Dreams Take Root in Pinehurst through U.S. Kids Golf

By Lee Pace

Dan Van Horn stood in front of a gathering of hundreds of young golfers and their parents at the awards ceremony for the U.S. Kids World Championship in late July 2025. Now 20 years into staging the largest junior golf event in the world in Pinehurst every summer, Van Horn harkened to the kernel of an idea hatched in his Atlanta home some three decades ago.

“My dream was to help my kids play golf,” said Van Horn, president and founder of U.S. Kids Golf. “We started with a line of equipment in 1995. Then we had our first tournament in 2000. We started with a dream and a vision here in Pinehurst, and we try to make it grow and get better every year.”

U.S. Kids began staging its marquee events in Pinehurst in 2006 and the two events — one for golfers 5-to-12 years old and the second for 13-to-18 on seven Sandhills area courses — have evolved into a bedrock of the Sandhills’ golf and hospitality calendar. More than 700 golfers and their families descend on the community for the first week and more than 1,500 the second week. The opening parade through the Village of Pinehurst resembles the Olympic tradition of youngsters grouped by country making a grand entrance.

“We’re proud to be at the home of American golf with all its tradition and all its great championships,” Van Horn says. “People know Pinehurst from all over the world and want to come here.”

Tom Pashley, president and CEO of Pinehurst Inc., marvels at the energy and smiling faces around the resort.

“This is truly a global championship,” he says. “They’re creating core memories for the family. Around the Thanksgiving table, around the Christmas table for years to come, they’re going to talk about that trip to Pinehurst.”

When Pinehurst hosted the 2014 U.S. Open and Women’s Open, the U.S. Kids administrative staff counted more than two dozen competitors in the two fields combined who were U.S. Kids alumni, among them Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed, Lexi Thompson, Beau Hossler, Smylie Kaufman and Maria Stackhouse.

“These kids are the future of the game,” Pashley says. “Pinehurst is over 120 years old, and we want to see the game continue to thrive. You look across the putting green those two weeks of U.S. Kids and wonder which of these 10-year-old boys or girls will be coming back to play in a U.S. Open. It’s heartwarming. We know the game is in a good place.”

Three of those promising young golfers who’ve come through U.S. Kids over the years and are forging their careers in pro golf are Akshay Bhatia, Ben Griffin, and Jackson Van Paris. All have connections to the Sandhills or the surrounding area of North Carolina.

The Bhatia family, in fact, was first attracted to North Carolina through the U.S. Kids.

Sonny and Renu Bhatia traveled from their home in Santa Clara, Calif., in 2009 so that daughter Rhea and son Akshay could play in the U.S. Kids. On the drive back to Raleigh-Durham International Airport from Pinehurst, Sonny had an idea.

“I just thought, wouldn’t it be great to come back and live here?” he said.

The Bhatias found a house in the town of Wake Forest, just north of Raleigh, and moved east in 2011. “It just felt right,” Sonny said.

Two years after the move, Akshay woke his dad up in the middle of the night.

“He came into my bedroom when I was sleeping: ‘Dad, I have a question,’” Sonny recalls. “I said, ‘Akshay, why do you have a question now? It’s 2 in the morning!’

“He wanted to know, ‘How do you become the best in the world?’”

Akshay used that drive to skip college and go straight from high school to the PGA Tour in 2019. So far, he’s had two PGA Tour wins, a dozen Top 10s and more than $11 million in winnings and is only 23 years old.

“I started loving golf when we moved to North Carolina,” Akshay says. “I liked being outside, and I wasn’t a big kid, so I appreciated there was no contact. I wore my golf clothes to school so I could go straight to the course. Everyone knew me as the golf kid.”

Griffin traveled from Chapel Hill to Pinehurst in 2009, ’10 and ’11, winning the 14 division the second year and the 15-18 division the following year.

“Ben had quite a run in Pinehurst,” says his dad, Cowan Griffin, who caddied for his son all three years. “It was a perfect environment to learn what competitive golf was all about. You were around class acts. The U.S. Kids produced a young man that respected his opponent, was courteous and kind, you treat each other fairly. You’re honest. It promotes just a slew of great traits for your future.”

More than a decade later with his son among the elite of the pro golf tour, Cowan thinks back on that three-year run and enjoys the reflections.

He chuckles at the memory of taking Ben to Pinehurst No. 6 in 2009 and having no idea that parents generally caddied for their children in U.S. Kids events. He dashed to the Belk store in Southern Pines for shorts, sneakers and golf shirts. He remembers Ben asking and Cowan refusing to answer where Ben stood through 16 holes in the final round in 2010 at No. 8, then being gratified to see the boy refocus, birdie the par-5 17th and win by one. He marvels at having watched Ben’s creative recovery shots on No. 2 in collecting the older boys’ division title in 2011.

“Ben was a real gritty player, and if he got in any trouble, he could manipulate his hands and make the ball hook or cut or go straight up in the air, almost like Phil Mickelson-type hands,” Cowan says. “Anywhere he was, he had an answer. On one hole on No. 2, the green was going away from him, and somehow he hit into a crest, which killed the ball, and it trickled down by the hole.”

As the U.S. Kids Teen World Championship was being run in early August 2025, Griffin was an hour away, teeing it up on the PGA Tour in Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, shooting four rounds in the 60s and finishing in a tie for 11th. He was seventh on the money list with $8.1 million. His story is all the more remarkable given that he took a year away from competitive golf in 2020-21 to let the Covid-19 shutdown run its course, find some new financial backing and recharge his batteries.

“It’s been an incredible journey, but since I’ve come back to golf, I’ve put my mind to being one of the top players in the game, getting into the majors, getting into contention and winning on the PGA Tour,” says Griffin, 29. “I’ve checked a lot of those boxes now, but I have to continue to keep the pedal down.”

Todd and Jana Van Paris were living in Lake Forest, Ill., in 2008 when they brought 5-year-old Jackson to Pinehurst for the U.S. Kids for the 6-and-under group. That started an eight-year run of Jackson finishing in the Top 10 of each age group as he graduated through.

Todd credits the U.S. Kids structure as giving his son a competitive outlet from a young age.

“Even at a very young age, Jackson has always been super-hyper competitive in everything,” Todd says. “He just had a real drive competitively. If it was just going out and playing golf for fun, he would never have developed a real passion for golf. U.S. Kids is one of the only platforms at a very young age where kids can actually compete. It allowed him to set goals and test his game against other players from all over the world.”

Through annual trips to the Sandhills for the U.S. Kids, the Van Parises made new friends and business contacts and eventually moved south and settled in at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst. Jackson’s last hole in U.S. Kids competition came in 2016 at Pinehurst No. 8, and father and son were captured by a photographer in a warm embrace in the golden glow of dusk.

“That’s a great photo, I think of it often,” Todd says. “That was the culmination of between 120 to 150 tournaments, somewhere around 600 hours of dedicated, quality time together to develop a unique, unbreakable bond. A bond forged through all the joy, frustration and life lessons this game teaches, especially in competition. Lessons of integrity, emotional control, concentration, sportsmanship and physical perseverance for both the player and the caddie.

“All of that comes through U.S. Kids. I am grateful Jackson had those opportunities.”

Van Paris finished his college golf career at Vanderbilt in the spring of 2025 and left college ranked No. 5 in the PGA Tour U. He is now playing the Korn Ferry Tour and had made two cuts in his first six events with nearly $12,000 in earnings.

Bhatia, Griffin and Van Paris—the three of the stories underlining the organization’s marketing tagline: “U.S. Kids: Golf starts here.”

 

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.