Recalling
a stay in the balmy air of Santa Cruz, California, course architect Alister MacKenzie
admitted he had “always wanted to live where one could practice shots in one’s
pajamas before breakfast.”
It
seemed an uncharacteristically impish remark for the sober-minded Scotsman, but
it came to mind one early morning as I peered through louvers at the empty
practice tee smack outside my ground-floor room in the Ross Lodge of the Pine
Needles resort. At this peaceful but golf-obsessed refuge, if you open a sliding
glass door and walk 10 steps in your slippers you can strike an iron shot or two
before your night’s sleep is fully dispatched.
This
spring is by any measure a time of reawakening for Pine Needles. The North
Carolina resort’s beloved 1928-vintage Donald Ross golf course—which underwent a
wall-to-wall renovation last summer by a team under the direction of Scottsdale
course designer John Fought—has embarked, to warm reviews, on its first full
season of a new era, with plenty of maturation time built in before it plays
host to the 2007 U.S. Women’s Open.
For
a small dinner gathering last October, Fought (rhymes with boat) put on a slide
show explaining the careful steps and historical research his team had
undertaken prior to the big dig. Their task was to make Pine Needles everything
it had been in the early days while giving it what it needs to charm and
challenge golfers of the post-titanium era.
The
conscience of the project was Peggy Kirk Bell, an LPGA pioneer who as resort
owner and all-around Pine Needles matriarch has played thousands of rounds on
the old Ross chestnut. Down-to-earth as ever but conscious of her Hepburn-like
status in American golf, Bell flashed a deadpan wit often during Fought’s
presentation, recounting how unceasingly she urged him to preserve hole details.
Pine
Needles, now 7,015 yards long and a 35-out, 36-in par-71, is one of those hardy,
handsome old courses that feels like it’s being pulled forward into its natural
terrain rather than plowed from behind in a grim hunt for landing areas and
greensites. Visually, it is neither harsh and jagged nor delicate and glossy.
The tee of each ensuing hole is where it ought to be, perhaps not visible from
the green you’re putting on but always just around the bend. Playing it a week
after it reopened, I found Fought’s restoration work so careful and complete
that slightly slow green speeds would have been, to a first-time visitor, the
only evidence of the overhaul.
Two
hallmarks of the Ross style are constant: hole-to-hole variety and the use of
just one or two land features to define each shot. Club in hand, the Pine
Needles golfer visualizes any number of outcomes to the stroke he is about to
play, perhaps not appreciating that these multiple eventualities are determined
by a single ridge, or bank, or natural bowl, often augmented by a man-made
hazard that may be at a fairly distant remove.
Consider
holes 11 and 12. The par-4 11th starts in a chute, plays downhill then back up,
encourages a draw on its tee shot and hides its green a bit as you approach. No.
12, also a two-shotter, calls for a slightly upslope drive to a wide landing
area with a strategic premium on keeping the tee ball to the right. The second
shot on 12 is to a green that sits just below you with its every detail in open
view.
Annika
Sorenstam and Karrie Webb are the two respective titleists from Pine Needles’
1996 and 2001 U.S. Women’s Opens. When the top female players in the world
reconvene here for the ’07 championship, they’ll find the course sharpened and
ready to test their mettle.
