It never ceases to amaze me how quickly news travels on golfclubatlas. Nice to hear that people are excited about the restoration work underway at Mid Pines. I’ve been meaning to post for a few days but have been quite busy out here. Great pics Andy. If you, or anyone else, stops by the course feel free to track me down. In addition to the Pilot article, Lee Pace (who wrote the recent Pinehurst Restoration book) also did a feature for Pinestraw Magazine that has more information on the design aspects if anyone is interested.
I’ve been lucky to have been a part of several neat restorations (Pinehurst, Pasatiempo, Cal Club, Waverley) but the opportunity here at Mid Pines is extremely exciting for me. Mid Pines became my golf “home away from home” while working on the Pinehurst #2 restoration. Because of the quality of the green complexes it became the course in the area I most hoped to work with someday. It also became an exciting side project at the Tufts Archives while researching material for #2. So it’s a dream come true to be back in Pinehurst 2 years later working once again in the Ross Sand Hills Style.
Just to expand on the key elements of the restoration from the Pilot article and hopefully answer a couple of the questions above, we hope to:
- Expand the fairways out to their original margins to re-establish Ross’s strategic options and playing angles. Hopefully we’ll also improve playability by removing select areas of trees that have encroached over the past 80 years. The entire plan was developed using a 1939 aerial photo and a number of supporting air and ground shots from 1921 onwards through the 40’s.
- Restore the original bunker style and detailing using Ross’s work at Mid Pines and in the Sand Hills region in the 1930’s as the basic template.
- Restore the sandy hardpan/wiregrass areas outside the maintained turf limits. Ross always intended Mid Pines to be a slightly shorter/tighter course than #2 so the open sandy areas will not be quite as expansive as those at Pinehurst. But there will still be plenty of them. Hopefully Mid Pines will have a nice vibe of its own.
- We will also be expanding the green edges back out to their original margins to reestablish lost Ross hole locations. As is common among older courses (particularly with Bermuda) many of the greens margins have shrunk 5-10 feet over time resulting in the loss of key hole locations.
- Steve had a great question on the greens restorations in general. Just to expand on the brief summary in the article we are doing extremely little to the greens. I’m as big of a fan of these greens as anyone – it’s part of the reason why I wanted to do this project. In a perfect world we wouldn’t touch them at all. Unfortunately, however, a couple of Ross’s original greens have been redesigned by previous ownership groups so we will be restoring them as closely as possible to the originals.
We will also be doing some subtle work to small sections of a few greens to re-establish a few of Ross’s key hole locations that no longer exist -- but nothing extensive. For example the front of the 1st and 7th greens originally featured two of the better hole locations on the front nine. We will be restoring those as part of the greens work this summer.
Overall we hope to restore the look, feel, and shot making options that Ross intended. As mentioned if anyone is in town and wants to pop in to see the work let me know!
Cheers and Happy Holidays,
Kyle Franz