Pinehurst is the Cradle of American Mini Golf, too

By Alex Podlogar

For more than a century, Pinehurst has been hailed as the Cradle of American Golf. Many people know that.

What fewer might know is that Pinehurst is also the Cradle of American Miniature Golf. And has been for almost as long.

This is the story of Thistle Dhu.

It goes back to 1919, a time when Pinehurst had already begun to establish itself as the home of American golf. By then, Donald Ross had made Pinehurst his home for nearly two decades, and not only had he remade Pinehurst Golf Links into a proper 18-hole golf course out of its rudimentary beginnings, Pinehurst No. 2 had opened 12 years prior, which ultimately became his masterpiece and was already achieving a bit of fame. By 1919, Pinehurst No. 3 had been open for almost a decade and thoughts about a fourth course had begun. Guests had been flocking to the resort in the winter, taking what they learned while visiting and returning home to begin their own clubs as the game exploded in popularity in the United States. Hence, the Cradle.

Tucked into the New England-style Village designed by Frederick Law Olmstead was one of many cottages, this one owned by avid golfer and steamship icon James Barber, who had emigrated from the UK in 1887 to start his company, and eventually, drawn by the golf, built a home in Pinehurst.

But this wasn’t just some ordinary estate. Barber, no doubt influenced by the game that enveloped this Village, contracted Edward H. Wiswell to design an 18-hole “miniature” golf course in his back yard.

Holes ranging from 12 feet to 71 feet long meandered around Barber’s estate and gardens, lining them with brick and using concrete barriers for strategy and hard-packed sand for playing – not unlike Ross’ greens at the resort at the time. Writing for Popular Science Monthly in 1919, Wiswell wrote, “The Thistle Dhu course was laid out to force the player to carefully study each shot and also to provide a good test for the expert golfer as well as school those new to the game.”

Indeed, it did. Ross was known to have played the course. So too did North & South Champions, including Maureen Orcutt and Glenna Collett, who teamed with top amateur players of the day in staged exhibitions on the course.

Upon seeing his completed course, Barber nodded approvingly and opined, “This’ll do.” The exclamation stuck and both the estate and the miniature course took on the name in a more Scottish brogue, “Thistle Dhu.”

Over time and renovations, much of the original course was lost, but not its legacy. In 2012, Pinehurst Resort, inspired by the history of what is considered the first miniature golf course in America and by the famed Himalayas putting course at St. Andrews, constructed a 20,000-square-foot putting course near the first tee of Pinehurst No. 4, naming it Thistle Dhu.

That second iteration of Thistle Dhu proved wildly popular among Pinehurst Resort guests and Pinehurst Country Club members, so when Gil Hanse built The Cradle short course in 2017, he also crafted a massive 75,000-square-foot putting course around the sentinel Putter Boy, merging what were two practice putting greens into a fun front yard of golf framed by this new Thistle Dhu, The Cradle and eventually the Cradle Crossing.

Over 105 years after the original Thistle Dhu treated golfers at Pinehurst with a game that could be enjoyed with just one club, guests today still can walk up with a putter and a ball and take a spin around one of the most unique golf courses in the world – one that initially was born not far down the brick pathway north of the clubhouse.