Pinehurst's Dedmans Take Their Rightful Spots In Hall of Fame Robert Dedman Sr. and Dedman Jr. are inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame

By Lee Pace

Pinehurst management in the 1990s expanded the 1900 Carolina Hotel eastward with two major projects—the Grand Ballroom as the centerpiece to an expansive new meeting center and then the spa and fitness center. One elongated hallway leading from the hotel’s East Wing to the ballroom afforded an important opportunity.

The Carolinas Golf Reporters Association created the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 1981 to highlight and honor significant individuals who had made a mark on the golf landscape in North and South Carolina. But it never had a satisfactory venue to display photos and plaques representing inductees that ran from great players like Harvie Ward and Billy Joe Patton to architects like Donald Ross and Ellis Maples to allied contributors like Jesse Haddock and John Derr.

Pinehurst management in 2007 offered use of one wall for the display. Over the next quarter of a century, the exhibit has grown to some six dozen members and was recently reorganized to provide additional wall space for the Hall of Fame to grow.

On Saturday night, the owners of the Carolina Hotel and the resort itself for the last 42 years took their place in the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame. The Hall inducted Robert Dedman Sr., whose Club Corporation of America bought the resort in 1984, and Robert Dedman Jr., who took the baton upon his father’s death in 2002 and has guided Pinehurst to unparalleled heights in the last dozen years.

“The Dedmans’ impact cannot be measured simply by courses renovated, courses built or championships hosted but something far more lasting—stewardship,” said longtime family friend and former USGA President Jim Hyler in introducing Dedman Jr. during the induction ceremony held, appropriately enough, in the Grand Ballroom. “They have not only owned the Pinehurst Resort but cared for it. They understood Pinehurst is not just a destination but a trust, passed from one generation to the next, carrying with it the soul of the game itself.”

Also inducted was Jack Nance, the recently retired executive director of the Carolinas Golf Association, which has been headquartered since the 1980s in the Sandhills area. Nance in his remarks paid tribute to what the Dedmans had meant not only to Pinehurst but the region and the state of North Carolina with having hosted four U.S. Opens, one U.S. Women’s Open and offering land between the Carolina Hotel and its golf clubhouses for the USGA’s new Golf House Pinehurst and World Golf Hall of Fame.

“What your family has done for golf here in the Carolinas is extraordinary and permanent,” Nance said. “From bringing the U.S. Open to Pinehurst to what we see today across Moore County—the USGA Hall of Fame and satellite headquarters, the massive road renovations, and the never-ending projects, the economic boom—it all traces back to your family’s vision. Your award tonight is well earned, and your legacy will be long lived.”

Dedman Jr. said his family’s long involvement at Pinehurst had “been a labor of love for two generations” and told of his father’s humble upbringing in Arkansas, his G.I. Bill-financed law degree after World War II and his entrepreneurial instincts that hit in the early 1950s. Dedman was playing golf in Palm Springs, Calif., at a golf community that featured three courses and one central clubhouse operation and it occurred to him that the model could work in a metropolitan area like his own home in Dallas. That launched the idea for Brookhaven Country Club, which opened in 1957 and was the first domino to fall in what would become ClubCorp—a massive global operation with country clubs and city clubs around the world.

“Over the next 50 years, ClubCorp became a world leader,” Dedman said. “My father raised and elevated the standards of excellence in the club industry. He democratized the industry, making clubs more affordable and accessible, clubs that were exclusive but not exclusionary. That has been a guiding principle since the beginning.”

The initiative of Dedman Sr. was restoration—rebuild the facilities that included having a chef fall through a kitchen floor, cultivate quality playing surfaces on the golf courses, bring championship golf back to Pinehurst, add new courses in Nos. 7 and 8 and expand the room inventory with the acquisition of Village of Pinehurst properties such as the Holly Inn and Manor Inn.

The initiative of Dedman Jr. has been transformation—green light the restoration of the No. 2 course back to its early 1900s character of bouncy fairways and perimeters of natural hardpan sand and wire grass, redesign and re-engineer No. 4 in a similar fashion, add the Cradle short course and launch a major expansion south toward Aberdeen that will include courses No. 10 and 11. Dedman noted the company has invested some $250 million over the last five years in the facility.

“And there’s more to come,” he said. “These are exciting times in Pinehurst.”