Dream Houses

By Lee Pace

There are slightly fewer than 2,500 hotel rooms in the Sandhills area ranging from the original lodging establishment that opened in 1895 to more recent facilities with brand names like Marriott and Hilton. All perform exactly as ordered – offering a comfortable bed and all the accouterments for golfers hopping from one world-renowned course to the next.

Increasingly in modern times, though, hoteliers and entrepreneurs have curated houses, lodges and cottages a step above – luxury accommodations with a story, dimensions and bountiful special touches geared toward groups of four golfers and upwards.

Travelers to the Pinehurst area today can drink a Scotch whisky in the home office Donald Ross occupied in the 1940s, play pool beneath the stained glass of a century-old church sanctuary or have a dinner buffet outside a vintage house in the Village of Pinehurst. They can rock on the same screened-in porch where Mike Strantz quaffed a cold one after a day chiseling Tobacco Road out of the sand pits north of Pinehurst. And they can walk outside their five-bedroom house located four miles north of the Village and play golf on a lighted par-3 hole with a fire roaring and the sound system at full blast.

“Golf groups would rather be all together under one roof versus being split up,” says Nikki Conforti, a golf package specialist at Talamore Resort who frequently books guests at Talamore and sister course Mid South into the Palmer Cottage, which fronts Midland Road between the two courses. ”They can all hang out together after golf and at night. It builds camaraderie and is a lot of fun. Our cottage is perfect for eight golfers with a game room with a pool table, dining table and fire pit. If those walls could talk, I’m sure there would be some good stories.”

The adjunct lodging properties at Talamore/Mid South between Pinehurst and Southern Pines off Midland Road and the Pine Crest Inn in the Village represent the charm and history of old Pinehurst juxtaposed with newer venues created as the area has grown with all the attention given to Pinehurst No. 2 and Pine Needles, with its combined nine U.S. Opens and Women’s Opens since 1996.

Robert Barrett bought the 1913 Pine Crest Inn in 1961 and by coincidence a home called the Chatham Cottage (built in the 1930s) was available directly across Dogwood Drive. He bought the house for his family to live in as they operated the inn. For years, Barrett would use an extra bedroom in the house for Pine Crest overflow, then by the mid-1980s the family moved out and it became an adjunct lodging option for the inn and was renamed the Barrett Cottage. There are groups who have been occupying the house the same week for more than three decades. The house has 16 beds with eight bedrooms and five baths.

One of the appeals is a lighted patio outside where guests can have a cocktail, smoke a cigar and settle the day’s bets. The inn staff will set up on the patio what is called the Barrett House Buffet, serving a meal of two entrees and all the trimmings.

“The beauty is the guys can come right off the golf course, eat at their leisure and hang out until eight, nine or 10 o’clock,” says Andy Hofmann, Bob Barrett’s daughter-in-law. “A group doesn’t have to get dressed and have a dinner reservation.”

The Pine Crest also offers the Telephone Cottage, a two-bedroom house that once served as Carolina Telephone’s local switchboard center until Barrett bought it shortly after purchasing the Pine Crest and renovated it into a two-bedroom facility.

Talamore (designed by Rees Jones) and Mid South (Arnold Palmer) were part of the 1990s golf boom as the Sandhills expanded its golf offering beyond the long-time staples of what are now 10 courses at Pinehurst Resort and three Ross-designed courses under the ownership umbrella of Pine Needles (1928), Mid Pines (1921) and Southern Pines Golf Club (1906). Talamore and Mid South are owned by Philadelphia businessman Bob Levy and over time both added lodging options.

The Palmer Cottage is the result of additions, renovations and upgrades over nearly two decades to an existing house that Levy bought in 2018. The cottage is marked alongside Midland Road by Talamore’s signature llama flag.

“For years it was one of the few properties for golf package groups to have eight guys stay under one roof with eight beds and four full bathrooms,” Comforti says.

Dan Keane is a long-time golfer who visited Pinehurst on trips from his home near New York City and visiting in-laws on the South Carolina coast near Hilton Head.

“My wife and I love, love, love Pinehurst,” he says. “It’s our happy place to come and visit.”

Keane was intrigued when he learned in 2020 that the Sacred Heart Catholic Church located just behind the Carolina Hotel and serving the Village of Pinehurst for more than a century was for sale. Dan and Jenna bought the 5,300-square-foot church and renovated it into a destination with five sleeping spaces (four bedrooms and a loft) and a “great room” in the original sanctuary area perfect for lounging, playing pool and meal functions. It’s called The Old Church at Pinehurst.

“My wife and I have big families, so we’re all about having places for big groups to enjoy each other’s company,” Keane says. “We saw the church was for sale and thought it was a good opportunity, not as much as a business decision, but it would be really cool to own and share with people.

“It’s different from anything else. Watching a movie, having a game on, a bartender behind the bar – it makes for a cool experience. All churches are places for gathering. It speaks to why people visit the Sandhills – relaxing, enjoying, sitting by a fire pit, having a glass of wine. It’s everything you’d expect and more.”

Pinehurst Resort has seemingly infinite lodging options within four main facilities – the Carolina Hotel, Holly Inn, Manor Inn and Magnolia Inn. But it also has two out-of-the-box offerings and in May opens the doors to yet another.

The Presidential Suite opened on the first floor of the Carolina Hotel in 2007 and offers 1,800 square feet of “wow factor” that would impress the CEO accustomed to the most opulent room in a midtown New York City hotel. There’s lots of technology (four LG flat-screen TVs, one hidden behind a decorative mirror) and soothing décor (the color palette of wheat, russet and loden reflects a New England autumn, and artwork heavy in sepia and duo-toned images depicts the early days in Pinehurst).

The resort in 2017 purchased Dornoch Cottage – built by famed golf architect Donald Ross in 1925 and occupied by Ross and his wife until his death in 1948 – that is situated beside the third green of Pinehurst No. 2. With four spacious bedrooms, a modern kitchen and Ross’s office still intact, Dornoch Cottage is made available to select guests and used as the site of parties and receptions. Golf architect Gil Hanse bunked there for six months in 2017 while redesigning the No. 4 course. Ross’s office faced a railroad line that ran past Pinehurst. According to legend, Ross would leave his desk lamp illuminated so passengers might wonder about what course he was working on next.

The resort hired Tom Fazio in the early 1990s to design a course to celebrate the resort’s centennial and open near its 100th birthday year of 1995. Pinehurst No. 8 was christened in the spring of 1996 on rugged land just north of the village and has served for three decades as a “private club for a day” for resort guests. Needing more beds for golfers in the post-Covid golf explosion, the resort has built a cottage village on a parcel of land between the eighth, ninth and 10th holes. Five cottages will be open in May and four more will follow in the fall, giving the resort 52 new rooms. Each cottage has two levels, some with two bedrooms and others with four, and all have a common room and pool table. Outside is a fire pit and putting green.

Ironically, for a resort in the golf business since 1898, the Cottages at No. 8 will be Pinehurst’s first bedrooms located adjacent to golf holes.

Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club has a variety of lodges and cottages for guests, many of whom visit annually for the golf schools that evolved from the teaching passion and acumen of resort matriarch Peggy Kirk Bell. The Donald Ross Lodge is the best of the inventory, with bedrooms adjacent to a common gaming room. Best of all, you can grab your golf clubs and walk just a few steps onto a private practice tee and a little further away you can access the four-hole par-3 course.

Another premium spot beside a golf hole in the Sandhills is the Stewart Cabin, which is tucked into the woods facing the pond on the par-3 14th hole at Tobacco Road in Sanford. The cabin is where Strantz stayed when on property designing the one-of-a-kind course that opened in 1998. The rustic, two-bedroom cabin has been fully renovated with a full kitchen, outdoor grill and a fenced-in porch with rocking chairs.

A product of the social media and Instagram phenomenon of the 2020s is Birdie Houses, billed as “luxury retreats powered by a global golf group chat.” The idea is to create a one-of-a-kind lodging facility in famous golf destinations and market it to golfers who wield their seven-iron by day and their phones by night, chatting and texting and posting about their experiences in golf. Birdie Houses has built a home on Hwy. 73 north of Pinehurst that is the ultimate entertainment retreat with a 100-yard plus golf hole, putting/chipping green, eight-person hot hub, gas fire pit, ping pong table, NBA Jam, 85-inch TV and indoor simulator lounge.

The Pinehurst Birdie House is booked for 2025, proof once again you’d better queue up quickly for golf in the Sandhills.

 

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.