# The Best Golf Courses in Pinehurst

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-pinehurst-nc/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / North Carolina


A leading golf course in North Carolina. Photo: Dan Perry from Atlanta, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The statue gives it away before you see a fairway. Payne Stewart, frozen mid celebration behind the 18th green, fist up, from the putt that won the 1999 U.S. Open months before he died. Golf towns usually manufacture their mythology. Pinehurst just keeps hosting the events that create it, and then the USGA made it official: this is the anchor site, with U.S. Opens already booked out to 2047.

Ranking courses inside Pinehurst Resort is a different job from ranking a town. There is no muni propping up the bottom. There are six numbered courses with real pedigrees and an argument to be had about almost every position except the first. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, though at resort pricing the value conversation is mostly about which splurge earns it.

## 1Pinehurst No. 2

Donald Ross opened No. 2 in 1907 and kept refining it until his death in 1948, which makes it less a design than a life's work. The U.S. Open record reads 1999, 2005, 2014, and 2024, with 2029, 2035, 2041, and 2047 to come. In 2014 it hosted the men's and women's U.S. Opens in back to back weeks, a first in the game, and it did not need to change its personality for either field.

The personality is the greens. The crowned, turtleback putting surfaces shed approach shots into chipping areas, and they have been embarrassing good players for a century without a drop of water or an out of bounds stake doing the work. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw restored the sandy waste areas and wiregrass in 2010 and 2011, stripping out rough and giving Ross's course its teeth and its look back. It was the rare restoration that made a famous course more famous.

The concession: No. 2 is not the most enjoyable round at the resort for a 15 handicap, and the premium pricing, $400 and up in the record, is the steepest walk in American resort golf.

None of it moves the ranking. The best course in Pinehurst is the anchor of the USGA's future, and the only argument is how large the gap is. It is large.

## 2Pinehurst No. 4

No. 4 carries a Ross lineage from 1919, a Tom Fazio rebuild in 2000, and then the decision that defines it: Gil Hanse tore it open and his redesign reopened in 2018. Hanse kept some of Fazio's routing corridors and rebuilt the greens and bunkering, sending the course over exposed sand and around a central lake. Visually it is the boldest course at the resort, the one that photographs like a modern argument rather than a history lesson.

The proof came fast. A year after reopening, No. 4 co hosted the 2019 U.S. Amateur with No. 2, a pairing the USGA does not hand out as a favor. It is generally rated the second best course at the resort, and for once the general rating is also ours.

The knock is that boldness divides people. Golfers raised on No. 2's restraint sometimes find No. 4 theatrical, and the lake holes trade Ross's slow pressure for a more immediate kind. We count that as range, not a flaw. A resort this size should not sell you the same course six times.

## 3Pinehurst No. 10

Tom Doak built No. 10 in Aberdeen, opened in 2024, on a former sand mine, the Sandmines, the first new course at the resort in nearly three decades. The land is the story: dramatic dunes, real elevation for the Sandhills, and a stretch through the old mine workings the resort calls the Pit, where the golf runs through the scars of the digging instead of pretending they never happened.

A walkable, rugged Doak course in the Sandhills was always going to be an event. Premium new course pricing applies, and it has no championship record yet, which is the only reason it sits third instead of pushing No. 4. Give it a decade of opinions and it may climb.

## 4Pinehurst No. 8

Fazio designed No. 8 in 1996 for the Pinehurst centennial, on land that includes Ross's original Gun Club area, away from the main campus. Wetlands and a nature preserve setting set it apart, and Fazio blended Ross style elements into a modern design that has hosted PGA Club Professional Championship golf.

Its fans praise its quiet: no crowds, no statue, just a strong Fazio test in the trees. Away from the campus, though, it has the least Pinehurst feeling of any course here, and in a ranking of a place, feeling counts. Fourth, respectfully.

## 5Pinehurst No. 7

Rees Jones opened No. 7 in 1986 on land near Ross's former home, with wetlands and elevation unusual for the resort, raised greens, and his signature bunkering. Local reputation calls it generally the hardest of the older resort courses, and Tiger Woods won the 1992 Big I junior title at Pinehurst with play including No. 7 in local telling.

Hardest is not the same as best. Golfers who like a stern, modern test rate it higher than this. We rate the thinking on No. 2, No. 4, and No. 10 above the punishment here, and put Jones fifth.

## 6Pinehurst No. 9

Jack Nicklaus designed No. 9 in 1988, when it stood alone as the National Golf Club before Pinehurst acquired it, and it plays as the resort's semi private, member leaning option, water and pines in the Nicklaus manner. It has hosted local championship play.

Last here is a Pinehurst specific insult, which is to say barely one. In most towns a 1988 Nicklaus would be the flagship. Here it is the sixth numbered course, waiting behind a century of Ross, and the statue behind the 18th green at No. 2 still gets the last word.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.