The golf course superintendent at Aronomy Golf Club, host of this week’s PGA Championship runs 174 bunkers. Seen from the air, they spread across the property in white clusters at every green, every dog leg angle, every slope where Ross originally put them. The golf course superintendent at Pinehurst number two runs zero rough. Walk any fairway edge there and the cut turf drops directly into brown sandy hard pan.
No rough, no transition, just wire grass and sand. The same architect designed both courses. Uh both restoration teams use period aerial photographs as their primary evidence. The opposite directions came from opposite climates, opposite soils, and what each site originally was.
In 2010 and 11, Pinehurst number two removed 35 acres of irrigated turf. The architects took the wall-to-wall irrigation system that fed both sides of every fairway and replaced it with one center line. 750 sprinkler heads were turned off. 200,000 wiregrass plants were planted. Annual water consumption dropped 50%. Six years later, in 2016 and 17, Aronomy did the opposite.
Gil Hance and Jim Wagner added 100 bunkers, expanded 29,000 square ft of green surface, and built 18 new tea boxes. Both restorations were trying to recover what Donald Ross originally intended. Neither produced what the other one produced, and neither could have. Nothing about the two maintenance programs looks anything alike.
If you’re walking around aamink this week during the PGA Championship, you’re looking at what the additive version produces. 174 bunkers, most of them clustered at the green complexes, three and four deep into the slopes that frame the approach shots. White sand hazards flanking every green complex, stacked into slopes that force decisions off the tea. fairways across a par 70 layout at approximately 7,343 yards. The course looks like something that was always this way. The last PGA championship here was won by Gary Player in 1962 at two underpar, but for decades of bunker removal had stripped away Ross’ original design.
At Pinehurst number two, the other restored course looks like nothing was added at all. Brown sandy waste where rough used to be. Native wire grass between the fairways and the trees. A low scrubby ground cover spreading across sandy hard pan where irrigated turf once ran.
Two heights of cut greens and everything else. 7,565 yards, 41 fairway acres, zero rough. Both superintendents are executing what architects handed them a decade ago. Neither one chose the course he got. If you found this channel before Thursday’s first round of PGA Championship coverage, subscribe.
We’re at Aranamink all week. Donald Ross was born in Dornne, Scotland. He trained at Royal Dornne Golf Club on the far northern coast where the terrain is lynx, sandy soil, constant wind, sparse native vegetation, the sea visible from the fairways, no trees to break the wind off the water, grasses that survive by not needing irrigation. When Ross came to North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century, the Pinehurst sand hills were the nearest American equivalent. sandy soil, native wire grass, long leaf pines along the perimeter, hard pan where the grass didn’t grow.
He designed approximately 400 courses in North America during his career. The philosophy behind most of them was about responding to what a site already was, not imposing a design on top of soil and climate that didn’t support it. At Pinehurst, he found what the Sand Hills offered and built around it. Pinehurst number two had no rough because the original site didn’t have rough.
That was the design, not an omission. Ross lived at Dornock Cottage on the Pinehurst property for decades. He considered number two his American home course and continued refining it until his death in 1948. The course core and Crenaw restored in 2010 at 11 still traces back to what Ross found there in the early 1900s.
Aronomink was a different commission. Delaware County, Pennsylvania, heavy mid-atlantic clay, cool season climate, dense woodland. When Ross laid out the course in 1926 and 1927, he responded to that terrain with elaborate clustered bunkering, nearly 190 bunkers at original build. Greens expanded beyond his typical portfolio size.
Precision placement in enclosed treeedge terrain. The design logic was specific to that site, just as Pinehurst’s logic was specific to the sand hills. Same architect, different soil, different climate, different answer. Ross was 55 years old when Aronomic opened in 1928.
The elaborate bunkering he installed there was among the densest in his entire portfolio. Both courses drifted over the following decades. At Pinehurst, wall-to-wall irrigation crept outward from the original center line. By the late 1990s, 65 acres of rough had replaced the sandy native waste Ross built around.
The wiregrass that held the hard pan edges was crowded out by irrigated Bermudarass turf. The centerline identity of the original course was gone. At Aronom, renovation after renovation removed bunkers rather than restored them. The nearly 190 original build had dropped to 75 by the time Hans and Bagner arrived.
More than 1,000 trees had been planted across a course Ross originally designed with approximately 12. The aerial view by the 1990s showed a heavily wooded layout. the original open bunker terrain buried under canopy. Both courses drifted. They drifted in opposite directions because they started as opposite things.
Both restoration teams went to aerial photographs. Pinehurst resort president Don Padet II and owner Robert Deadmond Jr. hired Bill Core and Ben Krenshaw in February of 2010. Core and Crenshaw used a 1943 aerial photograph as the primary blueprint for the irrigation plan. a black and white image showing thin green fairway ribbons against sandy hard pan, one line of irrigation heads per fairway. That was the document they built from.
The USGA documented the result. Approximately 1,200 irrigation heads reduced to approximately 450. All wall-to-wall Bermuda grass outside the centerline zone was stripped. The fairways were widened by up to 50%.
Eight new TE’s were built. The remove sod, 20ft rolls of Bermuda grass loaded onto flatbed trucks, was donated to local community ball fields and home barns. The course closed on November 16th, 2010. The project cost $2.5 million.
Wirgrass came back when the irrigation came down. Wirgrass holds sandy soil in place between fairways without requiring a mowing program. The species doesn’t need irrigation to survive. It doesn’t compete with Bermuda grass for moisture when moisture is managed correctly.
The reason it disappeared at Pinehurst in the first place is that wall-to-wall irrigation made conditions too wet for it to establish. When the irrigation pulls back to center line, the fairway edges dry out and wirerass reclaims its ground. The Sententa Green report documented the process. Core and Crenshaw planted 200,000 wirs to accelerate recovery.
Individual plants ham placed across the hard pan between fairway edges and tree lines. The course reopened in March of 2011. 41 acres of fairway, zero acres of rough. At Aranomink, Hans and Vagner used the 1929 aerial photographs of Jay Victor Don as the primary evidence for bunker placement. Don’s photographs were held at the Haggley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, black and white aerials showing Aronom as an open, heavily bunkered layout uh before the tree planting and bunker removal of subsequent decking.
The Don photograph showed where each original bunker sat, how it was shaped, and how it related to the green complexes. The restoration added 100 bunkers, bringing the total from 74 to 174. Three of the original bunkers were left out for member playability. They reclaimed 29,000 square ft of original green surface, 18 new tea boxes, hundreds of trees removed.
The canopy that had accumulated over 60 years of planting came out. reopening the sight lines and bunker angles. Ross um built the course around. The project ran from late 2016 through spring of 2017 with T reconstruction resuming in November of that year. The physics of each maintenance program follows directly from those decisions.
John Goslin has been the golf course superintendent at Aronom Golf Club since 2005. He graduated from Penn State’s turf grass program in 1987. What Hance and Vagner finished in 2017, Goslin inherited 174 bunkers, requiring daily raking, edging, sand replenishment, and drainage management. Before dawn each morning during championship week, his crew works through the bunkers, rakes moving in parallel lines across the sand, drainage covers checked, edges trimmed where bent grass crept overnight.
Each bunker has sand that must be held at consistent depth and correct moisture. Each bunker edge must be controlled so bentrass doesn’t encroach into the hazard. The bunker count isn’t just a design number. It’s a daily labor allocation.
Gosselin didn’t choose it. The Don photographs determined it. He executes it. Carrie Haye, the PGA of America’s chief championships officer, works with Gosselin on final presentation details.
Green speeds running at 13.5 on the stamp beater, a 48 in aluminum channel rolled across each putting surface to measure ball roll. The Philadelphia Association of Golf Course Superintendent awarded Gosselin the Everheart Steiner Award in 2017, the same year the restoration finished. The award recognized where the restoration permanently transferred to its maintenance schedule. Bent grass at Aronomic operates under different pressure than warm season grass in the sand hills.
Pennsylvania’s summer humidity drives a dollar spot brown patch of pythium blight and bent grass turf. The fungicide program Gossin runs to protect that surface through a mid-atlantic summer is more intensive than what a Bermuda grass system on sandy soil requires. Applications are timed to humidity thresholds and overnight temperature patterns. A spray rig moving through the fairways and early morning before the course opens before the crew sets pins.
That program covers the same surfaces Hans and Vagnner restored to Ross’s original footprint. The restoration didn’t end when Hance uh left the property. It transferred to the maintenance calendar at Pinehurst number two. Kevin Robinson ran the property as superintendent through the 2010 and 11 restoration.
John Jeff became superintendent in 2014. He graduated from NC State’s aronomy program and has been at Pinehurst since the year 2000. He inherited what Robinson and Corin Crenshaw built, a course with zero rut, a sandy waste system that looks simple and isn’t. Walk the edge of any fairway at pinehurse number two and the cut turf ends abruptly.
On one side, Bermuda grass motan and wire grass running back to the tree line. That boundary must be held so the turf doesn’t encroach. The wire grass must be managed so it holds the terrain without overtaking the playable surface. Sandy sandill soil drains fast.
Jeffre manages for firm conditions and fast drainage, not moisture retention. These are different agronomic problems than most superintendent in America face. He inherited them in 2014. Neither superintendent can run the others program.
Gosselin can’t manage Aronomic the way Jeffre manages Pinehurst. Pennsylvania clay and 174 bunkers and cool season bent grass aren’t managed the way zero rough Bermuda grass on sand hill sand is. Jeffre can’t manage pinehurst the way Gosselin manages aronomy. The wirerass ecosystem doesn’t support elaborate clustered bunkering.
The sandy soil doesn’t hold turf in the shapes that clay allows. Same architect, same decade of restoration. Nothing alike in the maintenance building. Augusta National doesn’t have a restoration project on record.
The course has never closed for 18 months to recover its original design identity. What Augusta runs is continuous perfectionism maintenance rolling adjustments year-over-year without a declared start date, end date, scope document, or budget. The Tom Fazio bunker modifications over the past two decades weren’t announced as a project. They happened as decisions.
The irrigation infrastructure has been updated incrementally, not overhauled in a single contracted window. When the Eisenhower tree fell in 2014, it was gone within a week. Stump removed, sod laid, no interruption to the maintenance calendar. Augusta doesn’t let things drip to the point of requiring a core Cshaw intervention.
Aronomy and Pinehurst number two both did. They had finite restoration projects with contracts, timelines, and costs. Augusta has none of those because Augusta’s maintenance budget doesn’t require them. Pinehurst and Aronomink made declarations.
Augusta makes decisions. When Bryson Desambo won the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst number two, he won one stroke over Rory Mackoy, six under 274. The closing hole was a par save from 55 yards out of the front bunker on the 72nd hole. A fairway bunker sitting short left of the 18th green, ringed by wirrass and sandy waste.
He blasted to four feet and made the putt. The restored course held under championship setup. Zero rough. Wiregrass flanks intact.
The firm and fast conditions weren’t manufactured for the US Open. They were the course. Jeff didn’t change the identity of Pinehurst number two to host the championship. He maintained what the restoration built.
The sandy waist that defines the course wasn’t an obstacle the USGA installed for the week. It was what Ross’ original sand hills site looked like before wall-to-wall irrigation covered it for three decades. The restoration was 13 years old. It held.
By contrast, when Keegan Bradley won the 2018 BMW Championship at Aronom at 20 under par, he was playing the modern restored version. 100 74 bunkers intact, bent grass greens rolling true. The course Ross originally built but refined through Hans and Vagner’s archival research. The golf course superintendent at your club inherited what was there when he walked in. The bunker count, the grass variety, the rough height, the irrigation layout, all of it was set by architects and greens committees before he arrived.
Goslin inherited 174 bunkers. Jeff inherited zero rough. If you manage your own property, the same logic applies on a smaller scale. A restoration for a sandy southern lawn looks nothing like a restoration for a mid-atlantic clay soil.
Different soil, different native species, different answer. The right answer depends on what your site originally was. climate, soil, original identity, not a generic approach. Gosselin knows what aronomic is. Jeffre knows what Pinehurst number two is.
Your superintendent knows what his sight is. He executes that every morning before you walk through the gate. Now you know what they do before you tee off.