If you could play 3 of the Pinehurst courses...

[Evan_Green]

Please forgive me if this has been covered before...but my question is:

If you could play 3 of the Pinehurst Resort courses... which would they be? (not including any of the area courses not connected to the Pinehurst Resort).

Obviously #2...

Which other 2 courses??

Thank you

[Brad Tufts]

Evan,

If I was limited to two of the resort courses after #2, i'd play #8 again (already played it once, lacked identity, but it was pretty good), and I'd try #1, the "original" course on the property (shortish, "Pinehurst" greens).  #6 is the newly redone Fazio which could be interesting to try.

If I was doing the overall recommending, I'd play Pine Needles and Mid Pines over #8 and #1, but that might not be what you are looking for.

-Brad

[Philip Spogard]

Ewan,

I was there a couple of years ago playing #2,7 and 8.

I can recommend #2 and 7. I was not so fond of #8. If I ever should go there again, I would play #4 instead of #8 for sure.

#8 was a little disappointing, but might have gotten better (since I was there in 2001)

None of them are bad though  

[Tim Bert]

#2 and #4 would be no-brainers for me.  I played #2,#4,#7,#8 last September, and of those four I'd pick 2,4,8 (in that order) if I could only do three.  That's from a guy that shot his best score of the trip on #7.  I don't know enough about the others to say if I'd recommend them over the ones I played.  I seriously doubt that I'd like them better than #4, but they might creep ahead of 8 and 7 if they are good enough.

[Tom_Doak]

If you want to see the next-most Ross on the property, play #3.  It's short [5800 yards or something], but it's mostly original.  Of course, there are plenty of other Ross courses in the area, and Pine Needles and Mid Pines are better than #3 ... but for that matter there are better choices in the surrounding area than any of the other Pinehurst numbers.

I haven't seen Mr. Fazio's redo of #4 or #8, so I'm not dissing his work.  However, going to Donald Ross's home to play modern courses makes about as much sense to me as going to Scotland to play inland courses.  Club Corp is all about name brands and Tom Fazio is one of the biggest, but CCA are about the only guys in America which didn't recognize the value of Ross as a name brand, and essentially ceded it to their local competition.  I would have taken one of their other Ross courses and hired someone to jazz it up in the spirit of a Ross restoration.

[Jeff_Mingay]

No one's mentioned Tobacco Road yet.

[BCrosby]

Play nos. 3 and 4. They at least feel like Pinehurst.

No. 8 is not a good course.

Bob

[Tim Bert]

I'm certainly no Donald Ross expert, but I would echo the above comment that #4 still at least maintains some Pinehurst feel and I think it is a good course.  It's at least a second cousin to #2.  I thought the greens on #4 had the closest feel to the #2 greens.

Like it or not, #8 has a completely different feel than the rest of the resort.

[Bill_McBride]

Tobacco Road made for an interesting contrast to Mid Pines and Pine Needles!

[Evan_Green]

We're going to play Pine Needles , Mid Pines & Tobacco Road while there- just wanted to see which Pinehurst courses were worth playing.

Tom - what you said made a lot of sense- Pinehurst = Donald Ross- it makes sense to play as many Ross courses as possible while there.

[Ian Andrew]

Evan,

You can go wrong with Pine Needles and Mid Pines. Mid Pines is a personal favourite to me, not overly hard, but lots of fun.