Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina has announced it will close its No. 4 course for most of this summer to resurface its greens that didn’t survive winter as well as customary at the famous North Carolina Resort. The course will close May 19-Aug. 7 for the re-grassing.
The Ultradwarf Bermuda greens have been in rough shape, but resort operators had been told they should recover as spring warmed up the courses and promoted the growth of the grass. That didn’t happen as hoped, so the resort made the difficult decision to close the course instead of sending out golfers to play with less than stellar conditions. News of the upcoming resurfacing was first reported by Joe GolfTraveler on X, formerly Twitter.
Pinehurst Resort currently is home to 10 full-sized layouts, including the famed No. 2 that has hosted several U.S. Opens in recent decades and the new No. 10 designed by Tom Doak that opened last year. It was announced last week that architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw will build the new No. 11 course for the resort.
Pinehurst No. 4 originally was a Donald Ross design that opened in 1919. The layout was renovated extensively over the years, most recently in 2018 by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. It has since been used as one of the courses in play at the 2019 U.S. Amateur and in the top-tier North & South Amateur. No. 4 is ranked second on Golfweek’s Best ranking of top public-access courses in North Carolina, trailing only the No. 2 course. The No. 4 course ranks 95th on the list of top modern courses in the United States, and it ties for 29th on the ranking of top resort courses in the United States.
The statement from the resort about the greens is as follows:
This season, the condition of Pinehurst No. 4’s greens did not respond as we anticipated and unfortunately fell short of our standards. Earlier this spring, we were optimistic that the course would recover as temperatures warmed, based on input from agronomy experts. However, despite those expectations, conditions have not improved. A recent follow-up report confirmed what we have seen: No. 4’s greens have continued to deteriorate.
As a result, we have made the difficult decision to close Pinehurst No. 4 beginning May 19 to complete a full greens restoration. We plan to reopen the course on Aug. 7.
We deeply regret the impact this will have on our guests’ and members’ golf experience, and we have been in communication with them. But we believe this is the right step forward and gives us the best opportunity to return No. 4 to our high standards by later this summer.
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