“Fresh and explorative.” “Large and unbound.” “Fascinating and fiendish.” “New highlight.” “The way forward.”
Those are just a few of the phrases Golf Digest’s Derek Duncan uses to explain why the storied publication has named Pinehurst No. 10 the Best New Public Course of 2024.
In a year which featured some of the best in golf course in some time, one course continues to stand above the rest. Just two weeks after Sports Illustrated honored the Tom Doak design by naming No. 10 as its Best New Course in 2024, so too does Golf Digest, emphasizing its stature with the headline: How Pinehurst’s newest course defeated some of the greatest public competition this decade.
Hole 2 at Pinehurst No. 10
“Tom Doak’s new course at Pinehurst possesses all the elements that define golf in the Carolina sand hills, but it’s arranged in ways that make #10 seem fresh and explorative,” Duncan writes in his open. “The essential components are familiar: deep sandy soils, rolling but not extreme elevation changes, pine forests and contrasting grasses and sedges for texture. From there, the architecture goes in its own direction.”
Not unlike Joe Passov’s piece for Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest marvels at Doak’s routing of No. 10, and the journey the golfer finds as he or she navigates the Sandmines property. And, of course, the 8th hole gets its signature mention.
“After a tame start with three holes that loop around a calm section of ground, the design gradually amplifies as the land becomes more extreme leading up to the par-4 eighth, one of the most original and bizarre holes in American golf. It plunges through the tall spoils of an old sand mining operation, staggering drunkenly over displaced ridges, hummocks and dunes.”
While different than Pinehurst No. 2’s famed turtleback greens, Duncan and Digest find delight in Doak’s (and lead design associate Angela Moser’s) green complexes at No. 10. It’s an equation that leads Digest to rank No. 10 over the other most notable designs of a triumphant year in golf course openings,
“The real highlights are the inventive green complexes. Most are surrounded by fields of short grass, similar to Pinehurst #2, leaving the choice of recovery shots up to the player. But the green contours are fascinating and fiendish, a combination of collecting slopes and bowls offset by shoulders, tiers and steep fall-offs—often on the same green.
Hole 8 at Pinehurst No. 10
“Pinehurst #10 hits the high notes of sand, sculpture and pines that make the whole Pinehurst experience endlessly intoxicating, but the rhythm is new and represents the way forward for one of America’s legendary resorts.”
We’re grateful to see No. 10 earn such high praise, and we too are excited about the times ahead at Pinehurst Resort.
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