Best golf courses near Pinehurst, NC

In 2010, a team lead by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw killed and ripped out all the Bermudagrass rough on Pinehurst No. 2 that had been foolishly planted in the 1970s. Between fairways and tree lines, they established vast bands of native hardpan sand dotted with clumps of wiregrass and scattered pine needles. They reduced the irrigation to mere single rows in fairways to prevent grass from ever returning to the new sandy wastelands. Playing firm and fast, it was wildly successful as the site of the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens, played on consecutive weeks. Because of its water reduction, the course was named a Green Star environmental award-winner by Golf Digest that year. In 2019, Pinehurst No. 2 and No. 4 hosted another U.S. Amateur Championship, and the USGA announced Pinehurst No. 2—in addition to hosting the 2024 U.S. Open—will also have the 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047 U.S. Opens.

Like a football team searching for the right coach, the resort could never settle on the right identity for the No. 4 course despite a series of major alterations by different architects. It found its match when it hired Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to carry out a full-scale blow-up and rebuild in 2018 that brought back the sweeping sand-and-pine character we identify with Pinehurst, while initiating a style of shaping in the greens and bunkers that’s confident and distinctly its own.

Tom Fazio did the first 18 at Pinehurst’s ultra-private Forest Creek G.C., the South Course, in 1996, carving it from a rolling pine forest, with most tee shots playing downhill and most greens amenable to low, running shots. When he returned nearly a decade later to add the North Course, he and his team decided on a different approach, a more organic, lay-of-the-land 18. So the North has more uphill holes and semi-blind tee shots. The sandy base of the pine forest is exposed on many holes, incorporated not just to frame holes but also as carry hazards on certain shots. Formal bunkers are edged with clumps of bushy wiregrass or dwarf pampas. The only water hazard is encountered late in the round, on long lake around which the 15th, 16th and 17th play. This course wasn’t inspired by sand-scarred neighboring courses like Pinehurst No. 2, Mid-Pines and Dormie Club.

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Cut from a nature preserve about a mile north of the resort, Pinehurst No. 8 is one of Tom Fazio's most versatile designs, as each hole plays differently from the previous. The front nine is mostly tree-lined, the back more open, with both touching ponds, marsh and Pine Valley-like sandy wastelands. For putting surfaces, Fazio built crowned greens with greenside swales, intended as a salute to Donald Ross and Pinehurst No. 2. No. 8 is also the most secluded of the resort's nine courses (for now--Tom Doak's Pinehurst No. 10 is due to open in 2024), which no homes or development touching it. Fazio retrurned in late 2022 to touch up elements of the course that needed burnishing, and the course plays as fast and firm as its older brethren.

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Differing in style from the eight other Pinehurst courses, No. 9 is a Jack Nicklaus signature design featuring bentgrass greens, forgiving fairways and five sets of tees. Several holes favor left to right shot shaping, and the putting surfaces are often multi-tiered.

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Tobacco Road took every idea that Strantz had been developing to that point in time (1999) and put it all in one place, specifically an old mining site of sand and pine 25 miles north of Pinehurst. The property is the secret star—yes, there are Strantzian trademarks like boomerang-shaped par 5s, greens and fairways notched blindly behind dunes, dramatic risk/reward shots played over deep chasms and putting surfaces stretched into stringy silly putty shapes. But without the elevation changes, depressions and contrasting textures of the rugged sand barrens, this would be True Blue 2.0. It’s much more than that: a master class in decision-making and composition that sits among the top 50 on the Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses ranking, a placement that’s at least 20 spots too low, at least in the mind of this editor.

Pine Needles used to lurk quietly in the Pinehurst background before the USGA chose to put it in their regular women’s championship rotation. It got another big boost in 2017 after Kyle Franz reworked portions of the course, putting the Pinehurst touch on the borders, cross hazards and bunkers. Though it lacks the intimacy and connectivity of its sister course, Mid Pines, with the holes wandering far afield due to a being part of a 1920s residential development, it’s grown into a big, championship worthy course (most recently hosting the 2019 Senior Women’s Open and 2022 U.S. Women’s Open) with arguably the best set of greens after No. 2.

The Dormie Club is a minimalist Coore and Crenshaw design just north of Pinehurst that follows the popular design theme of the Sandhills region: little traditional rough, sandy waste areas lining the fairways and greens busy with humps and hollows. The course is a second-shot layout, with forgiving fairways allowing players to get off the tee without too much trouble. The greens, however, have plenty of movement, placing an importance on proper shot placement on approaches.

What began as a private retreat called Knollwood, funded by Roaring Twenties millionaires like James Barber, Horace Rackham and Henry Ford, is now a charming public Donald Ross design, revitalized by young first-time designer Kyle Franz in the style of Pinehurst No. 2, where Franz had worked on the restoration. Mid Pines is pure elegance and beauty. The routing is spellbinding, with holes that stretch out into corners at the property’s high points, then fall back down to intersect at junctions across the calmer interior. Franz’s 2013 work expanding greens and restoring the perimeter sandscapes has greatly enhanced one of Pinehurst’s most refined golf presentations.

Mid South Club can play a lot longer than its yardage from the back tees with the significant amount of elevation present on this Arnold Palmer design. The rolling terrain and mounding provide options for the player to use the slopes to work the ball, though six green complexes require forced carries over water.

Don’t overlook little No. 3, which is easy to do at a first glance at the scorecard with a maximum yardage of less than 5,200 yards. You’d never know it. This is serious golf, pound for pound the toughest course on property and a scaled-down version of No. 2. The greens are dazzling with the same crowned edges as big brother and recently revived bunkers and perimeter barrens that match. It’s also the resort’s best walk.

The No. 6 is not likely to ever be an architectural darling. It was designed and built in the dark ages of the 1970s by George Fazio and is one of the sleepier courses in the area. But don’t be too judgmental—with all the sandy pyrotechnics being added around the neighborhood, No. 6 chugs along with quiet grace, presenting traditional hole after traditional hole of smart, effective bunkering through a property that rolls high and low through lovely pine corridors. There’s a lot to be said for this kind of confident maturity. In 2022, Pinehurst No. 6 hosted the USGA’s inaugural U.S. Adaptive Open.

You wouldn’t want to skip any of these other courses just to play the Cradle, mainly because you shouldn’t have to—you can fit it in at twilight or between resort rounds (though that can be a challenge based on high demand). But it’s hard to beat the little one-shot, nine-hole course on the fun-per-minute meter. Located just off the Pinehurst clubhouse, it’s a golf and social scene as all-age groups play with a handful of clubs across of field of wild tees and greens as music is pumped in through speakers. The new halfway house (Cradle Crossing) opened in 2021, adding even more to the attraction.

Sand is the defining character of Pinehurst, and Pinehurst No. 10 goes right to the source: a former sand mining site south of the resort, portions of which used to be a golf course called The Pit that closed in 2010. Several holes of this Tom Doak design, opened in April, 2024, plunge through the old quarries, including the turbulent eighth where players will want to pop Dramamine before tackling fairway swells you could surf across. Pinehurst is also characterized by the tight cluster of its primary courses and synchronous relationship with the surrounding village, but No. 10 is a world apart. The grandeur of the isolated holes roller coasting through the quiet sand barrens creates tension between the sublimity of the environment and the heroism of the architecture, demonstrated most intensely in the uninhibited green shapes, many of which are bowl-shaped and heavily segmented.