Pinehurst Resort Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

World Golf Hall of Fame to move back to Pinehurst in 2024

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 04:45:00 +0000

By Tod Leonard
North Carolina State Senator Tom McInnis stood at the podium on Wednesday at the Pinehurst Resort’s famed Carolina Hotel and, with voice booming, sounded like a pastor at the pulpit. He was dramatically heaping praise on the announcement made just a few minutes before that the World Golf Hall of Fame was returning to its birthplace.

“There was great sorrow, tears in my eyes, when I first learned the Golf Hall of Fame was leaving the cradle of American golf,” said McInnis, a Pinehurst member, of the hall’s 1998 move from North Carolina to Florida. “I don’t know why it happened. … And the Good Lord always tells us everything happens for a reason. When one door closes, another opens. Today, our doors open.”

Hyberbole aside, it was a milestone day for golf in Carolina’s sandhills region. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, State Representative Jamie Boles and McInnis were on hand, joining USGA CEO Mike Whan and World Golf Foundation CEO Greg McLaughlin, for the official announcement that the World Golf Hall of Fame will move from St Augustine, Florida, to Pinehurst and open in 2024. The scaled-down version of the hall will occupy the second floor of the new seven-acre campus the USGA is building to complement its headquarters in Liberty Corner, New Jersey

World Golf Hall of Fame moved to St Augustine in 1998. That will close with the move back to Pinehurst in 2024. Jeff Greenberg

The new hall will be independently operated by the WGF, but the collaboration with the USGA is seen as a way to benefit both agencies. The hall will be buoyed by the one million golfers who visit the Pinehurst area each year, as well as the influx of fans from the numerous USGA championships that will be contested over the next 25 years at a venue the USGA has identified as an anchor site. Not coincidentally, the next Hall of Fame induction will be held in 2024 on the Tuesday of US Open week at Pinehurst No. 2.

“The World Golf Hall of Fame started here 50 years ago, and like a lot of people from the East Coast, it spent a little time in Florida, got some time in the sun and enjoyed it, and now is returning home,” Whan said with a smile.

It was an ambitious, and some would say audacious, idea by the owners of the Pinehurst Resort to open up a World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. Though Pinehurst had hosted USGA championships since 1962 and was something of a destination for golfers from around the world, it was still a small, forested spot, many miles from a major airport.

The PGA of America, which had its own hall since the 1940s, merged with and took over the operation of the Pinehurst hall in 1983 but it ultimately couldn’t make it work financially, and after the non-profit World Golf Foundation was formed in 1994, plans were made to build a new hall that opened in 1998 in St Augustine.

The World Golf Hall of Fame has been there since, but there’s been a growing sense that the location and hall itself had become dated and needed a boost.

Discussions between Whan and McLaughlin about a return to Pinehurst began last summer, and they became more substantive when it became clear that the government in North Carolina was willing to pitch in significant dollars. Nearly two years ago, the Moore County Commission unanimously approved a deal in which the USGA received an $18 million grant and 90-per cent property tax break. At the time, it was reported that local incentives could cost the county an estimated $25 million. The North Carolina General Assembly also recently awarded the USGA $7 million toward the hall project.

In return, the USGA was required to invest $5 million in the state, build at least two buildings, employ at least 50 people, hold at least one men’s championship at Pinehurst every five years and women’s championship here every 10 years.

McLaughlin said the plan is for the smaller hall to be more interactive and digitally driven for a younger audience. One popular feature that will remain are the ‘locker’ areas of the hall members.

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The long view on golf’s new fascination with short courses

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 10:27:04 +0000

The Cradle at Pinehurst is the latest example of the game embracing par-3 courses as fast, cheap and fun alternatives for golfers of all skills.

By Jaime Diaz
PINEHURST, N.C. — Is it possible that in the big picture—or at least in a present that needs adjustments—golf is better smaller? That was the feeling I got earlier this week at The Cradle, the newly opened nine-hole par-3 course at Pinehurst Resort, which, along with an adjacent and also new 75,000-square-foot practice putting green, comprises a kind of small-ball paradise.

The overall staging of The Cradle—so named because it sits on the site of the golf mecca’s original (1898) course—is pretty perfect. Its gently rolling 10 acres, designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to replicate the sandy, love-grass-accented look of the famed No. 2 course, complete with dramatically undulating greens, is set directly outside the main clubhouse and veranda. With the holes averaging 87 yards (the longest is 127 yards and the shortest 58), most golfers will only need a few clubs in a carry bag.

Not only are the shots short, so is the time required to play them, usually less than an hour for a foursome. The all-day rate of $50 is also proportionately modest. In this era of power and par 5s nearly as long as The Cradle’s 789 yards, small can be beautiful.

Of course, championship golf has to be big—in its footprint and in providing holes muscular enough to sufficiently challenge the players who hit the ball so much longer than ever.

But even at the top levels of the game, there are signs of a new appreciation for the more artful strokes. Jordan Spieth has shown how superior wedge play can overcome bigger hitters, while the improvement of PGA Tour Player of the Year Justin Thomas and current World No. 1 Dustin Johnson can in large measure be attributed to their focusing on their proficiency near and on the green. There’s no denying that the little shots count the same as the big ones, and on firm and fast major championship setups, sometimes more.

With so many regulation 18-hole courses struggling to connect with a customer base in economic and cultural flux, par 3s means faster, cheaper and friendlier.

Accordingly, the short par 3 has been getting more attention. As it always is when the Open Championship is at Royal Troon, the 123-yard “Postage Stamp” was a star in 2016 for its genius setting and design. And at the recent Walker Cup, the 15th hole at Los Angeles C.C. North was daringly shortened to 78 yards and drew praise for its shot making challenge.

Why are these holes almost as much fun to spectate as they are to play? Because there is a purity of technique, athleticism and skill over a short distance that touring pros exhibit with the wedges. For all the talk of power, the game is still foremost about ball control. That’s never more evident than with the precision required with the most lofted irons. The crispness of the sound, the flushness of contact, the fizzing of the flight, the penetrating (not ballooning) trajectory (what Paul Azinger, one of the best wedge players ever, calls “integrity”), makes up a medley that, to me, defines a pro’s gift better than any other part of the game. In Azinger’s case, it was the foundational skill, as his instructor, the late John Redman, believed a golfer who could execute a proper pitch shot by definition possessed the essentials of a sound swing.

David Cannon/R&A
On Saturday at the Walker Cup, LA North’s par-3 15th played a mere 78 yards, but remained a challenge.

You could make the argument that playing short par 3s builds more competency for the recreational golfer trying to improve than blasting away with the longer clubs. All the more because pitch-and-putts give him or her a better opportunity to go out and play. With so many regulation 18-hole courses struggling to connect with a customer base in economic and cultural flux, par 3s means faster, cheaper and friendlier.

Even at prestigious private clubs, a par 3 is often the most popular course with the members. The par 3 at Augusta National, built in 1958, has always been a big hit, and in the last 20 years more clubs like the Olympic Club, Hamilton Farms, Sand Valley and Colorado Golf Club have added well-designed and maintained par 3s.

The Cradle follows a trend of alternative course openings in 2017, with the new Jordan Spieth-backed six-hole course at the University of Texas, Tom Doak’s 12-hole par 3 at Ballyneal, and Dan Hixson nine-hole pitch-and-putt at Silvies Valley Ranch.

You may note a bias toward par 3s in my commentary. Like a lot of guys my age, my first rounds were on scruffy short courses, in my case the Fleming Nine at Harding Park and Golden Gate G.C., both in San Francisco, both enduring jewels from the city’s golfing heyday.

I’ve also seen a big appetite for pitch-and-putts overseas. They can be found in a bunch of little towns in Ireland, usually teeming with an informally dressed crowd whose members tend to nonchalantly pull off very useful bump and runs. And when the Open was held at Muirfield in 2013, the so-called children’s course next to the west course at North Berwick was a big hit with visiting American pros and their families.

Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort
The Cradle’s nine holes average 87 yards with the longest hole playing 127 yards.

To me, a good par-3 course works on many levels besides just the price and the pace. A little funkiness in design and even conditioning is a plus, as the capriciousness invites improvisation. The mood should be informal and promote a hint of relaxed raucousness.

Sure, the American hunger for optimization has started a trend toward par 3s for the golfer who has everything. Such courses can be pricey, too penal to avoid slow play, and over spectacular topography that isn’t ideal for walking. There have been a few such creations.

But done right, a high end par 3 can become destination golf. And several at major resorts have pulled off that “you’ve got to play the par 3” allure. The 13-hole Preserve at Bandon Dunes by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw is thrilling. So is the short course at the Colorado G.C. by the same team.

The Cradle has immediately joined this club, and may even jump to head of the class. Hanse and Wagner have found a delicate balance between playability for the beginner to average golfer, with difficulty that will challenge and delight the better player. There are no water hazards or unplayable areas, and on most holes the tee shot can be bounced in. But getting the ball close means landing the ball precisely and with some spin, and getting up and down from off the green requires a bit of delicacy. Junior golfers who go round and round The Cradle (it’s free for kids 17 or under when accompanied by an adult) will develop a nuanced feel for the scoring part of the game. As for the kind of single-digit sticks that flock to Pinehurst, teams of them will fill the course in the shadowy early evening, perhaps a cocktail in hand, but also fueled by an obsession to conquer a first-class golfing challenge.

“I was trying to find the fun,” said Hanse, who shaped both The Cradle and the new putting green, named Thistle Dhu and inspired by the humpy undulations of the vast Himalayas putting course at St. Andrews, which it exceeds in size but not in cost [it’s free]. “All of it is right out the front door, so it sets a tone of the game truly being enjoyed. I want to hear some yell, for great shots, crazy bounces, holes in one. I want people sitting outside the clubhouse to kind of bask in this great scene. I hope it just reinforces that true golf spirit that is such a part of Pinehurst.”

And which beautifully small courses like The Cradle will spread.

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