Photos: Donald Ross-designed Southern Pines fully reopens today with Kyle Franz restoration

SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. – Kelly Miller and Kyle Franz have been at it again, and today the pair fully reopens Southern Pines Golf Club in North Carolina, the third vintage layout by famed architect Donald Ross that the duo has teamed up to restore.

Miller, the president of Pine Needles and Mid Pines Resorts not far from Pinehurst, North Carolina, said the work at Southern Pines is intended to make the 115-year-old layout play as close to Ross intended as possible while removing superfluous design elements that were added over the years.

Each of the holes was widened with trees removed to reintroduce strategic elements that were lost as the trees gradually encroached on playing lines – as hundreds of trees were removed, the smell of fresh-cut pine was thick in the air during the restoration. Rough was removed from around the greens with all the chipping areas mowed at fairway height to encourage creativity, and the bunkers were renovated with vast sandscapes being reintroduced. New irrigation also was installed on the now roughly 6,900-yard, par-70 layout.

Online tee times in coming weeks are listed on the course’s webpage for $95 or less, a relative bargain for a restored Ross course.

Combined with the rolling terrain – steeper than most courses in the Sandhills region – the restored course is intended to test the best players with strategic challenges while allowing recreational guests to keep a ball in play.

“It’s probably the best site here in Moore County that a golf course is on,” Miller said. “Kyle Franz firmly believes that, and it’s just a tremendous change in topography.

“We’re really trying to revive it and restore it to what it was. I think with the topography changes over there, the routing, the strategy that’s required –left-to-right lies, right-to-left lies, uphill, downhill – it requires all the shots in the bag.”

Miller previously had hired Franz for restoration work on Mid Pines in 2013 then Pines Needles in 2018, with great results. Mid Pines ranks No. 3 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts in North Carolina. Pine Needles is No. 4 on that list and will host the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open, the fourth time it has held that major championship. Both of those courses were designed originally by Ross, and Miller said Franz has become expert in restoring courses by the designer who also laid out nearby Pinehurst No. 2.

Southern Pines got its start in 1906, Miller said, with Ross becoming involved around 1911. The local Elks Club managed the course for decades, mainly attracting locals in a region known for golf tourism. But playing conditions had deteriorated, especially as far as excessive tree growth.

“We needed to look at some old aerials we had and some old sketches that folks made for Ross,” Miller said. “We needed to take it back. … I think a lot of people have never had the opportunity to play something like Ross did originally.”

Miller and his management company took over Southern Pines in 2020, with work beginning in December that year and progressing in two stages while the course remained open for play. All the work is ready to be shown off starting today.

The “lost hole” at Southern Pines Golf Club is a bonus par 3 with an adjacent sand putting surface. (Courtesy of Southern Pines)

The layout also will feature what has been dubbed “the lost hole,” a bonus par 3 designed by Franz. Originally, Ross had built a bonus hole that allowed players to tackle a nine-hole loop of Nos. 1-4, then the bonus par 3, then Nos. 15-18. But that bonus hole had been abandoned at some point. Franz reinstalled the concept and added a twist: The new bonus green will feature an adjacent sand green, which mimics the putting surfaces originally installed by Ross before the advent of Bermuda grass greens in the 1930s. The new hole will play about 140 yards.

“No one today has any conception of what a sand green looked and played like,” Franz said for the course’s website. “This will a neat little history lesson.”

And Southern Pines is all about the history.

“It’s just a phenomenal course,” Miller said. “We think people will come out here and really enjoy it.”

Check out the below photos of Southern Pines as it neared completion.