The Thankful Month

“I’m not certain of this, of course, but I believe that when good golfers die (those who let faster players through and don’t lie excessively about their scores), they come to Pinehurst and are given mulligans and preferred starting times through all of eternity.”

That paragraph was written in 1991 by Ron Green, the longtime sports columnist for The Charlotte News and later The Charlotte Observer and a frequent visitor to the Sandhills. It appeared in the foreword to Pinehurst Stories, a coffee-table book published by Pinehurst Resort as part of its campaign to bring major championship golf back to the No. 2 course and reintroduce itself to the world of golf following its evolutionary hiccup of the 1970s and early ‘80s.

Pinehurst No. 2 Hole 18

For more than four decades, Green wrote a Thanksgiving Day column about what he was thankful for, both in and out of the sports world. Sadly, Green passed away in September 2024 at the age of 95. Given that November is National Gratitude Month and culminates this year with Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 28, the following is a tip of the cap to Green’s tradition and the wonders of the Sandhills golf scene.

* Be thankful for the very sand of the Sandhills. The granules prompted James Tufts in 1895 to launch a colony for those with respiratory problems, thinking that porous soil and pine-scented air would help their breathing. When that idea didn’t pan out to Tufts’ vision, he pivoted and added golf to the recreational inventory. The sand lured Scotsman Donald Ross to settle here in 1900 and build golf courses in the image of those he knew from home.

* Be thankful for the design genius not only of Ross but Ellis Maples (Dogwood at CCNC, parts of Pinehurst Nos. 3 and 5), Tom Fazio (Forest Creek North and South), Gil Hanse (Pinehurst No. 4 and The Cradle); Rees Jones (Pinehurst No. 7, Talamore), Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (Dormie Club, the No. 2 restoration); Arnold Palmer (Mid South Club), Jack Nicklaus (Pinehurst No. 9) and Tom Doak (No. 10) among them.

* For the three entrepreneurs who have owned Pinehurst, from Tufts (soda fountain apparatus and supplies), Malcom McLean (inventor of the intermodal shipping container) and Robert Dedman Sr. (country club management and ownership) and given the resort and community a level of vision and consistency unmatched in the resort and travel industries today.

* For the local golf heroes who’ve molded the industry here and beyond, from Richard Tufts (USGA president, authority on the rules of golf), Peggy Kirk Bell (LPGA founding member and owner of Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club), the Padgetts (Don Sr. and II) who had successful careers as golf pros before coming to Pinehurst and leading the resort’s ascension to a four-time U.S. Open venue, with more to come.

* For the amateur golfers who so relished their frequent trips to Pinehurst for the North & South competitions and other events, guys like Bill Campbell, Billy Joe Patton, Harvie Ward, Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Paul Simson and so many more, gals like Peggy Bell, Babe Zaharias, Glenna Collett and Estelle Lawson Page.

Village Chapel

* For the landmark moments — Ben Hogan’s first professional golf win in 1940, Payne Stewart’s epic putt in 1999, Bryson DeChambeau’s bunker shot in 2024, Denny Shute’s win in the 1936 PGA Championship and the United States’ dominance in the 1951 Ryder Cup.

* For the native wiregrass, a perennial bunchgrass found in scrub, pinelands and coastal uplands that is scattered around the perimeters of many of the Sandhills’ golf holes and offers an interesting and challenging recovery beyond rank-and-file Bermuda rough.

* For the village master plan from the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted featuring broad, winding streets with no right-angle intersections and walkways nestled in thick foliage, a look that exists unspoiled today.

* For the Village Chapel, which sits at the base of the Village Green and emanates through the Coe Memorial Carillon music throughout the day. “You hear the bells, and you know you’re in Pinehurst,” says Ben Crenshaw.

* For the historical artifacts presented, cultivated and maintained so well at the Tufts Archives in the Village of Pinehurst, the USGA Experience Building and the hallways of the Carolina Hotel and the Pinehurst Resort clubhouse.

* For Carolina Vista, the two-block avenue leading to the Carolina Hotel through a canopy of towering pines and holly tree, the famous cupola and copper roof atop the four-story hotel glistening in the late afternoon sun.

* For the skirl of bagpipes on the front lawn of the Carolina Hotel, the rocking chairs, the afternoon tea, the bellhops who open the door and say, “Welcome back.”

Indeed, be thankful for all of it. As the Scottish golf pro Tommy Armour said when waxing eloquently about the village and its golf courses: “I have seen strangers, jaded and dull, come to Pinehurst and after a few days be changed into entirely delightful fellows.”

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.