Pinehurst No. 2

Donald Ross was tied to Pinehurst for nearly half a century, and he never stopped working on this course. He opened it in 1907 and was still changing it when he died in 1948. No. 2 is one of ten eighteen-hole courses at the Pinehurst resort, which James Walker Tufts founded in 1895 on 5,500 acres of North Carolina sandhills. Denny Shute won the 1936 PGA Championship on it. The 1951 Ryder Cup was played here. Then four U.S. Opens: Payne Stewart in 1999, Michael Campbell in 2005, Martin Kaymer in 2014, Bryson DeChambeau in 2024. The two 2014 championships ran back to back on the same course; Michelle Wie won the Women's Open.

Johnny Miller said hitting into these greens was like trying to land a ball on the top of a VW Beetle. Ross crowned them: the surfaces shed at the edges, so a shot that lands short or wide will not stay. In 2010 and 2011 Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw took out the thick Bermuda rough and put back hardpan sand and native wiregrass, which is how Ross had it. The card reads 7,588 yards, par 70. In 2020 the USGA made Pinehurst its first anchor site, and the resort now has U.S. Opens booked for 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047.