Sandhills Golf Trip — Pine Needles, Mid Pines, and Southern Pines
My golf trip to Pine Needles in North Carolina got off to quite the hectic start. We were originally supposed to fly from New York to Raleigh on Saturday morning. By Thursday, the weather forecasts were calling for significant snowfall Friday night through Saturday afternoon, so on Thursday night we decided to move our departure flight to Friday afternoon. It’s a good thing we did, as the snow that was called for ended up coming, and our original flight ended up getting cancelled.
Friday
We landed in Raleigh Friday night, picked up our rental car, and then stayed at a hotel for the night in Southern Pines, North Carolina, which was only a few minutes away from the Pine Needles resort where we would be staying for the rest of the trip.
I saw that there was a Cookout location only a few minutes from our hotel, and seeing all the praise heaped on Cookout on social media over the last few years, and knowing that Cookouts are only located in the South, I knew I had to try it. Cookout is a fast casual chain known for their tray combo meals, which are comical combinations of food for a ridiculously low price. Just looking at the menu is overwhelming when trying to think about all the different possible tray combinations.
After arriving at Cookout, we got out of our car and tried to go inside, just to realize that this Cookout was drive through only. Afterwards I looked it up and found out that, in fact, most Cookouts are actually drive through only. After this rookie mistake, we got in the drive through and placed our orders. For my tray combo meal, I went with a BBQ pork sandwich, fries and a chicken quesadilla as my sides, and an Oreo milkshake for my drink. Looking at the choices for the sides was truly jarring — chicken wrap, corn dog, quesadilla — and I had no idea what the serving size would look like for a side order of a quesadilla. Amazingly, this tray meal came out to only $8.75. After loading up on a sampling of sauces and getting back to our hotel we opened the food boxes. The side portions were a lot smaller than I would have thought, but I guess that’s to be expected when you have a side of quesadilla and the meal is only $8.75. I really liked the BBQ pork sandwich. It wasn’t dry and had a lot of flavor, with coleslaw and some hot sauce on top of finely shredded BBQ pork. The fries were soggy and flavorless, and the quesadilla was rather sad, with just a few pieces of chicken and cheese inside of it. The milkshake was great, although definitely too thick to be a milkshake. It was more like a Blizzard from Dairy Queen. All in all, even just for the BBQ pork sandwich and the milkshake, I would be more than happy to pay $8.75 for, so I’d say that my first trip to Cookout was a success.
Saturday
On Saturday morning we woke up early and saw about one inch of snow on the ground and temperatures that were in the low 30s. We knew that this wouldn’t bode well for the golf portion of the trip. Our plan for Saturday was to check into our rooms at Pine Needles and play an afternoon round at the Pine Needles course. We were especially excited to play Pine Needles, given that the Women’s US Open is being held there in June of this year. But first, we went down to the complimentary breakfast buffet at our hotel, where I particularly enjoyed making my own waffle on the waffle iron.
After breakfast at our hotel, we made the short drive over to Pine Needles to check in. Once we got there, we got the bad news that all three courses at the resort (Pine Needles, Mid Pines, and Southern Pines) were closed for the day due to the snow and low temperatures. Not only were those three courses closed, but after calling all of the other courses in the general vicinity, we learned that every other course in the area was also closed for the day. At this point, it seemed that we’d be lucky if any of the courses were even going to open up for play the following day.
Given that we no longer could play golf on Saturday, we decided to make the 15 minute drive from Pine Needles over to Pinehurst. All nine of the courses at Pinehurst were also closed for the day, and they had tarps covering all of the greens. We walked through the pro shop and then walked around outside of the clubhouse at Pinehurst, where we saw the driving range, the short 9 hole par 3 course called “The Cradle”, as well as the 18th green at the historic Pinehurst No. 2 course. The Cradle looked like a lot of fun and I was impressed at how Gil Hanse was able to fit 9 par 3 holes in such a small area. The holes range from 56 to 127 yards and the course was able to have some elevation changes even while fitting into a small area of space right in front of the clubhouse.
When we walked on the grass runoff areas surrounding the 18th green on Pinehurst No. 2, I was struck by how close the green and the runoff areas were to a brick sidewalk right over the back of the green. Then, right on the other side of the brick sidewalk, was a covered dining area inside the clubhouse. I couldn’t help but wonder how many times a day that the clubhouse gets hit with errant shots sailing over the 18th green.
Overall, Pinehurst was a massive complex. Not necessarily in style of course obviously, but Pinehurst reminded me a lot of the Bethpage golf complex. At both sites there’s a large clubhouse in the center of the property, from which many of the courses’ first holes jut out from in different directions. I could certainly see how Pinehurst has the capacity to host major golf tournaments.
After leaving Pinehurst, we stopped to eat an early dinner at Pinehurst Brewing Co. Given we were in the South, I wanted to make sure that I ate some barbeque food on the trip. I ordered a plate from the barbeque menu, that came with pulled pork shoulder, beef brisket, mac and cheese, green beans, and cornbread. I also tried the North Carolina vinegar based BBQ sauce, as well as the blackberry habanero BBQ sauce. I enjoyed the meats, as a platter like this is one of the few meals that’s actually hard to find in New York. The serving size was generous, and I appreciated how the pulled pork didn’t come covered in sauce, so that you could put however much sauce on as you wanted, so that you could actually taste the meat. I thought parts of the brisket either had too much fat or were too dry, but after having brisket a few times, I’m still not even really sure what brisket is supposed to actually look like, so I’ll reserve any judgement. Interestingly, the vinegar based BBQ sauce was not thick at all, and had a very strong vinegar flavor. That sauce went well with the pulled pork, while the blackberry habanero sauce was sweet then spicy, and paired well with the brisket.
After dinner, we went back to Pine Needles where we played some ping pong in a game room situated next to the Pine Needles pro shop, then went back to our rooms to rest up to hopefully play some golf the next day.
At Pine Needles, the rooms were individual rooms inside of houses/cabins that were situated around the Pine Needles complex. The main building on the complex is the building that contains the restaurant, pro shop, and resort check in desk. My room was located on the bottom floor of a house that had two rooms on the top floor, one room on the middle floor, and two rooms on the bottom floor. My cabin was a couple hundred yards away from the main building. My room had a glass door that led out to the ground level from the back of the house, where there was a putting green right outside the cabin. The putting green was situated as a central meeting point between a few other cabins in this section of the property. Unfortunately, the putting green was covered with a tarp today, and then on the other days it was far too cold at night to use it. This would definitely be a fun thing to have outside of your room on a summer night.
My room was small and had wood paneled walls that fit in with the cabin aesthetic, but the room had a brand new wall mounted heater (much needed after being accustomed to a New York apartment where the standard room temperature is 77 degrees), a large new TV, and a nice shower. The accommodations had everything you would need for a golf trip, but nothing more, as ideally you would spend your day at the golf courses, and then just the evenings after dinner in your room.
Sunday
We woke up early and headed to the Pine Needles restaurant for breakfast. Our package included a sit down breakfast, which was consistently a fantastic meal throughout the trip. I had an omelet with cheese, ham, peppers, onions, and tomato, with sides of toast, sausage, and grits. The food was all great, and most importantly, filling, as we would eat breakfast, then just eat some snacks while playing golf all day, and then eat a second meal at dinner after golf.
Our original plan was to play two rounds at Southern Pines today, but due to the cold weather and frozen ground, Southern Pines, as well as the Pines Needles course, were closed for the day. We were told that after a frost delay in the morning that Mid Pines would be open for play at 1:00 PM, and that the driving range at Pine Needles would be open in the morning. After breakfast, and before our 1:00 PM tee time at Mid Pines, we went down to the Pine Needles driving range.
Under the roof of each hitting bay on the Pine Needles driving range was a screen that was fully equipped with Toptracer technology. Once you created a Toptracer account and signed in, the screen captured all of your shot data on every shot that you hit. You could see the line that traced the path and trajectory of each of your shots, as well as all the relevant shot level data, such as distance, carry, ball speed, curve, height, and so on. You could even play an approach shot game on courses such as Pebble Beach, where the screen would call out a target yardage, and you earned points the closer you hit your shots to each of the 9 greens the game selected. After only planning on going down to the driving range to warm up for our 1:00 PM tee time, we enjoyed it so much that we were easily able to kill the time between breakfast and our tee time. The next thing we knew, it was time to head over to play Mid Pines.
The Mid Pines course is right across the street from the Pine Needles complex. After the snow and a few days of cold temperatures, I was pleasantly surprised as to how great of shape the course was in. The course was not soggy from the snow, and the greens were all extremely smooth and rolling at a pretty normal speed. There were only a few spots of snow on shady areas of the course, but none of our shots ended up in any snow the whole round. The course was walking only for the day, but the course was an enjoyable walk, with most of the tee boxes located right near the last green.
Given that this was my first round of the trip and my first round of Sandhills golf, I was struck by the lack of rough on the course. Playing all of my golf in the Northeast, I’m used to having rough a couple of inches high off of every fairway and around every green. At Mid Pines, beds of pine needles and some trees, fairway bunkers, or flat sandy areas bracketed the fairways, and every green was surrounded by fairway height grass. Any time I miss a green in the Northeast, I automatically pull out my 60 degree wedge when I’m in the rough. Around the greens at Mid Pines, I either opted for my 60 degree wedge or my putter, but I probably should have tried a club somewhere in the middle of those two sometimes. The 60 degree wedge wasn’t always the right club to be chipping off of tight lies with, and sometimes when the greens were elevated, it was very difficult to hit a putt hard enough to get up to the green from the fairway and then to have the putt slow down near the hole. Playing on these greens with short grass all around them was a new and interesting challenge for me that I enjoyed, and the shots around the green were much harder than they looked.
Another relatively new experience for me was putting on Bermuda grass greens. My speed and lines were off on the greens for the first 2.5 rounds of the trip, until my friend asked me if I was reading the grain on my putts. I said I was not and had no idea how to. After learning how to read the grain of the grass on the greens, my putting significantly improved, and I actually found it extremely helpful to have another data point to rely on when reading putts. To explain it simply, as a general rule on reading the grain, you go up and look at the grass that is cut around the edge of the cup. The grain is going wherever the grass around the hole cut is looking rough/patchy/not smooth, and then your putt will break towards that direction. For example, if you see that the right side of the cup has patchy looking grass on it, then your putt will break to the right with the grain. Also, if the patchy grass is in the front of the cup, then your putt is straight into the grain and will be much slower, while the opposite is true if the patchy grass is in the back of the hole. After learning how to read the grain on the greens, I found that I was definitely able to notice how putts into the grain were significantly slower, and how putts with the grain on the left or the right would start to break hard across the hole once they got closer to the cup.
Of the three courses that we played on the trip, Mid Pines was my favorite. Every hole was distinct, the course had a nice mix of elevation changes, and the course was challenging but not overly difficult. I never felt constricted on tee shots and the greens and green surrounds were challenging but fair. A few memorable holes featured downhill tee shots and then an uphill approach shot into the green. Mid Pines was a course that I would want to play repeatedly and that I wouldn’t get tired of playing. Even after playing it twice on this trip, I gladly would have went around a third time.
The 4th hole at Mid Pines is a short 309 yard par 4. The hole moves to the right, and the fairway slopes hard from left to right. If your tee shot ends up at the bottom of the fairway on the right, you find yourself blocked out from the green by one huge tree short of the right side of the green. If you play your tee shot to the left of the fairway you’ll end up with the best angle into a narrow green that angles to the right, but then you’ll have to contend with the pine needles and sandy areas to the left of the fairway. If your approach shot goes long of the green, the green falls off steeply in the back.
The 8th hole is a downhill 165 yard par 3. From the elevated tee, you can't see what’s long of the green, and the green is flanked by deep bunkers that cut right into the edges of the green on the left and front right. When walking up to the green and standing below its surface, the curved edges of the bunker in front of the green were very visually appealing, and you had a great view of the significant slope of the green.
The 16th hole was a downhill 376 yard par 4. The hole dog legs to the left, and from the elevated tee box, if you carry the fairway bunker on the left edge of the hole, your ball would kick hard towards the center of the fairway. This hole features one of the most fun tee shots of the round.
The 18th hole is a gently downhill 392 yard par 4 that dog legs softly to the left. After the difficult tee shot where trees encroach in along the left side of the hole, you’re faced with an approach to the 18th green with the scenic Mid Pines Inn situated behind the green. I liked how on this approach you see the bunker on the left side of the green, but besides that bunker, all you see is the short grass all around the green.
After finishing our round at Mid Pines, needing some nutritional value, we went to a local pizza and sandwich shop and picked up some salads. I got the chef salad, which was topped with tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cucumbers, hard boiled egg, cheddar cheese, turkey, ham, and salami. The salad was very good, and it felt good to eat something on the opposite end of the nutritional spectrum from Cookout.
Monday
On Monday we woke up and went to breakfast at the Pine Needles restaurant. Again, I got the omelet, with a side of toast, bacon, and grits. Our plan today was to play a morning round at Mid Pines, and then to play an afternoon round at Pine Needles. Unfortunately, there was a frost delay on all three courses this morning, so we had a delayed start to our round at Mid Pines. As fun as the course is, given that we already played it once and that we wanted to make sure we got a full round in at Pine Needles, we only were able to finish 13 holes at Mid Pines. We played the full front 9, and then the 10th and 11th, then jumped ahead to the 17th and 18th holes. Again, the course was in great shape, especially given that there was another frost delay that morning. After our 13 holes at Mid Pines, we went back across the street for our afternoon round at Pine Needles.
Pine Needles had the look and feel of a championship golf course, given that past US Women’s Opens were contested here and that the 2022 edition will also be held here. The distinctive green Rolex clock on the putting green next to the first tee further cemented those impressions.
The course was also in great shape, and the course was essentially fully dried out from the snowfall a few days prior. One thing that was a new experience for me was that the Bermuda grass on the fairways was completely dormant and a burnt light brown color. To my surprise, this had no impact at all on the playability of the course, and the dormant grass played like any other green fairway grass would. The only downside was that it made it a little difficult to see where the fairways ended and where sandy areas started.
Overall, while I certainly enjoyed Pine Needles, as I get a thrill out of getting the chance to play anywhere that holds a high level professional golf tournament, I found the course to be a little less interesting and a little more repetitive than Mid Pines and Southern Pines. I think it’s to be expected that a championship level golf course does have to be more of an execution test, and that the holes will have less creativity and variety than other courses with no intentions to test the best golfers in the world. I felt like a lot of the holes blended together for me, with many of the tee shots being an uphill tee shot into a blind landing area, with bunkers on the left and the right sides of the fairway. I did find the greens interesting, as they also had great short grass run off areas surrounding them. On many of the holes (as you can see below), the greens were elevated a couple of feet off the fairway, which made shots around the green very difficult, as you had to play from a tight lie and get your ball about 5 feet into the air just to get onto the greens.
The shots around the greens were more challenging than at Mid Pines due to the more dramatic slopes and elevation changes surrounding the greens. Also, the swaths of trees were much thicker at Pine Needles and the property felt much bigger than at Mid Pines, and there were some longer walks from greens to the next tee boxes. While it was a bigger property than Mid Pines, I still found myself wondering where they would put large grandstands and spectators for the upcoming US Women’s Open.
The 2nd hole is a 420 yard par 4. I feel like the tee shot on this hole is one of the tee shots that you end up facing may times throughout the round — a tee shot where you can’t see the green, with fairway bunkers on the right and the left of the fairway. Aside from the relatively repetitive tee shot, I found this green surround very interesting, as from this angle below you can really see how elevated the green is from the fairway, how short the grass is on the green surrounds, and how steep the fall off is to the right of the green.
The 3rd hole is a short 125 yard par 3 over the water. I loved the irregular shapes of the bunkers to the left of the green and how they seemed to protrude right into the green. To get to this hole you had to walk through a tunnel under a road, so I wonder if fans will be able to get to this part of the course for the US Open.
The 4th hole is a 342 yard par 4 that plays straight up hill and over water on the tee shot. I like this picture that I took from the green and looking back down the hole towards the tee box.
With this pin location on the far right edge of the green, the 170 yard par 3 5th hole looked like a reverse redan, where you would ideally aim your tee shot at the center of the green and have it feed off of the elevated left side of the green towards the back right pin. Towards the right of the green you can see the extremely steep fall off that goes about 10 feet below the surface of the putting green.
The 10th hole was my favorite par 5 on the course. The 460 yard dog leg left par 5 has a scenic tee shot over water, but the intrigue came on the second shot. Short of the green and stretching across the fairway, there’s a hazard with sand and tall grass. Given the short yardage of the hole for a par 5, you have the option to go for the green, but you don’t want to end up in this hazard short of the green, and you know that there will be steep fall off areas around the green. Even though I was in the fairway, the hazard in the center of the fairway forced me into a layup, where I was still left with a challenging wedge shot into the green. Sure enough, after getting up towards the green, you realize that the hazard was much further short of the green than it looks from the fairway, and it serves as a great visual misdirection tactic.
The short 310 yard par 4 11th hole featured one of my favorite tee shots on the course. The downhill tee shot into a fairway the slopes towards the right kicks balls towards the right hand fairway bunker. If you end up in the deep fairway bunkers on the right, then they bring into play deep cross bunkers short of the green that are also in play if you decide to hit a driver off the tee.
My favorite hole at Pine Needles is the downhill 160 yard par 3 13th. The bunker short left of the green looks like it’s right up against the green, but once you get down to the green, you see that it's actually about 10 yards short of the green, and over that bunker there's a downhill ramp that can actually kick your ball onto the green.
After finishing up our second round of the day we were starving and decided to go to Cookout again. This time I got the tray combo meal with the BBQ pork sandwich, sides of chicken nuggets and a corn dog, and a Reese’s peanut butter cup milkshake. The sides of chicken nuggets and corn dog were much better than my sides of fries and chicken quesadilla on the first trip, and the milkshake was excellent. For only $8.75 this was a great meal after a full day of golf. After eating Cookout twice in three days, I think I’ve hit my Cookout quota for a while, and I’m glad I took the opportunity to try it.
Tuesday
On Tuesday we woke up early and again went to the Pine Needles restaurant for breakfast. I had the same meal that I had the prior two days, and again it was filling and delicious. Our plan today was to play 18 holes at the third and final course, Southern Pines, and then head to the airport to fly home to New York. Again, there was a slight frost delay, so our tee time at Southern Pines got pushed back about an hour and a half. After eating breakfast and heading over to the course to wait, at 9:30 AM, we were the first group off the tee.
Southern Pines struck me as different from Mid Pines and Pine Needles. While Mid Pines and Pine Needles were both similar in many respects, Southern Pines was unique in that it featured many massive elevation changes with some steep uphill shots into greens, sweeping vistas where trees were removed so that you could see many holes on the course, and the course featured bentgrass greens rather than Bermuda grass. Also, Southern Pines is still wrapping up some of its recent restoration work, so a few of the sandy areas still seemed like they were under construction and there were some dozers and machinery around, but that did not detract from the course at all.
Southern Pines was my second favorite course of the trip, behind Mid Pines, as I really enjoyed the variety and memorability of the holes, as well as the views that you had on the course when standing on certain elevated areas. I found Southern Pines to be the most difficult of the three courses, as I thought the approach shots were the most challenging. The approach shots challenged you as a few of them were severely uphill, and many of the greens were surrounded by huge bunkers. Southern Pines was the most visually intimidating of the three courses, as on many of the approach shots it was difficult to pinpoint the safest areas to miss the greens. Once you were on the greens, I found them fairly easy to putt on, but that was probably just because I was back putting on familiar bentgrass again.
The 1st hole is a downhill 368 yard par 4 with a fairway that slopes to the left and has a sandy cross hazard through the fairway well short of the green. The approach shot is into one of my favorite greens on the course, with its three distinct sections — the front, back left, and back right. Compared to the rest of the course, this is a gentle opener and one of the more straightforward holes.
The 3rd hole is a downhill 176 yard par 3, with visually intimidating bunkers surrounding the green, especially for the left side pin placement that we faced. Of the three courses, I believe that Southern Pines had the most dramatic and challenging par 3s.
The 4th hole is an uphill 369 yard par 4 that moves to the left. You have to keep your tee shot on the right side of the fairway to have the best angle for the steep uphill approach shot into the green, and the bunkers along the right side of the fairway make gaining this advantage difficult. I think that this approach shot is one of the hardest on the course, especially with the left hand pin placement that we faced. A deep bunker short left of the green guards the pin, and the pin is up on a ridge, where any shots to the right of it will feed further away from the hole. This shot is further made more challenging by the fact that it’s severely uphill.
The 7th hole is a visually daunting 150 yard par 3 that plays over a huge chasm short and left of the green.
The 8th hole is one of my favorites on the course — a slightly downhill 362 yard par 4 that plays to a green that moves gently to the right and borders a body of water. From the fairway and on down to the green on this hole, you have my favorite view on the course, where you can see over a large pond and see many other holes on the course. Then later in the round on the 11th green, I found that from an even higher point, you have this same view, except in the opposite direction.
The 9th hole was another dramatic looking par 3 and measures 164 yards. This green has a very steep false front, and the bunkers on the left and right of the green are very deep. On the left edge of the green, directly over the bunker, the green falls off steeply to a short grass run off area.
The 10th hole is an uphill 325 yard par 4, where the fairway slopes from left to right. This is a well designed hole as the approach shot becomes more challenging with the ball below your feet when trying to hit an elevated green with deep bunkers to the right of the green (as the common miss is to the right with the ball below your feet). I think this hole will look great when some native grass grows into the sandy area before the start of the fairway.
The 11th hole is my other favorite at Southern Pines. Off the tee on the short 290 yard par 4 that dog legs to the right, it’s difficult to pick a club off the tee and decide how much of the bunkers along the right that you want to attempt to cut off and carry. The bunkers to the right of the fairway are deep below the surface of the fairway, while the bunkers on the left are elevated, which is not a very comfortable shot with the water long of the green. When walking towards the 11th green, you have the best view on the course, where you can see the 8th green, and many other holes, across the body of water.
The 13th green of the 388 yard par 4 featured one of my favorite green shapes on the course. The approach shot played downhill, into a green that falls off in the back and has the look of an infinity green. The green is wide but not deep and has wavy rolls all around the edges.
The short downhill 469 yard par 5 15th hole has an inviting tee shot and then a sandy cross hazard that forces you to layup well short of the green on your second shot or to go for the green, where the only safe area to miss is short of the green. Once some native grass grows into the sandy area in front of the fairway, I think this hole could be a postcard hole for Southern Pines.
The 17th hole, a difficult 400 yard part 4, features a sandy area on the right side of the fairway that obfuscates your view of the green. The approach shot is into a green that’s guarded on all sides by deep bunkers, and from the fairway, you see more of the bunkers than the green, since the bunkers are layered on top of each other off the back of the green. As you can see here, the only relatively accessible pin location is on the right side of the green, which is the only portion of the green that you can see from the fairway. We happened to have this right hand pin location for our round.
After the round at Southern Pines, we packed our clubs back into our travel cases and left for the one hour drive back to the Raleigh-Durham airport. The trip was a great experience to play three Sandhills courses that are very different from the golf that I’m accustomed to playing in the Northeast. It was fun to have to think about new shots, such as reading the grain on Bermuda grass greens, hitting 100 yards shots off of pine needles rather than out of rough, and thinking differently about shots around the greens from the short grass run off areas. Playing these new and different courses reminded me of how many different kinds of shots that truly great golfers must be able to hit to play well at all different kinds of courses. I look forward to playing more new courses in the future.
