We find ourselves at the midpoint of the 124th United States Open Golf Championship at the Number 2 Course at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina. For fans of the professional game, Pinehurst is one of the more different looking courses hosting a PGA Tour event. The greens are diabolical due to their humpback nature, the rough is more about sanded native areas than it is about high grasses, and it has all the looks of a golf course that was built at the turn of the century way back in 1900.
The godfather of Pinehurst is Donald Ross who first came to the property in 1900 and remained there in the capacity of club professional, greenskeeper, and course architect and designer until his death in 1948. Oftentimes acknowledged as one of the most important figures in the world of American golf course architecture alongside A.W. Tillinghast, C.B. Macdonald, and Allister Mackenzie, Ross is given credit for having designed or been heavily responsible for the re-design of close to 400 golf courses in North America. He has been responsible for course design in 31 different states, four Canadian provinces, Scotland, and the island of Cuba.
Ross was born in Dornach, Scotland in 1872 and served an apprenticeship as a teenager with a carpenter. An avid golfer who was a regular at the Dornach Golf Club, Ross was encouraged by Dornach's club secretary, John Sutherland, to move to St. Andrews and begin working under the tutelage of Old Tom Morris. Under the guidance of Old Tom, Ross learned the art of club making, greenskeeping, and the fundamentals of what makes a great golf hole. He returned to Dornach as a 21 year old to take on the position of golf club professional and greenskeeper.
When Ross was 27 years old he was encouraged to move from Dornach once again, this time to Boston in the United States. He took on the professional and greenskeeper job at the Oakley Country Club. While in Boston Ross made connections with members of the Tufts family. The Tufts were an old time New England family that was active in business, philanthropy, and education. The family had purchased major acreage in the sand hills country of North Carolina and was in the process of building a mega-resort in the Pinehurst area. The Tufts strongly encouraged Donald to relocate to North Carolina for the winter months when Boston area courses were closed due to snow. Ross accepted their offer and took on a similar job at the new Pinehurst Resort as the golf professional and greenskeeper. He never left.
When Ross first arrived at Pinehurst in the autumn of 1900, the golf course was a nine hole par three course for the hotel's guest. Ross was given the freedom to develop the extensive property and he went about designing and developing four golf courses on the site. The Number 2 Course where the U.S. Open is being contested this weekend was always the gem of the complex and was considered the tournament course. For 48 years until his death, Ross had his primary residence at Pinehurst and he lived alongside the third hole on the tournament course. He constantly tweaked the Number 2 Course, adjusting bunkers and green sites.
Ross received accolades nationally for his work at Pinehurst and his course architecture abilities were suddenly in demand. He started to travel around the country and began his Ross Design business. By 1926 Ross Design had four offices on the east coast and over 3,000 employees. It was the time of the Roaring Twenties, golf was a hot commodity with Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, and Walter Hagen, and Ross rode the wave of the sport's popularity.
On top of all that, Ross was an outstanding golfer. He recorded four top 10s in the U.S. Open, had a top 10 in the British Open in the only time he teed it up there, won the North and South against strong professional fields in 1903, 1905, and 1906, and captured the Massachusetts Open in 1905 and 1911. He was also innovative as a greenskeeper and developed a strain of Bermuda grass that was a match for golf courses in the humid and hot southern United States. Ross also had a strong hand in the formation of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1971.
Ross actually designed Peninsula Country Club in San Mateo. It was his only California design. Among his 400 designs, we get to see the nuances of Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro annually as it hosts the long running Wyndham Greater Greensboro Open. Of course from my personal perspective, Donald Ross designed Beverly Country Club in Chicago in 1908. Beverly hosted four Western Opens with the 1910 version won by Chick Evans, the 1963 Western captured by Arnold Palmer in a Monday playoff victory over Julius Boros and Jack Nicklaus, and with Nicklaus winning the Western four years later by one stroke over Doug Sanders. Francis Ouimet won the U.S. Amateur at Beverly in 1931 and Vinny Giles won the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2009. Most importantly, I played my first round of golf at Beverly in 1967 on a caddie day Monday. I fell in love with the game from that point onward and owe some of that high regard to the design work of Donald Ross.
So enjoy the last two rounds of the 2024 United States Open. As for me, I'll be watching intently and giving a tip of the golfing cap to Donald Ross, one of the godfathers of American golf course architecture.
No comments:
Post a Comment