Fresh Greens: New Putting Surfaces at Pinehurst No. 4

By Lee Pace

Golfers visiting Pinehurst Resort in the fall of 2025 will have the opportunity of playing Pinehurst No. 4 on a freshly laid surface of Tif-Eagle Bermuda grass greens. An escalation of quality control issues over several years prompted the resort in mid-May to close the course for three months, resurface the greens and get the course open again in early August.

2019 U.S. Amateur

Pinehurst No. 4 has one of the most varied and interesting histories of all the courses at Pinehurst, which has 10 courses open with an 11th on the way and scheduled to open in the fall of 2027.

• 1919 – Original Donald Ross layout opens.
• 1936 – Difficult economic times force closing of nine holes.
• 1939 – Remaining nine holes closed.
• 1950 – Nine new holes open, designed by Richard Tufts, grandson of the resort founder and at the time president of Pinehurst Inc.
• 1953 – New eighteen-hole routing completed.
• 1973 – Course lengthened and renovated by Robert Trent Jones in preparation for the course serving as the second course with No. 2 for the one-off World Open on the PGA Tour.
• 1983 – Rees Jones rebuilds the greens to accommodate longer shots instituted by his father a decade earlier.

The result was a soup kettle of Ross, Tufts and the Jones family.

“It had become a hybrid of designers and ideas with no thread to tie it all together,” Pat Corso, Pinehurst’s president and CEO from 1987-2004, said in 1998.

Ergo the resort’s decision to hire Tom Fazio to essentially blow it up and build a new course on the same piece of ground. The new No. 4 that opened in December 1999 was routed through essentially the same corridors as the earlier course, but holes were rearranged, and Fazio integrated a British flavor of a myriad of pot bunkers as a nod of the cap to Ross, the Scottish designer whose famed No. 2 course sat next door.

The course also embraced the design flavor of the era: It was green and it had smooth, soft edges, and there were flower beds in several nooks and crannies, most notably the slopes around the green of the par-three fourth hole.

All of that was fine until 2011, when No. 2 was given a new set of bones and coat of paint courtesy the design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The Deuce had also become sleek and glossy in the golf world’s creep toward the standards set by Augusta National. Don Padgett II, the Pinehurst president and COO at the time, slammed on the brakes and charged Coore and Crenshaw to return the club’s pride and joy to its sandy, linksy, disheveled self that Ross had molded with his native Scotland in mind.

Gil Hanse

The more No. 2 was embraced over five years from the context of visuals, playability, maintenance and fidelity toward Pinehurst’s past, the more No. 4 paled by comparison. Thus the decision in 2016 by Pinehurst owner Bob Dedman Jr. and Tom Pashley, who succeeded Padgett in 2014, to hire Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner to rebuild No. 4. The course closed in October 2017 and Hanse set about his facelift, his sleeping quarters over the winter being the Ross Cottage by the third green of No. 2. The new course opened in September 2018.

“It all started with Coore & Crenshaw,” Hanse says. “They were brought in to bring back the character and to restore the sandy waste areas and Ross’s vision for what Carolina Sandhills golf looks like. We’ve carried that a little further in this presentation. It’s not a tribute course to Ross or course No. 2. But we feel it will be a good companion golf course.”

The corridors from the old course were used but several shifts in holes were made. Two of the par-threes were altered substantially. The green on the fourth hole was moved from well below the tee and beside the lake to a higher elevation further to the left, with a sharp slope now cascading to the right toward the water. The sixth green was elevated and substantial sandscaping integrated around it. The old 12th hole was abandoned in favor of a new par-three built into the woods sitting in a triangle between the previous seventh, 10th and 11th holes.

“The characteristic about No. 4 that is most special is the land. It has some of the most dramatic contours on the entire site,” Hanse says. “On No. 2, holes four and five and 13 and 14 are the most dramatic in terms of topography. I think we have eight or nine that have that element. That gives us the opportunity to create very dramatic landscaping and more picturesque landscaping. The new course has something of the
look and feel of No. 2 and returns a more natural connection to the landscape.”

Andy Ogletree, 2019 U.S. Amateur Champion

The course was cited as “Best New Course You Can Play” by GOLF Magazine in 2018 and was the match-play venue for the 2019 U.S. Amateur. Pinehurst No. 4 also hosted the morning round of the U.S. Amateur championship match. Pinehurst No. 2 hosted the afternoon round marking the first time ever the USGA used two courses to stage the final match.

As time evolved, course maintenance officials noticed the greens, planted with the same Champion Bermuda grass that was used on No. 2, at times didn’t drain quite as well as hoped and some areas didn’t green-up during the warm-weather months as they should.

One telling moment to Farren in the spring of 2025 was noticing the difference in the quality of the putting surface on the eighth green of No. 4 and the 10th green of No. 2, which are less than 100 yards apart.

“The same microclimate, the same protocol of management as the greens on No. 2, but the quality of the green on No. 2 was much better,” says Bob Farren, director of golf course management at Pinehurst. “We made a determination that it was best to start over with the greens.”

The sub-structures were totally rebuilt and the greens sodded with Tif-Eagle, the strain now used on No. 8 and No. 10 and planned for No. 11.

“Thank goodness for Bob Dedman and his commitment to a quality experience at Pinehurst,” Farren says. “He had no hesitation and allowed us to make a decision and act quickly. We hate that some guests who had No. 4 on their bucket list this summer were not able to play the course. But it was the best decision for the long-term.”

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.