Pinehurst No.2

Gunnar Kobin

Apr 19

4 min read

Updated: Oct 12

Do not play Pinehurst No.2 in winter

The logistics gods were not on my side. Of the four Pinehurst courses I had on the schedule — Nos. 2, 4, 8, and 10 — the most iconic got booked for day one. No practice round. No easy warm-up on something friendlier. Jet-lagged off a flight from Europe, cold March morning, and the first tee I saw was the first tee at No. 2. If I had known better, I would have lobbied harder to move it to day three.

The second surprise came when I actually looked at the course. It was brown.

I know what you're thinking — it was March, of course it was brown. But I had not expected it, and more importantly, the other courses in the Southern Pines area I played that week were not. They were green. Overseeded, cheerful, looking like golf is supposed to look. No. 2 has made a point of not doing that. They let the bermuda go dormant in winter, keep the fairways firm and fast and a slightly embarrassing shade of tan, and the whole course takes on the look of a faded postcard. Purists love it. I spent most of the front nine trying to decide whether I loved it too, or whether I was just talking myself into loving it because of the green-fee receipt in my pocket.

The course doesn't look hard when you stand on the first tee. It looks almost unfinished. After the Coore and Crenshaw restoration about fifteen years ago, most of the rough was stripped out and replaced with sandy waste areas, pine straw, and wiregrass. From the tee it reads like a driving range that somebody forgot to mow. Wide fairways, no trouble visible, no water anywhere on the property apart from a token creek. You think: okay, this is fine. I'll figure this out.

Then you hit your approach to the first green and it trickles off the back edge into a collection area that looks like it was designed by a golfer with a personal grudge.

The greens are crowned. Not subtly crowned. Not gently convex. They are upturned bowls with the rims shaved down, and the land around them slopes gently away in every direction. A shot that lands two yards short of the flag rolls off the front. A shot that lands two yards long rolls off the back. A shot that lands pin-high but three feet left of where you aimed? Usually off the side. The margins are not what they look like on television.

I played it from around 6,500 yards, which should be civilized. From the fairway it mostly was. My driver behaved. The pines framed things nicely. But the second shot into any of those Donald Ross greens — the one that looked like a comfortable nine-iron — kept turning into a chip-and-a-prayer from 30 feet of dead grass. Day one, no warm-up, cold hands, brown everywhere: I was not at my sharpest, and the course knew it.

What saved me from total disaster was the caddie. If you have never played a course where a caddie does more than carry your bag, Pinehurst will reframe the whole concept for you. Mine had been looping there for over a decade. He read my lie, read my lies about my distances, and more than once pulled a club out of my hand and handed me a different one without discussion. I went with it. By the back nine I was just nodding. My score got better. My ego got worse.

Here is the thing nobody mentions in the glossy coverage, though. Pinehurst No. 2 is a walking course. You walk, your caddie walks, the group ahead of you walks. There are no carts chasing you down. There is no one in the group behind screaming at Alexa to play Pitbull. For someone who has now played enough resort golf in Southeast Asia and the Gulf to be actively radicalized against Bluetooth speakers on golf carts, this alone was worth a chunk of the green fee. The loudest thing I heard on the entire course was a woodpecker.

Now — is it worth the money?

Depends who you are. Green fees for resort guests are north of six hundred dollars depending on the season, plus caddie fees, plus a tip that should not be small. You are paying for the history. This is where Payne Stewart pumped his fist in 1999, where the USGA has decided to park the US Open basically forever, where Donald Ross lived and built things and died. You are paying for a piece of golf that is hard to find anywhere else. And you are paying for a course that will humble you in ways that more photogenic courses don't.

But if you are a 20-handicapper who wants to post a decent score and take pretty pictures for Instagram in front of green fairways, this is not your course. At least not in March. You will lose balls in the wiregrass. You will duff chips off tight lies you have never seen before. You will three-putt greens that look flat. You will get to the 18th and quietly wonder whether you actually like golf. That is the honest version.

For me it was worth it — even with the day-one disadvantage, even with the brown. The rest of the trip put No. 2 into sharper contrast. No. 4 is a more generous, more modern test. No. 8 is pretty in a more conventional way. No. 10 is the most fun of the four, the one that will let you hit a few good shots in a row and feel like a golfer again. No. 2 is not interested in your fun. No. 2 is a monument you pay to walk around.

The next time I go, I will book it for day three at the earliest. I will expect brown. I will aim for the middle of every green and stop trying to be clever. Ross did not build No. 2 to reward clever. He built it to reward patience and accepting your lot in life — a message I find I am more receptive to as I get older.

The greens will still be waiting. They have been waiting for over a hundred years. They are in no hurry.