By Ken Mink
PINEHURST, N. C. – Earlier this summer the golf world was focused on this little village in the Sandhills of North Carolina, with hundreds of thousands of people showing up to watch the best golfers from around numerous continents – the U. S. Open championships for men and women.
For consecutive weeks golf fans were treated to the best golf has to offer.
Those crowds have gone now, and the picturesque little village has returned to a much more relaxed pace – but the golf lives on through more than 30 outstanding courses, including eight at the famed Pinehurst Resort and Country Club – all within a 15-minute drive.
Pinehurst Resort is the cherry on the sundae, but golf lovers can find plenty of other quality golf courses in the Pinehurst-Southern Pines-Aberdeen area. The region has become known as “The Home of Golf” and lives up to that title in many ways.
Writers from our magazine recently visited this area to check out some courses, playing the Mid South, Talamore and Dormie layouts.
We found the Mid South and Talamore courses to be a pleasure, but had some reservations about the acclaimed Dormie Club which Golf Magazine just rated as the No. 53 Course You Can Play in America.
Located just minutes from the historic Village of Pinehurst on Midland Road, the Mid South Club is one of the Carolinas’ most attractive residential golf communities. Five hundred forty five acres of longleaf pine forests, lakes and gently rolling hillsides provide a backdrop for a place of beauty and serenity.
Like most Sandhills courses, Mid South offers wide, immaculate fairways, large greens and sets of tees to fit all levels of play.
All the Bermuda fairways in the Sandhills area are now lush with their full summer dress and provide carpet-like fairways leading to unblemished bent grass greens.
The Mid South Club has 11 acres of bunkers, with No. 14 known as The Little Sahara due to its desert-like look. This hole measures 425 yards from the white tees. The hole looks at first glance like a crossword puzzle piece with slivers of white sand sticking out at 14 angles. Suffice to say we found our sand wedges quite useful on this one.
Number 11, a par three of 151 yards from the white tees, is a chance for a birdie if you can avoid the numerous sand traps surrounding the green.
Once you get to 14 you have entered the course’s Twilight Zone, culminating with the 368-yard (white) Number 18, which gives golfers a chance to hit it left toward a relatively narrow fairway or go for a large semi-island offering a shorter route to the green. Either choice requires a second shot over a lake peninsula to reach the putting surface. A beautiful, interesting and challenging hole by all means.
If you stay in the golf course condos near the lake, as we did, you have a wonderful view of the Number 9 and 18 greens, with the lake in play on both. The condos there are among the best golfside units we have ever experienced in more than 50 years of golf – large (two bedroom) with beautiful golf-oriented artwork, plush furniture, multi large screen TVs, all kitchen gear, Jacuzzi tubs and a large deck providing a panoramic view of the course and lake. First class in all respects.
The course has eight holes with water in play and six holes with doglegs to deal with.
The par three sixth hole is indicative of how course architect Arnold Palmer uses water to intimidate and entice you at the same time. It’s not long – only 164 yards from the back tees – but even from the forward tees (104 yards), it’s all carry. “You either make it or you don’t,” said General Manager John McDougald. “For the ladies, it’s not an extremely long carry, but it’s still an impact hole. You know you have to get the ball airborne, you know you have to fly it to the green. And that’s why people remember the hole so well.”
| On No. 8 there is a large bell hung on a wooden frame near the edge of the fairway, for golfers to ring when the fairway is clear on the par four. |
McDougald, general manager at both Mid South and its sister operation at Talamore, makes no bones about stacking Mid South up against most courses in the nation.
“They call Arnold Palmer The King of Golf and there is no doubt the Mid South Club is the King’s masterpiece: I don’t think there’s any question, especially for people who know a little bit about golf – when they get done here, they know they’ve truly played one of Palmer’s treasures. In my opinion, it’s the best golf course that the Palmer group ever did. There’s no gimmick, it’s true to the tradition of the area, and it’s a great addition to have Palmer’s name on a great golf course.”
Big is the byword at Mid South. There is a big clubhouse, big greens, big fairways, big bunkers, big lakes – and in some areas, big rocks (like those fronting the ninth and eighteenth greens). Arnold Palmer (and his design partner, the late Ed Seay, who spent an extensive amount of time onsite) always seek to make a visual impression on the players, and Mid South is certainly no exception.
Construction on the golf course began in 1988, and (after the property exchanged hands) it opened in 1993, as Pinehurst Plantation. From that point on, the Club went through several more ownerships until 2004, when Talamore Golf Partners acquired the layout and built the amenities, including the beautiful 30,000 square foot clubhouse.
Be sure to get at least one yardage book for your group. It contains numerous details and pro tips about each hole, presented in color. The book also has a listing of hotels and restaurants and a map of the area.
(See related story on our cover page about Pinehurst area hotels and restaurants)
The course ranks behind only Pinehurst No. 2 by Pinehurst Magazine and has many other distinguished honors, including:
- 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 U.S. Open qualifier & 1996 U.S. Senior Open qualifier
- 1996, 1997, 1998 U.S. Amateur qualifier
- 1997 Junior U.S. Amateur qualifier
- PGA Club Professional qualifier
- Ranked in the Top 20 Best Courses in North Carolina – Golf Digest
- One of the country’s top 18 newest & best golf communities – Robb Report
- Top 100 Courses to Play in 1996 – Golf Magazine
- #1 Private Club in the Sandhills area as ranked by Pinehurst Magazine
- Top 100 Courses in America – GolfLink.com
Tees/Yardage/Slope/Rating
Gold 7003 140/73.9 Blue 6607 131/71.5 White 6200 125/69.7 141/76.4 (W) Green 5655 117/67.5 136/72.8 (W) Red 4773 117/68.6
Just across Midland Road from Mid South is the Talamore course, another outstanding product that is a pleasure to play.
As described by Talamore officials:
“No ordinary golf course receives the kind of acclaim and international praise that has been given to Talamore’s 18-hole course since its opening in 1991. Talamore has been ranked in the forefront of outstanding courses in the Village of Pinehurst area, an area which has been known for its golfing traditions for more than a century.
“Talamore Golf Partners hired architect Rees Jones to bring his considerable talents back to Village of Pinehurst in order to design a course that would be visually striking and exceptionally enjoyable. The result was a 7,020 yard course that was ranked in the top five new courses in America upon its opening in 1992 by Golf Digest.”
According to Rees Jones: “This is a position course. Length isn’t going to benefit the long hitter. What I’m trying to do is require thinking. I don’t want to take the driver out of the golfer’s hands, but what I want him to have to think about whether he wants to use it. You have to manufacture golf shots and make them happen. Strategy is an important key to a successful round of golf here. My hope is that golfers will enjoy this dimension of the game. Talamore is intended to capture the best of classic golf in the Village of Pinehurst area. The site has a spirit that’s unmistakable: one that allowed for a remarkable diversity of features. There’s a challenge in the course that’s meant to add to the enjoyment of the game. After all, golf is supposed to be fun.”
Talamore was also made famous by instituting the first llama caddy program. Availability is now limited to have one of these unique animals escort you around the links. It certainly makes for an unforgettable day.
But no course is perfect. The day we visited the traps were not well maintained. And there are a few moguls right in the middle of some holes leaving golfers with a relative unfair uphill, sidehill or downhill lie.
The course is a shotmakers layout and is fun to play but you mustreally have to pay attention of all of the elevation changes, some as much as two full clubs.
Both Talamore and Mid South have extensive banquet and meeting facilities, large clubhouses and lunch facilities and multi-acre practice areas.
Talamore’s event centerpiece is the Conservatory Ballroom featuring a 1,500 square feet marble dance floor, grand staircase and a 30-foot waterfall. Complementing the Conservatory is the magnificent Magnolia Room. The four-season Monet Garden Rooms open out onto lush gardens and patios with breathtaking views of the golf course and swan appointed lakes. Talamore’s banquet facilities accommodate groups from 50 - 500l. The selection of ballrooms and smaller gathering rooms provide a great variety of settings and styles from which to choose. Inquire about Kosher wedding , Indian wedding and Asian wedding service from the area’s premier caterers, as well as destination weddings , encore weddings , value dates and weekday wedding packages . Luxurious overnight lodging is also available.
For more on Talmore and Mid-South golf and facilities: Golf packages are available for all seasons (800-552-6292). For more information on the Lodges at Mid South, consult the website: http://www.talamoregolfresort.com/
Located about five miles up the road from Pinehurst is the Dormie Club, a location that is something of an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.
The course opened about four years ago in a remote area that served as one of the spectator parking lots for the 2005 U.S. Open and entertained bird hunters many decades before.
Though the facility has received some lofty ratings from some golf magazines our group found Dormie to be lacking in several areas.
When the course first opened it was purportedly going to be the Pine Valley of the South, with caddies and forecaddies required and expensive green fees.
That went over like a ton of bricks with the downturn in the economy.
The course soon found itself with less than a satisfactory number of golfers and restrictions have since been relaxed. Caddies and/or forecaddies are no longer required, with standard golf carts available. But the relatively high weekend green fees ($85 winter, $215 spring, $115 summer and $175 fall) to us just seems like overpriced agony, though better rates are available through various packages.
The course has far too many drawbacks to justify those kinds of rates as its minimalistic approach can prove challenging.
On arrival, golfers are greeted by a retrofitted cabin serving as a bare bones clubhouse intended as a temporary facility but still in use four years later. No yardage books are available and the basic scorecard provided does not have even a simplified hole layout.
One gets the impression Dormie owners are not ready to put a lot of cash into improving their product.
The course has no paved cart trails, relying on sand trails. While that in itself is not so bad, there is a problem in the trails intersecting at so many points things can become as confusing as Grand Central Station on a Friday afternoon.
Signage is very poor and finding your way around is difficult at best without caddies or forecaddies. The club even erected a wooden sign at one intersection reading “This Ain’t Seven.” A tipoff to the confusion that reigns at the convergence of the 7th, 10th and 14th tees. We finally had to give up trying to find one hole and went on to the next.
We found several blind shots, doglegs, lot of elevation change, sloped and tiered greens and some ridiculously long holes (for average players, men and women). For example there is one hole (10) that is 605 yards from the men’s white tee and 571 yards from the women’s tee. Good grief!
And that is not even rated the toughest hole on the course (No. 8, 459 from the white, 432 from the women’s tee).
The fairways and greens are in good shape. And if you’re good at putting on sloped and/or tiered greens you might tolerate it. Other redeeming facts: Water is in play on only three holes and the traps are waste areas (another way to avoid maintenance costs with its minimalistic approach).
Designed by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, whose recent renovation of Pinehurst No. 2 was so well received, Dormie is a course which might well be enjoyed by scratch or better golfers and the hardcore golf architectural junkies, but for average Joes and Janes it is a course that does not provide much fun.
The course is located at 6033 Beulah Hill Church Road, West End, N. C. For info: 910-215-4587 (www.dormieclub.com).
