Pinehurst No. 2: Know Before You Go

Start with the fact that changes your planning, because a lot of articles bury it: Pinehurst No. 2 is not open to the public. Not on a 24-hour window, not on a cancellation, not on a quiet Tuesday. The resort's own wording is blunt — walk-on play is not available.

To play it you must be a resort member or an overnight guest, and there's a two-night minimum attached. Non-guests calling the day before can get on Nos. 1, 3, 5 and The Cradle. Never No. 2.

That's not a hurdle you can be clever about. It's the price of entry, and it means the trip is a resort stay or it isn't a trip.

What the restoration actually did

If you last saw No. 2 on television before 2011, you haven't seen this golf course. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw finished a restoration in March 2011 that fundamentally changed what it asks of you.

They eliminated the rough entirely — Pinehurst describes the result as two heights of grass, "greens and everything else." They tore out around 35 acres of irrigated turf and put back sand, pine straw, native grasses and more than 200,000 wiregrass plants. They pulled out hundreds of irrigation heads, widened fairways by up to half, and stopped overseeding in winter so the course stays firm.

The greens also went from bentgrass to an ultradwarf bermuda, which made them firmer. Remember that — it matters in a minute.

Pinehurst make the point better than anyone: the drive Payne Stewart hit on 18 in 1999 would now finish in sand and wiregrass.

The greens, and the one rule that matters

Everyone calls them turtlebacks. Here's a detail most travel writing gets wrong: Donald Ross didn't build domes. He built rolling contours. The pronounced convex shape came later, built up over decades of aggressive top-dressing and sand splashing out of the bunkers onto the green edges. The course grew into its own defining feature.

However it got there, the effect is that a green-side miss isn't a green-side miss. The ball doesn't stop near the green — it releases and runs twenty yards down a slope into a closely mown collection area, and now you have a genuinely difficult shot with your third.

So: miss short, and miss on line. That's the USGA's own guidance and it's the single most useful sentence anyone can give you before you play here. Long is the worst place to be. Take one less club than your ego wants, aim at the front edge, and accept a thirty-footer as a good result.

Booking and cost

Pinehurst doesn't publish a standalone green fee for No. 2 — access comes through a resort package, with a $250 premium to add a No. 2 round on top. Packages start around $690 for two nights with a round a night, and climb steeply from there to the multi-round options.

Caddies run about $100 for a single bag with a suggested gratuity on top; a forecaddie for the group is cheaper. Caddies are encouraged rather than required.

No. 2 is cart-path-only, and the paths are a long way from the line of play. One of the resort's own caddies puts it best: on this golf course, if you get in a cart, you're just wasting your time. Push carts are available. Most people who know the place walk it.

Why it's worth the resort-only hassle

No. 2 has hosted four U.S. Opens — Payne Stewart in 1999, Michael Campbell in 2005, Martin Kaymer in 2014, Bryson DeChambeau in 2024. In 2014 it did something no course had ever done, hosting the men's and women's U.S. Opens in consecutive weeks, with Michelle Wie winning the second.

And it isn't finished. The USGA has made Pinehurst its first-ever anchor site, with U.S. Opens committed for 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047.

That means when you play it, you're playing a course you'll watch again — and you'll know exactly why the players are all aiming thirty feet short of the pin.