By: Alex Podlogar
The night before the momentous conclusion of the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst, we tried our best to convey what truly makes this village and its people special. In our minds, while the grandstands and banners and trophies and galleries are the mileposts that signify both its enduring and immediate legacy and relevance, it is the next morning that defines Pinehurst.
Always the next morning.
A year ago, following the play of Saturday’s third round, we looked ahead simply by looking around:
The leaderboard is crowded. And it is crowded with names we all recognize. There’s hope in there for certain players and doubt in others. Much of that doesn’t matter right now, though. It’ll be settled soon enough, and the crowds will disperse and the grandstands will come down and the players will leave until they return here again in five short years, this time joined by the best women players in the world.
But Pinehurst No. 2 will still be here on Monday. So will The Cradle and Thistle Dhu and the nine other courses. So will the restaurants and cozy bars in and around the Village. So will the charmed residents in their cottages, the men and women walking their dogs in the dewy morning and the horse-drawn carriage meandering under the glow of the golden hour. So will the chimes of the Village Chapel and the wisps of the pines, swaying under Carolina blue skies and dropping their needles for the fox squirrels’ bedding.
The moon will wander, the stars will shine, and in the morning, the sun will rise to take us through the paces again and again. A ball will be struck somewhere close, and friends old and new will walk together to play a game.
There will be a new champion tomorrow.
Some of us, though, have already won.
We’re now one full year removed from the U.S. Open, and at the same time, now one year closer to the next one. We’re down to one snapshot of a high school or a college experience until those next majors in 2029. Think about how quickly those years went by for you. Or worse, how much quicker they went for you when it was your son or daughter. And as we know well, it is only 3 ½ years until some of the grandstand and hospitality construction starts. Graduation comes. Graduation always comes.
Already, Rory has won the career grand slam. Scottie has reclaimed his inevitability.
Even Bryson has come back to his bunker.
Today, the whirl of mowers, edgers, rakers and rollers serenade the coffee drinkers on the veranda. It is growing season. Mixed in are people from all over the country, and all over the world. Some are visiting for the first time. Others are returning for their fifth, or 10th time. The Cradle’s music plays in the afternoons. The sun keeps getting up to greet the dewsweepers before retreating to say good day to those reclined at the Cradle Crossing.
Kids play. Croquet clicks. Generations walk together. Friends bound for decades by their shared experiences close in around Payne Stewart’s statue and gather in warmth as the condensation drips from their glasses to the bricks below. Laughs are abundant, even if the good shots are not.
The Village Chapel chimes in the distance.
Muted, for now, are the roars of 2024. They linger, for sure, but settle softly in the mind’s ear as one tours this place. But they rally ahead in an instant through the nerves of hands, the patter of a pulse and the doubt in the mind when faced with a bunker shot the kind only one man has played so well – one even he couldn’t pull off again with three tries some 10 months later.
Those folks sipping from their dripping glasses await your attempt at his history. The murmur you hear is their glee at your burden, and their anticipation of what you’ll do with it.
There is a challenge to the golf here, there is no question, and no matter the course. But that challenge is part of the joy. The storied past that exhales this pine-scented breeze sparks the soul of what Pinehurst has always been, what it is this day, and what it will continue to be tomorrow.
But it is everything else – and everyone who steps here – that stirs it from its slumber and keeps it alive and swirling within this sandy oasis.
Year after year after year.
For that, we can only thank you.