Crenshaw brings soul to Pinehurst

PINEHURST -- Ben Crenshaw is in a golf cart on a fresh early fall morning, sitting on the right side of the first hole at Pinehurst No. 2.

The sound of chancel bells drifts across the golf course, still damp and dripping in spots from a heavy overnight rain.

Crenshaw watches a work crew on the far side of the opening hole. They are digging and raking in a sandy area that, until recently, had been covered by thick Bermuda grass rough.

Now, the same area is an expanse of gray-white sand, dotted with a few ragged-edged bunkers and awaiting the planting of clumps of wiregrass that will make the left side of the hole resemble the naturally unkempt look native to the North Carolina sandhills.

It's how Pinehurst No.2 looked long ago, back when Donald Ross was walking the property, and it's how it will look again when Crenshaw and his design partner, Bill Coore, complete their renovation of the revered layout.

"It's all still there," Crenshaw said, seeing the past and the present together.

What Crenshaw and Coore are doing with No.2 is both dramatic and necessary. Over the years, as more and more grass covered the sides of the famous layout, it had buried much of what defined the course.

The greens complexes, with their slopes and swales on and around the putting surfaces, are among the most admired in golf architecture, but the rest of the course - its backbone - had been dulled by time and grass.

Crenshaw and Coore, blessed with archival evidence and artists' eyes, are uncovering the past, one hole at a time. There's an element of risk involved, given that some resort guests might not like the scruffy, rugged look that will frame the course when the project is complete next fall.

It's going to look dramatically different.

Crenshaw paused before accepting the project, wanting to be sure it was the right thing to do. He and Coore, with their tendency toward minimalism, were the ideal choice for what's being done. Coore grew up in Thomasville and No.2 "is extremely sentimental to him," Crenshaw said.

It's close to Crenshaw's heart, too.

"I hold this place in reverence," Crenshaw said, watching a foursome of players on the course.

Since the project began, acres of sod have been removed, much of it donated to area groups for their use. On virtually every hole, grass has been removed and replaced by what attracted Ross to the area in the first place - the distressed, stark, sandy soil so common to the area.

The fairways are wide and follow the original lines created by Ross. More than half the sprinkler heads have been removed at No.2, leaving the restored natural areas to take what the weather gives them.

There is an art to bringing back the natural look of No.2. Crenshaw stands in a sandy area, recently cleared and now being cultivated. He talks about the fun of placing clumps of wiregrass so that there's no pattern to it, spreading them like the wind might, and the options that will evolve over time when weather and fallen pine needles fill in off the fairways.

"You may get a great lie or be up against a pine cone or against wire grass," Crenshaw says. "You wonder why Ross was so enamored with what he saw. It's just sandy, impoverished soil but it's ideal for golf."

As Crenshaw tours No.2, he pauses to talk with resort guests who recognize him.

He's spent more time at Pinehurst than at most sites where he works, a sign of what the project means to him. Listen to him talk and you can hear it in his soft Texas drawl .

Crenshaw has an old soul, one that cherishes the heritage of the game and the genius of the men who created art along the ground. As he rides past the house Ross lived in near the third green, Crenshaw talks about what the legendary designer created at Pinehurst No.2.

"The areas off the greens are masterpieces. I don't think there's anything like it in North America," Crenshaw said.