In 2013, I completed a lifelong quest to play every golf course in Utah, all 122 of them that existed at the time, and wrote about my “golf odyssey” for the newspaper and website I worked for back then, The Salt Lake Tribune.
So I like to think I’ve played some pretty challenging golf courses since I took up the game at South Jordan’s Glenmoor Golf Course as a 12-year-old with a few clubs I borrowed from my uncle Mark. I’ve also been fortunate to have played some of the best courses in Arizona, Nevada and California, including the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links on the Monterey Peninsula in central California.
By far, however, the hardest course I have ever played is Pinehurst No. 2 in the sandhills region of North Carolina, site of this week’s U.S. Open. That’s why, like millions of other golf fans, I will be glued to my television and laptop this weekend as Utahns Tony Finau and Zac Blair attempt to win our national championship.
Finau, the former Salt Lake City and Lehi resident and West High graduate, will be playing in his 33rd major and 10th U.S. Open and has to be considered among the 10 or so golfers with the best chance of winning the title on Sunday. He tees off Thursday from the No. 10 tee at 5:51 a.m. MDT with former champion Dustin Johnson and Ludvig Aberg of Sweden.
Blair, the former Fremont High and BYU star, had to take the strenuous qualifying route to make it into his third U.S. Open, and fifth major, and will tee off from No. 10 Thursday at 6:46 a.m. MDT with American Davis Thompson and Aaron Rai of England.
The Utahns better be prepared for a meat-grinder of a golf course, which is gnarly at any time of the year, let alone before the USGA sets it up for a U.S. Open.
I learned that back in 2014, a few months before Pinehurst hosted both the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in back-to-back weeks. Martin Kaymer of Germany and Michelle Wie of the U.S. were the champions.
Trust me when I say that I’ve never really gotten over how diabolical Pinehurst No. 2 can be.
It almost caused me to give up golf. It was that tough.
If I had played my own ball entirely on that blustery, cold early spring day in March, there’s no way this mid-handicapper would have recorded a score in the double digits. I played the course — as well as Pinehurst No. 8 and Pinehurst No. 3 — in a four-man scramble charity tournament and our team of fairly decent golfers (but no single-digit sticks) was just happy to come in under par.
Here’s part of what I wrote for The Tribune after the experience as sort of a preview for the 2014 tournament:
“All the photos and television shots over the course of the next two weeks won’t do justice to the revered course’s most notable characteristic: diabolical, humped greens. They are shaped like the tops of giant mushrooms. Or the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle. And they make it almost impossible to get it close to the pin for hackers like me.”
Blair got to experience Pinehurst No. 2 for himself a few days after I wrote that, and actually handled it well for a first-timer in a major. He tied for 40th and memorably put his father, local legend Jimmy Blair, on his bag for his walk up the 18th fairway on Father’s Day.
“Pinehurst requires a ton of creativity,” Blair told me last week. “The guy who wins will be the guy most able to handle those turtleback greens.”
Finau tied for 18th at the last major, the PGA Championship last month at Valhalla in Louisville, and has made the cut in 26 of his last 32 majors. He tied for 32nd at Los Angeles Country Club in the U.S. Open last June, after having missed the cuts in 2022 (The Country Club in Boston) and 2021 (Torrey Pines in San Diego).
“I don’t know that I’ve ever played a golf course similar to Pinehurst No. 2,” Finau told the website sbnation.com’s Playing Through last week after a T8 finish at The Memorial. “There’s no real bunkering. It is kind of a waste area all over the golf course. The greens are very undulating; if I remember correctly, almost every green is a turtleback green, which presents its problems.”
Finau told the writer, Jack Milko, that to win he needs to drive well and be dialed in with his lag putting.
“I’m probably going to use my putter a lot around the greens. … And I also need to hole putts inside 10 feet,” he said.
Pinehurst does not have a history of producing accomplished champions. Payne Stewart memorably beat Phil Mickelson by a shot in 1999, shooting 1-under, while New Zealander Michael Campbell came out of nowhere in 2005 and outdueled Tiger Woods and others to win with an even-par score of 288.
Pinehurst is 7,565 yards when tipped out, but might not play that long this week as conditions will be hard and fast and the world’s best golfers will have to guard against having their tee shots roll through fairways and into the sandy waste areas and some native vegetation knowns as wiregrass.
I’ve got a lot of memories of said wiregrass, and none of them are good.
Aesthetically, Pinehurst No. 2 isn’t eye-candy, by any stretch. Augusta National, it is not — in that regard.
For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed playing Pinehurst No. 8, which opened in 1996 and was designed by Tom Fazio, a lot more than No. 2. If memory serves, No. 8 has more memorable, playable holes.
But it doesn’t have the history that No. 2 has, of course. Designed by the late Donald Ross and restored in 2010 by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, the so-called “Cradle of Golf” has left plenty of golfers, like me, crying in their post-round beverage.
The most famous meltdown was turned in by John Daly at the U.S. Open in 1999. Daly became so frustrated on Pinehurst’s eighth hole that he whacked a ball that was rolling back to him in frustration, getting a two-shot penalty for violation. He eventually took an 11 on the hole and said afterwards that he would never play at Pinehurst again.
I feel your pain, Big John. I really do.