A couple of clarifications. The connector hole between the fourth green and the 15th tee is not a recovered lost hole but rather an entirely new hole. There was previously a hole in the general area but laid out in a different direction to provide for a 9 hole loop (1-4, connector, 15-18).
Jay,
Thanks for the clarification. To me, it felt more like one of the holes that you'd see on these new par 3 courses rather than Ross, so I'm glad that my intuition is tracking something.
As to the price, an important thing to note about the Pine Needles family of courses is that they have good replay rates. I paid $150 to play Mid Pines and $125 for Southern Pines at the beginning of March, but the replay rate at each was only $60. I always try to play 36 holes when I'm playing a new course and I get very happy when the replay rate is below 50% of the original.
One issue: they don't give you the replay rate if you're mixing courses on one day. I would have had to have paid $195 to play Pine Needles after I played Mid Pines in the morning. I told the guys behind the counter at both Mid Pines and Southern Pines that they should extend the replay rates to the other courses.
On comparing PN, MP, and SP, my preference comes out pretty clearly in that order. On my visit in 2019, I preferred PN to MP, but it was close and I only played the former once. Now I've seen each of them two more times and I'm completely convinced about PN>MP. The variety of the terrain at PN is just so good and really plays an important role in the driving. Take the 6th hole, which doesn't seem to be one of anyones' favorites. This is an outstanding driving hole. It's semi-blind over the bunker on the left but if you hedge right, your ball will take the slope to the right and leave a blind second. But if you stay left and either pull it or go to far, you have tree trouble. The aesthetically pleasing drive on 12 seems easy up and over the hill but if you hit even a slight pull, the ground takes your ball toward the waste area on the left.
To be fair, the terrain at MP plays an important role in the driving game. Shaping your drives correctly on 12, 14, and 15 will really help you. But it's a bit less interesting and I felt that there was less variety in the holes at MP than PN. I also like the greens at PN a bit more than MP. They're larger and the middles tend not to be heavily contoured. But the edges are. And this introduces a lot of flexibility in to how difficult the course can play. It's not too hard if you put the pins in the middle but it becomes quite difficult if you put them at the edges. The edges of the greens at PN are clearly second to no. 2 for me (although not nearly that good).
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was surprised by the difficulty of SP and how different it was from PN and MP. To me, the false fronts are overdone. There are far too many of them and several are severe (2, 4, 9, 15, 18). I felt like I was hitting the same shot into most of the greens so it really lost variety points with me. The greens are more heavily contoured and on their own, I like them. But the combination of the severe edges and the heavily contoured greens was a bit much. I wish that a few more of the greens had been toned down, like that on 17 in my above picture.