Mid Pines

Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club sits in Southern Pines, North Carolina, in the heart of the Sandhills, and its course is a genuine 1921 Donald Ross design paired with a classic Georgian inn. For decades tree growth and softened features had blurred Ross's original scale, but in 2013 architect Kyle Franz, who had assisted on nearby Sandhills restorations, led a celebrated revival. Using a 1939 aerial photograph and Tufts Archives imagery as his blueprint, Franz removed roughly 400 trees, widened fairways, expanded greens by twenty to twenty-five percent to recover their original shapes, and reinstated the hardpan sand and wiregrass waste areas that frame the holes. The work restored Ross's width, angles and strategic options, and earned recognition including GOLF Magazine's best U.S. resort restoration. Mid Pines reopened in August 2013 and is again considered a premier example of the Sandhills' Ross legacy.