Pinehurst Country Club — Restaurant in Pinehurst

North South Amateur Championship 2024

Recently the North South Amateur Championship was conducted at Pinehurst ( historically the Men’s is the longest running amateur event in USA). For the first time, the Ladies and Men’s competition was conducted simultaneously, necessitating more Officials.

The competition was played on Pinehurst #2 and #8 for the Stroke Play qualifier. Then the Match Play was all on #2.

A Referee was assigned for every match to walk with the players the first round. Then for every match further a Referee was assigned for walking along and another as a walking observer

(Special note: the week was one of the absolute hottest on record for that third week of June. The discomfort walking was paramount for players and Referees; lots of drenched uniforms by the end of each match. )

One match that to which I was assigned in the quarter-finals was between 15 year old Luke Colton from Frisco, Texas and Jase Summy, a University of Oklahoma Sooner golf team member from Keller, Texas.

With the demanding difficulty of the green complexes on #2, par was your friend. The first 9 holes, between the two opponents, had the players with a lot of pars and total of 3 birdies. One would expect a minimal number of under par holes on this layout. Then they both parred the tenth hole.

For the next nine holes the intensity of the match accelerated as they collectively produced a total of 11 birdies. Eleven birdies in 9 holes! It was such a delight to see such spectacular shotmaking and clutch shots that epitomizes the allure of great matches.

Arriving at the 18th tee, the match was one up for Jase Summy after tension filled pars made by both players on the 16th and 17th holes. If you are calculating your math and take those two holes out of the equation, this means this match had 11 birdies on 7 holes!

Both drivers striped terrific drives down the fairway to set up the challenge. Summy fired his second to the middle of green with a 15 foot birdie putt. Then Colton played his left-handed solid iron to within two feet setting up a likely birdie. Summy narrowly missed his attempt followed by a confident holing of a clutch birdie to tie the match by Luke. On to extra holes.

The first hole of overtime, both drove again gaining the fairway for the approach. And again both hit the green in regulation with Colton at 25 feet and Summy slightly closer. The treacherous hole location was on a devilish slope cautioning the player to be precise. Colton hit a beautiful putt narrowly missing. Summy stroked his putt and at the last possible tumble, the birdie putt fell in for the victory. It was a tremendous match.

Keep your alert on for future success from Luke Colton. As a left-hand 15 year old, his poise and determination to score was top notch. Reminded me of Miles Russell from Jacksonville, the 14 year old who won the PGA National Junior Championship last year and has continued winning events. Luke may be a headliner some day.

Oh! Almost forgot! In the match, Luke shot 67 and Jase posted a 68. On Course #2! The variables of match play were in play as the match was tied for the eighteen holes but one player was one stroke...

During the 1929 U.S. Amateur, the great Bobby Jones inexplicably lost his first round match at Pebble Beach to an obscure player by the name of Johnny Goodman.  By that time, Jones had dreamed of an idyllic golf club somewhere near his home in Atlanta and apparently had a handshake agreement with Ross that the Scot would design the course whenever Jones was ready to embark on the project. But when Jones lost in the first round at Pebble Beach, he had a week to kill – travel arrangements not being as fluid as they are today. He spent considerable time playing a new course on the Monterey Peninsula and getting to know its architect. Jones was so smitten by what he found in Cypress Point and Alister MacKenzie that he left California knowing MacKenzie, the British physician-turned-golf architect, would be his designer—not Ross Ross was a notorious individualist,” author and historian Charles Price explained in “A Golf Story,” his 1986 book about Jones and The Masters Tournament, “and Jones wanted a course with his designs incorporated into it, not a course entirely of somebody else’s.” Ross wasn’t happy to learn that Jones was hiring MacKenzie to design the new course in Georgia. Pinehurst resident John Derr remembers the hair standing on Ross’s neck in the mid-1930s when Derr, at the time a young sportswriter from Greensboro, innocently made a glowing remark to Ross about this terrific new course in Augusta. Ross was miffed. And so he went back to work on his own gem...

If you are thinking of moving to Pinehurst for a club membership at a club that cares about its members.....Definitely look somewhere else. PCC is not an elite membership, it's not classy, it's not exclusive, it's none of what you think. They cater to their partners and resort guests. The members are just a way to pay the bills, and they devise every way possible to nickel and dime members for what can only be described as low budget amenities. The pool is pretty nice and the lake is nice as well, but they opened up memberships to people who live outside Pinehurst, and now everything is super crowded! Just my opinion over a number of...