Donald Ross Courses You Can Play

By PAUL AND B.J. DUNN

Special To Triad and Triangle Golf Today

            Last year we decided to find out where it all began. We had spent more than two years researching and writing a 300-page book about the golf courses designed by the great Donald Ross, and now it was time to walk the hallowed grounds in Scotland, where he learned his trade.

We had registered with a home exchange program on the Internet and, as luck would have it, there was a family from Dunblane that was anxious to visit North Carolina and play some of our courses. We did all the paper work and were able to spend three golf-filled weeks, through downpours of rain, goats on the green and constantly losing our way (only to be rescued by a man from New Jersey) at Dornoch, where Ross grew up and learned his craft.

               It is estimated that he designed more than 400 courses in the U.S. Amazingly, more than 200 private golf and country club courses and over 100 of his semi-private, public and resort courses are still alive and well. He set up shop in two locations: summers at his home in Little Compton, Rhode Island, next to Newport, and the rest of the year at his house located at 120 Midland Road, Pinehurst, fittingly right off the third fairway on  #2.

             Richard Tufts wrote, “Many of Donald’s friends…urged him to write his autobiography. This didn’t interest him, and one got the impression that he felt he had failed if his courses did not speak for him more eloquently than he could himself.”  Largely for that reason, we decided two years ago to compile a book that would describe in words and pictures, the courses designed by Ross that are still open to public play. Derrydale Press published Great Donald Ross Golf Courses You Can Play, which includes 101 venues, many of which are found within driving distance of anyone living in the Piedmont area. We were able to include some gorgeous photos in addition to phone, fax, e-mails and directions to the courses and, where possible, list holes that are the same today as when they were laid out originally by Ross. This allows Ross aficionados to not only visit his masterworks, but to play his original holes as if Donald were happily part of the foursome.

              In North Carolina we include: Asheboro (not previously listed in any Ross anthologies), Buncombe, Grove Park Inn, Lenoir, Linville, Mid-Pines, Monroe, Mooresville, Pinehurst, Pine Needles, Richmond Pines, Southern Pines, Stryker (Fort Bragg) and Wilmington. In Virginia: Belmont, The Homestead, Kinderton, Sewells Point and The Woodlands. In northern South Carolina: Cheraw, Ft. Mill and Lancaster.

            If you can, picture the dour Scot tooling around in his favored, oversized Packard, or climbing on a train that might take a day to deliver him to his destination, and then picking up his check for designing a course for an amount between $385 and $1000. Bear in mind that he was “on site” at only about half of the venues that bear his name, and at his peak in the late ’20s he had as many as 3,000 men working for him, maintaining offices in four states. He relied on long-time engineering associates Walter B. Hatch, James Harrison, Henry Hughes and J.B. McGovern, with Walter Irving Johnston creating the finished plans including detailed specifications for individual holes and fairways that were then provided to the building foreman.

               It stands to reason that a man who was able to design golf courses that still remain as an inspiration to modern architects, would be an excellent player as well. Although his brother Alec won the US Open in 1907, Donald, too, had several championships under his belt. He won the Massachusetts Open twice, the North and South and tied for sixth in the 1910 British Open, (with F. Kinnell, T.G. Renouf and E.P. Gaudin), with an overall score of 309. He often shot his age on Pinehurst #2 when he was in his sixties.

                Pinehurst #2 is considered by many to be his masterwork. Today, he stands in gleaming bronze, next to his mentor, William Tufts. Down the green, golfers now see a third figure added to the montage, that of Payne Stewart, arms raised to the skies, as they were when he sank the putt that earned him the U.S. Open championship in 1999.

                 Ross always remembered his early years as green keeper at Carnoustie and Dornoch. He said, “What I did was go out in overalls and get down on my hands and knees, and care for the turf and the bunkers and grass. How I used to hate it. But, as it turned out, that was the best training I could have had for what turned out to be my future.”

In his day there was no college Golf 101 course to take; he literally invented the profession of golf course architecture as we know it today. As we played the different venues covered in the book, we were struck by the similarities, and yet awestruck at his genius, that could adapt the terrain as a landscape artist, always keeping in mind the men and women who would follow behind him, playing the game.

Autographed copies of Great Donald Ross Golf Courses You Can Play may be ordered from Old Sport in Pinehurst at 910 295-9775 or unsigned at http://Amazon.com.