What is one of the major complaints about golf? It takes too long to play, detractors like to say. Proponents of the game are constantly trying to invent new and different ways to “speed the game up” with golf architects even designing award-winning short courses that are now cropping up all over the country. Pine…
By David Droschak At 28 years old and the golf world still reeling from the Great Recession, fresh-faced architect Kyle Franz made a bold prediction after having a hand in the bunkering work at Pinehurst No. 2. “I did an interview in the summer of 2010 right after we finished Pinehurst No. 2 and one…
By Brad King His story began 700 miles from the Arctic Circle on the east coast of Scotland in Dornoch, north of the Highlands and fast by the sea. But the Scottish immigrant who arrived in America at the turn of the century and became one of North Carolina’s greatest ambassadors did not come directly…
By Stuart Hall When Peggy Kirk Bell first met golf at age 17, how the wondrous, intertwining 78-year journey would unfold must have been unfathomable. In 1938, the idea of a young woman becoming a golf instructor or a touring professional or even a savvy business negotiator was likely as much wishful thinking as practical because…
By BRAD KING When he was contemplating converting the green complexes at historic Pine Needles resort in Southern Pines from bentgrass to an ultra-dwarf strand of bermudagrass, Kelly Miller didn’t have to look far for a good sampling — just across Midland Road, in fact, to the Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club. Miller, the longtime…