The Coincidental Resort
The eyes of the sports and golf worlds will be upon Pinehurst the third week in June. The largesse of the Sandhills golf community will evoke awe and interest from across the nation and the world.
The eyes of the sports and golf worlds will be upon Pinehurst the third week in June. The largesse of the Sandhills golf community will evoke awe and interest from across the nation and the world.
It’s been 10 years since the last U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. What’s different about the golf course and infrastructure in one decade? So much. But then again, so little.
“Getting the No. 6 job was a major step for us in the golf-design business,” Tom Fazio says of the mid-1970s assignment to build the resort’s first course away from its core operation in the Village of Pinehurst. “There was next-to-nothing new built in 1974 and ’75. Then the call came from Pinehurst.”
Tom Doak was bitten by the golf bug as a youngster growing up in Stamford, Conn., first playing a local municipal course and then tagging along on his father’s business trips to esteemed golf destinations like Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, Harbour Town and Pinehurst.
A.B. Hardee was going to bring the ocean to the Sandhills. He was going to build a lake and a dam and install a wave-making machine on some swampy property in northeast Moore County. You could ride the waves on the lake, then play an Ellis Maples golf course around the lake.
“Our relationship with CCNC is centered around Donald Ross and the Pinehurst area,” Macrae says. “The recently developed relationship between the Royal Burgh of Dornoch and Pinehurst will provide even more opportunities for the two communities to share their history through golf and friendship.”
This area of south-central North Carolina has deep Scottish roots dating to the 1700s, when droves of Scottish emigrants fled the Highlands to the shores of North Carolina and moved up the Cape Fear River and its tributaries inland to the pine forests of Moore County. They found land for the taking and plentiful game for hunting.