Pinehurst No. 2 was plain.After the 2008 U.S. Amateur, resort Owner Bob Dedman came to the realization that the crown jewel of the “Cradle of American Golf ” had lost its luster.Donald Ross’s masterpiece, a course he spent nearly 40 years fine-tuning in an effort to create the quintessential test of championship golf, still had its signature crowned, undulating green complexes. They alone certainly allowed No. 2 to stand tall among the greatest championship venues in the country, but Dedman was disappointed that other elements, which had made No. 2 so special a century ago, had gradually gone away.So Dedman hired the design duo of Coore & Crenshaw, highly lauded for their continual commitment to preserving

an architect’s original intent, to do just that. They started by removing every single blade of rough, more than 35 acres in all, to expose the distinctive sandy soil dotted with

a vast array of native grasses and plants. They also removed over 500 irrigation heads to help chop down maintenance costs.

THE WINNER IS PINEHURST

“This is one of our great golf courses in the United States,” said Crenshaw. “We had to think long and hard about what we would do and whether we wanted to be that bold because we knew some things needed to be done that might shock people. But we tackled it, and we’re so happy that we did.”

That beauty would be on full display during the monumental back-to-back U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open at No. 2, where players wouldn’t be able to employ the bomb and gauge plan of the past. Firm and fast playing conditions would lead stray tee balls bounding into the sandy areas framing the fairways and leave wayward approaches settling into closely mown collection areas guarding the greens.

“This may look like golf of the past with the presentation of the course (but) in so many ways this is golf of the future,” said Coore in a pgatour.com story. “In today’s world, with water issues, environmental impact

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issues, cost associated, ... the majority of courses are going to have to go more in this direction.

Many Open participants agreed. “This place is awesome,” said Phil Mickelson on the Tuesday of tournament week. There’s no luck involved with the hack-it-out rough that sometimes we have around the greens. It’s just a wonderful test that is, I think, the best test I’ve seen to identify the best player.”

Rory McIlroy also acknowledged the genius of No. 2’s design. “It brings into play imagination, creativeness, hitting different shots out of different lies, where maybe in previous U.S. Opens, you hit it in the rough, and again you only had one option,” said McIlroy in a pre-championship interview.

“It played just the way we wanted it to play, the way the architects wanted it to play,” said USGA Executive Director Mike Davis. “The feedback I got from both the men and the women, they loved how it played. It gave them options. They could be creative.”

The rave reviews may just mean that the back-to-back Opens could

be back. That’s probably good news for Martin Kaymer, who fired consecutive rounds of 65 Thursday and Friday en route to a total of 9-under par, the third lowest in 114 years of the U.S. Open. Pretty well done for someone who predicted 8-over par for the week might win the tournament.

It wasn’t the nail-biting back-nine drama that we were hoping for, but the golf

world was collectively impressed by Kaymer’s sheer dominance and were eager to see what the Women’s Open had in store for them.

What transpired eclipsed everything the USGA could have hoped for. Michelle Wie, who first made the cut at the Women’s Open 11 years ago at age 13, earned an incredibly long-overdue major championship victory by carding a

final-round of even-par 70 to edge Stacy Lewis by two shots. Wie opened with a pair of 68s Thursday and Friday, and like Kaymer, was the only player in the field to finish under par.

“I think the course is spectacular, and I think winning on the same golf course that Payne Stewart won means so much to me,” said Wie after the win. “There’s just so much history to this golf course. And just the fact that I can be part of that history, it’s just so cool. I feel so honored to be part of that history.”

Photos credited to Pinehurst Resort