[rjsimper]

Really great par 4 

[Chris Buie]

1922 & 1939

[Mark Saltzman]

Chris, I really like the use of the top-shot bunker on 8 (which I guess was 5 at one point?). The bunker would help to hide the cant of the fairway and only the fairway bunker on the right would give an indication of the ideal line off the tee. Nothing wrong with a bit of visual confusion on such a short par-5. Would love to see that restored.

Any other holes have this feature in their early iterations?

[Jason Topp]

The bunker carry distances listed so far seem pretty short for a US Open.  The average carry distance listed for the PGA Tour is around 270.  http://www.pgatour.com/r/stats/info/?02409  In the warmth of summer, I would imagine carry distances will be longer at Pinehurst.

Are the blue tees the back tees?  If so, then it would seem that many fairway bunkers will not be in play for tour pros that choose to hit driver.

[Mark Saltzman]

Jason,

these are the blue tees, the longest set put out for resort play.  There is a gold/US Open set behind them.  Big difference on a few holes (and it plays to a par of 70).

2 is 60 yards longer
3 is 40 yards longer
4 is 60 yards longer
5 is 40 yards longer
6 is 20 yards longer
7 is 30 yards longer
8 is 20 yards longer

[Chris Buie]

Mark, there was a similar bunker on the 7th hole (which was the 4th hole in 1922).


Photos like the one below (of the 8th) help people appreciate the expert work that was done to restore the course.


They, of course, did a lot of research at the Tufts Archives before the work started. Here is one of the photos (from No. 3 Course) they tried to emulate the look of. I'd say they did a fantastic job recapturing the original look of Pinehurst.


There is a back tee on 8 which is across the sandy path on the second fairway. That is the case on the 3rd hole as well.

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 9: Par 3, 176 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




Though the short-ish yardage would indicate that this is a birdie hole, the 9th green is one of the smallest greens on the golf course and is arguably the most well-guarded.  Very deep bunkers located short-right, short-left, left, and long will penalize any shot that misses the green.

The green lays at almost a 45-degree angle to the tee, sloping generally from back-left to front-right.  A severe ridge runs across the narrow 'waist' portion of the green, separating the front-right portion of the green from the back-left portion.  Front-right pins are very accessible, while back-left pins located on a very small piece of green, are nearly impossible to access -- shots must carry the deep fronting bunker and stop very quickly to avoid caroming off the back of the green.


Tee View:










From Short of Green: From here it is easy to see the difference in elevation from back-left to front-right.






Green from Left:




Green from Back-Left:

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 10: Par 5, 580 Yards [Tees were on the White Tee Box at 455 Yards]

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




If someone has a current picture of the back-tee view, please post/IM me as I'd like to add it to the tour


From the back tee, the tee shot must carry a gully to reach the uphill and semi-blind fairway.  OB left and waste area right make this one of the most demanding tee shots on the golf course.  The fairway narrows and jogs left about 250 yards from the blue tee.  The  fairway bunker on the left, at 280 yards uphill to reach from the blue tee, is more about visual intimidation than anything.


View from the white tee:




From Short of Fairway:




The 10th will be a 3-shot hole for almost everyone.  3 bunkers, staggered left, then right, then left, dot the lay-up area between 200 and 100 yards short of the green.


Playing from the moved up tees, this 2nd shot is played from near the first of those 3 bunkers, just over 200 yards from the green:




From Short of Green:






And from Behind:

[JLahrman]

Mark, any pictures of what I remember as a very steep drop-off behind the ninth green, especially on the left side? You just can't miss long.

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 11: Par 4, 453 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




A confusing tee shot at the 11th.  Unlike the previous iteration of the hole, the current 11th has plenty of width, but the golfer is left wondering whether he is best to challenge the waste area on the right, or the single fairway bunker on the left 250 yards from the tee.  The ideal line is defined by the pin location, which is cleverly located to be in clear view from the tee, though hardly a focal point for all but the most perceptive golfer.

Tee View:




From Short of the Fairway one gets a good sense of the nature of the scrub area:




Plenty of fairway width on the 11th:




A view from the right side of the fairway.  Clear that the right side of the fairway is not the place to be if one wants to attack a right pin.  From the left side of the fairway the golfer would have the option to run the ball onto the green and toward this pin position.




A closer look at the bunker complex that guards and hides the right side of the green:




And a look at the bunker complex from the green side:




From short-left of the green one can see how approaches from the left can access right-side pin locations:




Green as seen from right...




and from behind...




And the 11th pre-restoration (Courtesy C. Buie):

[George Freeman]

Would love to see a shot from this angle after the restoration...

Thanks for the tour Mark!

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 12: Par 4, 418 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




The aerials show the significant change that took place on the 12th.  A fairway that was once a runway, with bunkers left and right floating in the rough, is now significantly widened out to the bunker edges and expanded beyond the one on the left to reward a golfer who challenges it.

It is 229 yards to get past the bunker on the left and 293 yards to reach the area where the fairway pinches to 22 yards in width.  Though it may appear as though the fairway in the DZ is narrow because of some clever visual deception, there is plenty of room.


Tee View:




What is not clear from the tee is the ideal line into the green.  A tee shot down the right will leave a shorter approach, but the view of the green will be blocked-out by bunkering short of the green.  Approaching from the left gives the golfer a clear view of the putting surface and the opportunity to run the ball onto the green.

Approach from right:






Short of Green:






Green from Back-Left:

[Chris Buie]

Sorry I haven't been able to properly keep up with Mark's really nice work on this thread.
Anyway, one thing that stands out to me that hasn't really been discussed too much is the trees. As you can see in the 1939 aerial it was sparse between 11 and 12. Later on it became a thick forest. Of course, predictably I would like to see that thinned out on various places on the course - all in good time. It would get a bit more air coming through and most importantly give players a chance to bend one through the trees. That brings a lot more creativity and more fun into the game. If you can hook a 165 yard shot around two trees and a through a little pine window then you deserve a par. It would incidentally make for much better TV as well. I'm not saying to cut them all down - just to thin it out in certain areas. Chopping around in a forest is for loggers not golfers.

"As beautiful as trees are, and as fond as you or I are of them, we still must not lose sight of the fact that there is a limited place for them in golf." - Donald Ross


Moving on here is the pre-restoration 11th tee - no comment needed.


And here are the photos of 12 before those fabulous artists went to such lengths to render so brilliantly.



And here is a photo of 12 during the early stages of the recent work.

[rjsimper]

Chris, your "before" photo of 12 probably makes the hole look more visually attractive than it ever was, as it is quite a bit elevated from the actual view.

One change I have noticed quite a bit is that 12 now is more of a thinking tee shot...the sand dunes pinching the fairway, even though they may be 290, sure don't look like it. It's hard to make yourself hit it to the left on this hole, knowing that the green is right and the dunes appear to be very much in play.

[Chris Buie]

I'd say you are right on both counts Ryan. There is more playable width - but if you want to gain the advantage which distance provides (leaving a shorter shot to the green) then you'll have to challenge those tough areas. Mid iron approaches to these greens can be pretty challenging. I've seen what looked like good shots on this hole end up making those long slow slides down into collection areas. I have a really clear image of one of my own approaches to this hole doing just that.
So it is a significant advantage to have a shorter iron in. Partly your tee shot decision would depend on how straight you were hitting it that particular day - and if you were playing catch up style - aggressively. Yeah, it's an interesting hole. I've always liked it. I like the fact that the course isn't tricked up and has a natural look. I appreciate Raynor and am glad he did those great courses - but they have these angles going on that don't fit my eye as well as Ross courses. I'm not trying to bash Raynor here - he did great things which had such interesting playability - just talking about personal preferences.
Ross courses seem to blend in really well with the landscape. At least, it seems that way to me.

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 13: Par 4, 375 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




One of the best holes on the course, a short par-4 that will have many walking away scratching their heads after making 5.  There is plenty of room to play to the left off the tee, but from that angle the approach is longer and must be played over a deep bunker short-left of the green.  The ideal line is from the right, but the fairway gets narrower and narrower as the tee ball gets longer.  240 yards from the tee, a deep bunker guards the inside of the dogleg.  From here it is difficult to reach the green.

Tee View:




From start of fairway:




This picture gives a good idea of the angled right side of the fairway, that causes a narrowing of the DZ the longer the shot:




Approaches played from the right side of the fairway are ideal and should take the penal green side bunkering out of play.






Even better, tee balls that carry the bunkers on the right will leave just a (not so simple) pitch up the hill.  Not many golfers will be playing their second shots from here... Third shots are likely more common.




From short-right of green shows the depth of the bunkering and the significant false-front on the 13th green:




Green from Right:






13th from Behind:




Looking down 13 and 14:

[Chris Buie]

[Bruce Wellmon]

Hole 13: Par 4, 375 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




One of the best holes on the course, a short par-4 that will have many walking away scratching their heads after making 5.  There is plenty of room to play to the left off the tee, but from that angle the approach is longer and must be played over a deep bunker short-left of the green.  The ideal line is from the right, but the fairway gets narrower and narrower as the tee ball gets longer.  240 yards from the tee, a deep bunker guards the inside of the dogleg.  From here it is difficult to reach the green.

Tee View:

I played #2 in January. The difference on this tee shot alone is amazing.
Chris, I didn't read the Dunlop White article. Do you ever foresee a move away from the current greens back to the ones shown in your photos?

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 14: Par 4, 438 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




Along with the 4th, one of only two tee shots that plays significantly downhill.  It is 240 yards from the tee to lay-up to the bunker on the left into the widest point of the fairway.  It is 280 yards past the bunker.

While the single bunker on the left will have many golfers playing out to the right, perhaps the ideal tee shot is a lay-up down the left.


Tee View:






From short of fairway:




Fairway as seen from 13:




One of the most cleverly bunkered greens I've ever seen.  Deep bunkers front the green both short-left and short-right, perhaps making the golfer take an extra club to avoid them.  But these bunkers are well short of the green, and all of the trouble is pin-high or long. 

Approach:




As seen from short of the green, there is plenty of room over the bunkers and missing short is not a problem.




But missing left will find a collection area with a huge hump in its centre.  While recoveries from here are difficult, recoveries from the very deep run-off long are almost impossible.

[Chris Buie]

[Tony Ristola]

Mark & Chris,

Great photo journey.

With respect to the "turtleback" nature of the greens, they were that way in the early 60's, so I wonder when the transition occurred and if there was a consulting architect, and who he was ?

And, if the transition occurred in stages rather than at one time.

Pat,

there is a decent article I've seen linked to by Ron Whitten about the greens. I believe Alice and Pete Dye stated the greens had so much top dressing over the years and that only the greens were top dressed. As a result they became noticeably elevated from their surrounds. Then, someone came in with a dozer and sliced these edges down; hence the current nature of the greens... which have been rebuilt in a similar manner by others.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HFI/is_6_56/ai_n14707636/
QUOTE
In 1935 the greens were like inverted paper plates, slightly raised in the center and canted in different directions for surface drainage. By the 1960s they had become inverted pie pans, and by the 1980s, inverted bowls. Not by original design, or by conscious remodeling, but by happenstance, by application after application of sand topdressing, year after year, which raised the profiles of the putting surfaces at least a foot during a period of 25 to 30 years.

Pete and Alice Dye had been away from Pinehurst for a decade when they returned in the mid-'60s, when Alice competed in the Women's North and South Amateur, an event she would win in 1968. They were startled that the greens had become "raised angel cakes."

"The greens had a sharp edge all around them," Alice recalls. "Right at the collar. If your ball would drop off, it was so steep that it would run like crazy through the bottom of a little hollow and end up on the opposite slope. So then you'd have a lot of those ghastly downhill lies, shooting back up and over those little ledges. It was horrendous. That's why Pinehurst played so tough."
...
Sometime after Diamondhead Corp. bought Pinehurst from the Tufts family in late 1970, someone on a bulldozer beveled off the steep ledges around the greens, which better tied the edges of the greens into the slopes around them. But in doing so, they carved away many front- and back-corner pin placements.

Curiously, no one recalls just when that happened, or who made the decision to do it. The best evidence is that it occurred in 1977, a year after Peter Tufts (son of Richard) agreed with Diamondhead to "restore" Pinehurst No. 2. Tufts left the project in 1977, he recalled recently, because "they took a bulldozer and ruined those greens."

"We went up there one spring," says Alice Dye, "and I looked at the greens and said, 'Pete, they've lost those edges.' You could see where they went around and sliced off that steep edge. What they did was shrink the greens. They went from about 5,000 square feet down to 4,000 or less."
END QUOTE

Difficult to imagine someone going in willy-nilly with a dozer to the greens.

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 15: Par 3, 183 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:




A very innocuous par-3.. no scary bunkers, no OB, no hazards... but a very difficult par.  The green is a plenty wide target, but the emphasis here is controlling distance.  A very large false-front will send balls on the first 1/4 of the green trundling off the front.  A slope at the back edge of the green will send shots just a bit long on a journey toward the 16th fairway.

Tee View:






From short-right of green:








From left:




From 16th Tee:

[Chris Buie]

Hmm, maybe they should go back to this look. Don't know, it's a tough call.  

Mark it is a sufficiently wide target, but my own personal experience from the backs when there is some wind going...it doesn't look so wide from ~200 out! That's just my experience. (This photo is taken from the front of the long tee box.)
It can be really tough getting up and down from around this green - depending on how much room you have to work with.
If the flag is in the front you have to hit a really high shot to get it to stop anywhere close. That, of course, takes a really high degree of skill. Anybody that can pull that off is a for real player.
Although you can make birdie, it is not a birdie hole - par is always a good score here.

[Mark Saltzman]

Hole 16: Par 5, 511 Yards

2008 Aerial:




2011 Aerial:



Check out those aerials, what an improvement in mowing lines!!


The tee shot on the 16th is over the only water hazard on the course [it shouldn't be in play] and asks the golfer to choose his line carefully as the fairway lies at a diagonal to the tee.  It is 255 yards over the entire left bunker, and a trio of bunkers lay through the fairway on the right at 280 to catch those longer hitters that do not judge the angle of the tee shot correctly.

Tee View:






After successfully finding the fairway, many golfers will have a go at this short par-5 in two.  Menacing bunkering guards the right side of the green, nudging the golfer left on the approach. 

Approach from 240:




Approach from left from around 225:




Those laying-up will play into the bottom of a small valley.  Completely hidden from view from the fairway on the 2nd shot is bunker guarding the left-side of the fairway that, unlike most bunkers at P2, does not have a flashed face, thus keeping it hidden from view.  The ambiguity of the lay-up shot makes it much more difficult (and interesting).

The hidden bunker:




Approach from 115:






Green from back-left:






Green from 17th tee:

[Chris Buie]

Ross's approach to bunkering evolved quite a bit over time.


Not sure which hole on No. 2 this is, but it is another example of how his bunker style changed over time.

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