerable time walking this same ground 15 years ago when in town working on the restoration of Pinehurst No. 2. He was looking for 18 new holes on this Aberdeen site that at the time Pinehurst owner Bob Dedman Jr. was considering for what would be designated as Pinehurst No. 9. But Dedman pivoted in the spring of 2012 and bought Pinehurst National and wove it into the resort and club fabric as the new No. 9 and sat for a decade on this site until the demand for more golf in 2022 prompted him to pull the trigger. Coore & Crenshaw would have designed that course, but they were too busy at the moment, ergo the pivot to Tom Doak, whose No. 10 course is now two years old.

“I have high hopes for this course,” Coore says. “That we didn’t build that original course and now are building this one has worked out great. Hindsight is 20-20, but it’s worked out better for all parties involved. The course we laid out in 2011 would have been interesting, but the course we have out there now is far better. The routing is better.”

Most notable, perhaps, is the ruggedness of the ground.

The parcel is bordered to the northeast by the Country Club of North Carolina and to the west by Hwy. 5 and was used in the early 1900s as a source for sand in the concrete, mortar and asphalt manufacturing businesses. Pinehurst native and course architect Dan Maples used it for The Pit Golf Links, which opened in 1985 and existed through 2010 before going under due to financial duress.

Dedman purchased the site and repurposed it for two new courses pegged The Sandmines. The furrows and burrows from long-ago excavation machinery were left intact, with years of wild plant and tree growth adding to the texture.

“This site was totally manufactured years ago, with the piles and mounds of material they didn’t want,” Coore says. “It sat there for decades, and trees grew up through them. You’re left with a site that looks totally natural for golf.”

Because the land is so untamed, Coore has designed a course with relatively benign putting surfaces. And there is only one water hazard on the course — a lake behind the seventh green that is largely out of play. Again, there is plenty of drama in the ground itself that multi-tiered greens and water to suck up poorly struck shots are simply not needed to make the course interesting and testing.

“The greens on this course are almost the supporting cast,” he says. “There are not a lot of contours and movement. They are pretty subtle because everything around them is so wild. It felt like if the greens had a lot of contouring, it would be way too much. The land is up and down and twisting and turning. If you get to the greens and have the same thing, it would be too much.”

Construction crews began clearing the site in November 2024, with major earthmoving beginning in October 2025. As of April 2026, the holes had been largely designed and sculpted and the greens all “floated out” in the parlance of golf construction. The course will be sodded in the summer and will open at some point in mid-2027.

As Coore walks the course, he talks of the process of finding the holes, applying the brush strokes and supervising the shapers and diggers.

“It’s like putting a puzzle together,” he says. “You see these interesting landforms and say, ‘OK, that’s a great spot for a green here.’”

Among some of the interesting puzzle pieces are the par-3 sixth hole that runs downhill and back up to the green and was inspired by Crenshaw suggesting that a hole similar to Harry Colt’s eighth at St. George’s Hill in Surrey, England, might fit nicely.


“Inspiration? It comes from anywhere and everywhere,” Coore says.

One feature prompts him to say, “Hang on to your hat.”

Another one elicits a smile and a shake of the head, “Who could imagine some of this stuff?”

There are old mounds in fairways with pot bunkers cobbled out, leaving Coore to make another comparison to U.K.-style golf.

“This is just a punch-wedge out to safety. You go, ‘OK, I’ve gotta get out of here and not worry about aiming for the green.”

There are vestiges of the ancient mining operation, including a piece of vintage railroad track on the 13th hole that Coore moved to the periphery of the hole — out of line of a bouncing golf ball but within eyesight.

“This will be an eccentric golf course. I call it ‘wildly wonderful.’ It’s different. I have very high hopes for it,” he says.

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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