Pinehurst No.10
Updated: Oct 12
Pinehurst No.10 is most fun course in the resort
After the pasting I took at No. 2 on day one, the idea of another Pinehurst round felt slightly ominous. I had a quiet expectation that every course at this resort was going to be a dressed-up version of the same experience — tight lies, crowned greens, sandy waste, and slow erosion of my self-respect. By the time we got to Pinehurst No.10 on day three, I was mentally braced for another walk through the pines wearing a defeated grin.
Pinehurst No. 10 is not that.
The first thing you notice is that it isn't even at Pinehurst. Well — it is, technically. It belongs to the resort. But it sits on a separate property about fifteen minutes' drive from the main village, built on the bones of what used to be a sand quarry called The Pit. There is a small, standalone clubhouse. Your caddies are waiting there. There's no cross-pollination with the other nine courses. You drive out, you play, you drive back. If you were expecting to roll from the first tee of No. 2 to the first tee of No. 10 on foot, think again.
The second thing you notice is the land. I had been told No. 10 had elevation. I was not prepared for what that actually meant after two days of pancake-flat Ross layouts. You stand on the first tee and the fairway falls away from you. You stand on later tees and the fairway climbs, or tumbles, or bends around the remnants of old mining scars that Tom Doak and his team left in place and made into features. For someone playing Pinehurst for the first time, No. 10 is the course that will not fit your preconceptions.
The third thing you notice is how much of it there is. The routing is enormous. You could fit another eighteen holes on this property and nobody would be stepping on each other. Holes are long, fairways are hilariously wide, and the walks from green to tee are sometimes a genuine trek. On most resort courses I have played lately, you can hear the group on the next fairway discussing where to eat lunch. On Pinehurst No. 10 you feel like you have a piece of the Sandhills to yourself for the afternoon. That sense of space is not a small part of why the round is so pleasant.
Doak's philosophy is different from Ross's, and you feel it immediately. Ross at No. 2 designs around the green — the entire hole is about where you place your approach so that the green doesn't spit you back out. Doak at No. 10 designs around options. You can take aggressive lines off the tee and be rewarded, or you can bail safely and still have a reasonable shot in. The greens are enormous. Big, rolling, multi-tiered surfaces that you can actually hit. Then, once you're on them, you realize the putting is harder than it looked. The contour moves you around. A thirty-foot putt up a tier and across a slope is not a birdie try, it's a par-save attempt. But at least your ball is on the green, which after No. 2 felt like a holiday in itself.
It was also the first course of the trip where I hit a few shots in a row that I actually liked. Nothing clears the head quite like a couple of well-struck irons after two days of flubs. I remember the middle stretch in particular — a short par four where I finally got the release right, and a hole where the tee shot finds a landing area you can actually see, which is a genuinely underrated pleasure in golf.
I took a cart. Most people on Pinehurst No. 10 do — the course is big enough that walking it turns into a real undertaking, and unlike No. 2, carts are the norm rather than the exception. Which brings me to the one sour note of an otherwise excellent round. Somewhere in the group ahead of us, a Bluetooth loudspeaker was doing its thing. You could hear it across two fairways. Eventually I flagged down the marshall and asked him about it. His answer was that this is apparently the new trend in America, and there is not much anyone can do about it.
I suggested, politely, that there is in fact something you can do about it, and that is to kick those people off the course. He smiled the smile of a man who has had this conversation before. I do not think my suggestion is going to be adopted. But I stand by it. There is nothing stopping Pinehurst from writing a no-speakers rule onto the scorecard, handing it out at the clubhouse, and enforcing it. Every other civilised sport has noise rules. Golf used to be one of them.
Is it worth the money? Yes, with an asterisk.
No. 10's green fee is in the same neighbourhood as No. 2's — five hundred-plus dollars depending on the season. You are paying for the newest course on the property, on a piece of land that is genuinely rare for this region. You are paying for Doak, who does not build bad golf courses. And you are paying for a round that will remind you why you like this game, rather than one that quietly asks whether you should take up tennis.
The asterisk is that No. 10 is, by design, more fun than it is serious. It is not trying to host a US Open. It is not trying to crown the best golfer in the group. It is trying to give everyone at the resort a good day, and it succeeds. If what you want from a round is a genuine test of your nerves and your short game, No. 2 is still the one. If what you want is a round you will talk about warmly over dinner, No. 10 is the one.
For a trip plan, I would not flip the order I had, but I would protect it. Play No. 2 in the middle somewhere, not on day one. Play No. 10 later in the trip, as a palate cleanser. No. 4 and No. 8 are good buffers in between. By the time we got to No. 10 I needed it, and the course seemed to understand that without being asked.
Of the four Pinehurst courses I played, No. 10 was the one I enjoyed most — and the one I find myself thinking about in the way where you rehearse the shots in your head. The par three with the fall-away green. The blind tee shot over the ridge. The putt I left about eight feet short because I completely misread the tier. Courses that get into your head like that are not common. Pinehurst has one of them now, and it isn't the one on the postcards.
Read also: Mid Pines Golf Club
Read also: Southern Pines Golf Club
Read also: Pinehurst No.2
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