A twofer on No. 2: Women’s Open will follow U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 2029
It’ll be another two-week doubleheader on No. 2 in 2029. Fifteen years after the iconic Pinehurst Resort and Country Club course hosted the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open consecutively to universal acclaim, the USGA announced Friday that the back-to-back is coming back.
The men had already been scheduled for 2029, the 30th anniversary of Payne Stewart’s unforgettable win and one of five U.S. Opens that Pinehurst is scheduled to host over the next 25 years, starting in 2024. The women were added on Friday as part of an announcement of an increased purse for the Women’s Open, from $5.5 million to $10 million.
“I was so excited to hear that,” 2014 Women’s Open champion Michelle Wie said, in a video released by the resort. “I cannot wait for a lot of the younger golfers to experience that for the first time and players on our tour to experience it again. It was such a unique experience, such an amazing experience, not just because I won, but because of the back-to-back I felt like it elevated our tour so much.”
The women are already headed to the Sandhills this summer, with Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club hosting its record fourth Women’s Open in June.
The grand experiment at Pinehurst in 2014, championed by former Raleigh resident Jim Hyler, at the time the USGA president, saw Wie’s first major victory outshine men’s winner Martin Kaymer as the men’s and women’s players mixed and mingled at the end of the first week. That leaves a high bar to clear in 2029.
“It’s going to be an incredible next seven years while we get to speculate about what’s going to happen,” Pinehurst president Tom Pashley said. “That’s going to be a tremendous amount of fun.”
Pinehurst, with its dastardly greens, natural waste areas and sandy base, is uniquely equipped to host not only the wear and tear of two major tournaments back to back, but do it through summer Sandhills thunderstorms.
“It’s not only a great test of golf, but from an operational standpoint, you can argue it’s as good as any U.S. Open site we go to,” former USGA executive director Mike Davis said in 2020. “There’s a lot of space between holes. Nice grandstand space. The fact that it sits on sand and drains so well, if there’s a rain event, you can get the golf course back much faster and it’s a better fan experience because you’re not walking in mud everywhere.”
John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s chief championships officer, said Friday that discussions about doing both opens on the same site again started immediately after 2014 but picked up speed over the past year. Pinehurst was always the top candidate.
“Since 2014 was such a home run, we got that question a lot: ‘Are you ever going to do that again?’” Bodenhamer said. “We always kind of hedged our bets. But the folks at Pinehurst would always say if we ever wanted to do that again they’d be up for it. For us, there were so many positives coming out of that.”
It’s yet another page in Pinehurst’s growing relationship and partnership with the USGA, which also includes hosting the U.S. Open in 2035, 2041 and 2047 as well as the expansion of a satellite USGA office in the village. Construction of Golf House Pinehurst, a $25 million museum and testing center, has been delayed by COVID but is expected to begin this spring, Bodenhamer said.
Pinehurst hosted its first U.S. Open in 1999, famous for Stewart’s triumph only months ahead of tragedy, the plane crash that ended his life later that summer. Stewart’s jubilant pose after holing the winning putt is memorialized by a statue behind the 18th green.
The forgettable Michael Campbell won on the Open’s return to Pinehurst in 2005, and the course was completely renovated and returned to its sandy roots as architect Donald Ross intended it ahead of Kaymer’s win in 2014.
Part of the USGA’s “anchor site” designation for Pinehurst and the U.S. Open in September 2020 was a commitment to bring more national championships to Pinehurst and North Carolina. Pashley said Friday’s announcement was a big one, but there would be more to come, and potentially more often on courses other than No. 2.
“We’ve got the big pieces of the puzzle with the U.S. Open figured out,” Pashley said. “We’ll take some time to figure out what the other championships will include. It’s going to be a very robust championship calendar, even more so than it already is.”
In addition to this summer’s Women’s Open at Pine Needles, the Country Club of North Carolina was the site of last year’s U.S. Junior Amateur, and Pinehurst’s No. 6 course will host the first-ever U.S. Adaptive Open for golfers with disabilities in July. Pinehurst No. 2 and No. 4 also hosted the U.S. Amateur in 2008 and 2019.
“It’s a bit of a perfect storm in North Carolina right now,” Bodenhamer said. “There are so many great golf courses that really have seen what we’re trying to accomplish, a lot of places that believe in our mission and want to support us. Frankly and candidly, the state, in a bipartisan way, has really embraced the game of golf as an economic driver, a tourism driver.”
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 1:14 PM with the headline "A twofer on No. 2: Women’s Open will follow U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 2029."
