Tot Hill Farm Golf Course

Act Two for Tot Hill Farm

Architects, Blog, Golf

If Mike Strantz hadn’t died from tongue cancer in 2005 at the young age of 50, would he ever have made it to Pinehurst proper to design a golf course?

We’ll never know, of course, but at least 25 percent of his remarkable but all too limited design portfolio was built within 45 miles of the Village of Pinehurst.

Twenty-five miles to the northeast is Tobacco Road in Sanford, which opened in 1998 with craggy edges, blind shots and dramatic ups and downs whittled from the site of an old sand quarry.

Festival DAvion

Festival D’avion Named as Signature Event

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Southeast Tourism Society (STS) has named the Festival D’Avion as one of the Signature Events of the Southeast for 2023.  The event is one of 20 tourism events selected by STS among its 13 member states and the District of Columbia. It was the only event in North Carolina recognized among the selections. The event was originally nominated by the Pinehurst, Southern Pines, Aberdeen Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB).

Lens of the Sandhills

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Today the Sandhills and its golf courses are evolving more and more as an exquisite canvas for shutterbugs of all makes and models, and the ability to immediately display the visuals on social media and assorted blogs and digital venues multiplies their visibility a million-fold over the old days of weekly and monthly magazines.

Loving Our Black & Whites

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A vintage photograph showing Pinehurst owner Richard Tufts seated on a bench beside architect Donald Ross taken in the 1940s had long captured Tom Pashley’s fancy. Here was Tufts, third generation of the Pinehurst founding family and a giant in American golf administration circles in the mid-1900s, alongside Ross, the native Scotsman and architect of four golf courses at Pinehurst by 1919 and nearly 400 nationwide through his death in 1948.

Pinehurst Major-itis

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The eight trophies sit in a glass display case at the east end of Heritage Hall in the Pinehurst Resort Clubhouse. To one side is the outside veranda and then the 18th green of Pinehurst No. 2, to the other a 100-foot hallway lined with photographs, memorabilia and shadow boxes telling the history of 125 years of golf at Pinehurst.

When They Were Young

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Ben Hogan was a 30-year-old journeyman when the PGA Tour came to Pinehurst in March 1940. Hogan had been playing for eight years and didn’t have a win to show for it. He was out of money — and confidence. If he didn’t crack the winner’s circle that year, he was going to go back home to Fort Worth, Texas, and work full-time as a club pro.

Getting Outside

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Spending time outside is one of my favorite activities and there’s no shortage of incredible outdoor activities in the Southern Pines/Pinehurst area. Whether you’re an avid hiker looking for a great trail, or you just want to relax on a patio, there’s something for everyone in the amazing Sandhills region in North Carolina.

Kid You Not

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Dan Van Horn was an engineer living in Atlanta and raising a family of three in the mid-1990s when it struck him how well the baseball equipment industry addressed the youth market and how poorly the golf industry was positioned for its junior players.

“You could buy a lightweight bat that felt great in a kid’s hands, but golf clubs were just crude, sawed-off clubs that were still too heavy and had shafts too stiff for a kid’s strength,” he says. “My kids weren’t having any fun with golf.”