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Pinehurst Resort Announces 10th Golf Course

 

Future site of Pinehurst No. 10 (The Pilot, Pinehurst Resort)

Pinehurst Resort and Country Club recently announced that its property in Aberdeen off N.C. Highway 5 will be the site of its tenth golf course.

Work clearing trees is slated to begin later in January on a course that will be designed by world-renowned golf architect Tom Doak. The resort is hoping to have Pinehurst No. 10 completed in spring 2024, just ahead of Pinehurst’s No. 2 course hosting the U.S. Open for the fourth time.

The project represents the first from-scratch course for the resort in nearly 30 years. Once completed, it will be its first course in Aberdeen and be located about four miles south of its main footprint in the village from which it draws its name.

Doak has never worked on a Sandhills area course and only once has designed a course in North Carolina.

“Tom Doak builds incredible golf courses on sand, and we’re excited to see what he’ll create in the North Carolina Sandhills,” said Pinehurst Resort President Tom Pashley in a statement. “We’ve worked with some amazing golf architects who’ve embraced our natural aesthetic and believe Tom will do something fantastic on this site.”

“Having a Doak course at Pinehurst allows guests to play a course designed by one of the most creative golf minds of this generation,” Pashley told Golf.com. “Some equate playing at Pinehurst to visiting a golf architecture museum. You get to experience some of the best work from different design eras when you come here.”

Pinehurst Resort purchased the land of the former The Pit Golf Links in February 2011. Pinehurst effectively sat on the land for 12 years, giving it time to pursue a significant number of updates and additions to its properties. That includes a redesign of Course No. 2, which hosted the U.S. Golf Association’s first ever back-to-back U.S. Open and Women’s Open in 2014; a redesign of Course No. 4 and updates to several others; construction of the new Cradle short course; and construction upgrades of several amenities, including the Member’s Club, a new pool complex and improvements in lodging.

In 1999, the resort bought more than 250 acres bordering The Pit to the northwest. The resort’s purchase of the course in 2011 added 925 acres.

Given the topography and soil profile of the property, Doak said, the property is unlike the resort’s nine other 18-hole courses.

“The site is topographically distinct and drastically different from anywhere in Pinehurst,” Doak said in a statement. “It’s bigger, bolder and more dramatic. There’s about 75 feet of elevation change, and we’ll work our way up to it around the mid-point of the layout. You’ll have expansive views from this apex over the rest of the course. It will be an unforgettable experience for golfers.

The news release said that Doak’s vision for the course will incorporate the rugged dunes mined as a result of the quarry. The natural features of streams and ponds on the property will be accented by native sand and wiregrass.

More than just a full-length 18-hole course was hinted at for the site of No. 10. The resort said the site could also include additional golf, a short course, clubhouse, guest cottages and other lodging. The resort said in the news release that it would discuss these possibilities with Aberdeen town officials.

“This exceptional property is a place where many of our dreams of the future can be contemplated,” said Pinehurst Resort CEO Bob Dedman Jr., in a statement. “How those dreams play out will be determined over time, the same way the path forward revealed itself through recent additions like The Cradle, Thistle Dhu and the redesign of Pinehurst No. 4. Adding a Tom Doak design to our collection is another historic chapter in the story of Pinehurst.”

(Original story by Jonathan Bym, The Pilot)

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