Donald Ross’ creatively named course “Number 2″ was then and is still now considered the crown jewel of the resort. Donald Ross who has hundreds of golf course designs to his credit did a large number of them having never set foot on the job sites. What makes Pinehurst different from these other sites is that Ross lived here and spent his free time tinkering with and tweaking the course until his final days.

From a championship perspective Pinehurst 2 hosted the 1999 and 2005 U.S. Opens hosted both the Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens on consecutive weeks in 2014. 

The scene is set, Cathy and I made sure we took a sleeping tablet the night before so we were well rested and in fine form for the big day.  Our three ball was Cockers, Shugzee and me, with our two caddies. It turned out that they filled the fourth spot with a guy called Dave who played off 3, so off we go for our big moment.  Great drives off the first, we were about to break out the champers and then we saw the green and the guide book said that Donald Ross thinks it’s a good idea to let you warm up before testing you with a difficult hole.  I though, oh boy this is going to be tough. Cathy and I shared a caddy called Bernard, to set the scene Bernard is called the “human rain delay” by his fellow caddies and that is because he does everything slowly.  He suggested that Cathy lay up when she had 150m to the hole and then tried to convince me to lay up with 110m.  He worked in yards, we worked in metres, we could only understand every third word he said and his  way of telling us it was a slow put was “she is gonna grip a bit”.  We both felt that he cost us at least 4-6 shots.

I had 6 over which I was happy with considering Bernard was responsible for a lot of them!  

The course was absolutely amazing and it was so great to see where some of the most amazing shots had been played from.  The greens are so bumpy, (as in they have Swales all over the place) they reminded me of a frisbee that had melted.  So often you would chip onto the green only to roll off the side or back.

I sunk a great putt to par the last and this is me celebrating aka Payne.

This is the line straw, should you venture off the fairways.  

These are the annoying clumps of grass that will spoil your day if you go a bit wild. 

This is Bernard’ camera work!! 

 The three musketeers

More fantastic photo work by Bernard  

Today we left Pinehurst and took a four hour coach trip to Aiken which is where we will stay for the the Masters 4 days.  It was the first day of tournament play and we watched Jason have his birdie run by streaming live play on our iPads. My how the time flew by.   

Only one more sleep until the next adventure. 

Categories: The Masters Trip

Shaz Thompson

Mad about golf, enthusiastic about life, totally in love with my husband and just having fun.