The greens at Pinehurst No 2 have been unforgiving and have handed out some incredibly bad breaks.
Mark Hubbard must have thought he’d hit a great approach with his shot pitching a yard or so from the hole and bouncing past it.
Inches from going in, the ball gripped and spun on the third bounce and rolled right back off the front of the green.
The disbelief is written all over his face.
Donald Ross had no prior experience designing golf courses when the founder James Walker Tufts invited him to Pinehurst.
He intended to be the first professional golfer in the region, but Tufts quickly hired him to create the first four Pinehurst courses.
That was a turning point in golf history.
Drawing inspiration from his childhood days spent playing the links in Dornoch, Scotland, Ross established the crowned green as his signature.
He was a meticulous individual who took a great deal of care to ensure that every bend and hill satisfied him. His bunkers all have the appearance of having been created by nature rather than being constructed at all.
“If you use a line and a square to build a bunker, the result is sure to have an artificial-ness akin to hideous. It’s just as easy to break up all the lines and avoid such a regrettable result.. Man cannot do in a few days what nature took years to accomplish,” Ross said.
“Pinehurst absolutely was the pioneer in American golf,” Ross affirmed. “While golf had been played in a few places before Pinehurst was established, it was right here in these sandhills that the first great national movement in golf was started. Men came here, took a few golf lessons, bought a few clubs and went away determined to organize clubs.”
