Pinehurst Golf Officials Betting Facelift Reverses 13% Decline in Visitors
The Renovated Hole 13 at Pinehurst
Pinehurst Resort via Bloomberg
The renovated Hole 13 of the No. 2 course at Pinehurst includes a natural bunker edge and sandy rough.
The renovated Hole 13 of the No. 2 course at Pinehurst includes a natural bunker edge and sandy rough. Source: Pinehurst Resort via Bloomberg
The Renovated Hole 1 at Pinehurst
Pinehurst Resort via Bloomberg
The renovated Hole 1 of the No. 2 course at Pinehurst Resort is seen in an aerial photo.
The renovated Hole 1 of the No. 2 course at Pinehurst Resort is seen in an aerial photo. Source: Pinehurst Resort via Bloomberg
Pinehurst Resort’s No. 2 course didn’t get the financial boost its owner expected after hosting the 2005 U.S. Open. Over the next four years, visits by casual golfers fell 13 percent.
To reverse the decline after New Zealand’s Michael Campbell won his only major at the Pinehurst, North Carolina, course six years ago, Bob Dedman Jr., the resort’s chief executive officer, hired Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore to restore the 104-year-old layout to its original Donald Ross design at a cost of $2.5 million.
“Our hope is to attract more and more golfers to the resort,” Dedman, 53, said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t do this very lightly.”
The number of golfers who visited the course -- where about 35,000 rounds are played annually -- dropped by about 5,000 from 2005 to 2009. Over the same period, rounds played at public courses in the U.S. fell 2.7 percent, according to the National Golf Foundation.
Dedman declined to provide financial details about the decline.
The course, where Payne Stewart won the 1999 U.S. Open before dying in a plane crash four months later, has slipped in Golf Digest magazine’s ranking of the top U.S. courses. By 2010, it was No. 32, down 13 spots in three years. It had been in the Top 10 as recently as 2002.
The renovation required the resort in Sandhills, about an hour’s drive south of Raleigh, to shut down No. 2 for four months. To restore the course, 26 acres of grass was stripped out and 700 sprinklers removed. Rough was replaced by sandy waste areas and fairways hardened by less watering.
‘Wow Factor’
The U.S. Golf Association was consulted at every stage, because the course is scheduled to stage the U.S. Open championships for men and women a week apart in 2014.
“Now I think you’ve got the wow factor,” USGA Executive Director Mike Davis said. “Aesthetically, it’s a huge change.”
Crenshaw and Coore reviewed photographs from the 1940s and Ross’s writings from Pinehurst’s Tufts Archives before beginning work.
The No. 2 course, which costs as much as $410 to play, had over the years been transformed into a layout with wiry Bermuda rough lining each fairway, removing a number of Ross’s strategic intentions, Crenshaw said.
“Bermuda was allowed to grow almost wall to wall,” said Crenshaw, the 1995 Masters Tournament winner.
Now Pinehurst has two lengths of grass -- fairway and green. Where there used to be rough, there is hard sand, pine straw and wiregrass. Over 100,000 sprigs of wiregrass, which grows in long tufts, were planted along fairways.
Hidden Subtleties
“We spent the last 25 years growing grass,” Dedman said. “And when it’s covered up like that, you don’t see the subtleties he intended.”
Natural bunker edges were re-established, said Crenshaw, so that a number of traps now blend into sandy waste areas, allowing players to hit shots from them as if in the fairway.
The course’s signature “turtleback” greens were also re- sodded with bent grass, with minor changes made to the 15th and 17th greens to allow more pin positions.
Even though the landing areas of some fairways are now 50 yards wide, compared with less than 30 yards before, the course remains difficult for top professionals while improving its appeal to the everyday golfer, Crenshaw said.
Firm, Fast Fairways
By using only a main sprinkler line down the middle of each fairway, the course also will use about 30 percent less water. The lack of moisture will allow well-placed drives to travel further down fairways, while errant shots will bound into sandy areas, Crenshaw said.
“We wanted to let Mother Nature have a hand in how the course is played again,” Dedman said. “Firm and fast with larger fairways and no rough. It will play much different.”
New tees were added to eight holes, increasing the yardage to 7,485 from 7,214 when Campbell won in 2005.
Dedman sold ClubCorp Inc., which had been built by his late father into the world’s largest owner of golf courses, clubs and resorts, to KSL Capital Partners LLC in 2006 for more than $1.8 billion. His family bought Pinehurst in 1984 and retained the resort in the sale, which included closely held KSL assuming $600 million of debt.
Dedman said business was hurt by the economic crisis of 2008, which curtailed golf travel and corporate outings.
“We made the decision at a very tough time to reinvest in No. 2,” he said. “But I think time will tell that it was one of the best decisions we’ve made for the next 50 to 100 years.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Buteau in Pinehurst, North Carolina at Or mbuteau@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net
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