GOLFTOWN JOURNAL

The first day of 2025 represents the launch of year number 125 in the existence of the Carolina Hotel, the grand and glorious structure commissioned by Pinehurst founder James W. Tufts to serve as the centerpiece for his fledgling wintertime resort.

The hotel was built with four stories in a T-shape, “thus all the rooms are open to sunlight and air,” noted The Pinehurst Outlook. It had 250 individual rooms and 49 suites, each with telephones, fireplaces, electric lights, steam heat and velvet carpets. The east wing featured a music room where the Pinehurst orchestra played nightly.

“It is painted in colonial colors, yellow with white trimmings,” said the Outlook in early January 1901. “It commands a view of the whole village and the surrounding country in all directions. The grounds appropriated exclusively to the hotel are extensive and laid out in walks, bordered with trees, shrubbery and flowers. Roses, pansies, pinks and English violets are still in bloom.”

And most notably, it was located just a short stroll or trolley ride from “the most extensive and diversified golf ground in this country.”

The Carolina has been building on that legacy ever since.

The most famous names in golf have spent the night at The Carolina. Golf administrators and rules officials from the USGA and the R&A have checked in. Writers from Golf Digest and commentators from NBC Sports have been guests.

“Staying at The Carolina is like going back in time, to a much simpler time,” says Scott Straight, a frequent guest from French Lick, Indiana. “The history of this place is amazing. It’s like going to Yankee Stadium.”

“Looking at all the old photos on the walls, it’s amazing what it looked like 80 years ago and thinking, wow, all the greats of golf have come through here,” adds Charlotte’s David Williams, also a long-time regular at The Carolina.

The hotel, christened the “Queen of the South” upon its opening, has been a bucket list destination around the world of golf. It’s never looked and functioned better than it does today after an extensive renovation and upfitting that ran from November 2021 through the spring of 2024, when changes were completed in time for the U.S. Open Golf Championship.

The guest rooms have been renovated and are brighter, featuring new fixtures, finishes and custom-built furniture. The bathrooms have been expanded and upgraded with improved lighting and soundproofing. There are espresso machines on desks beneath wide-screen televisions. The previous guest rooms included large closets built originally to store the bulky trunks that travelers took by train and steamship on two- and three-week excursions. Now golfers pop in for a weekend, carry compact synthetic clothing and need only a wardrobe to hang their bags.

The lobby features new furnishings, comfortable seating areas and brighter, modern lighting fixtures that create a warm and welcoming atmosphere. The public spaces are accented by the return of notable touches from the past, such as the arched windows framing the exterior. The new design also includes updated check-in and concierge desks. There is a new coffee shop and just on the outside of the structure is an expansive patio and fire pit.

Construction workers addressing changes to the hallway ceiling as you walk from the central lobby toward the east wing discovered that some 40 feet of original arched ceiling and dormer windows had been covered up years ago. In the spring of 2024, they knocked out the drywall ceiling and removed decades’ worth of the accumulation of asbestos, sprinklers and wiring. Calvin Burkley, Pinehurst’s director of projects and planning, contacted the resort’s consultant, Glave & Holmes Architecture, for ideas on how to restore the old look.

Now as guests meander down the hall, looking at photos of Ben Hogan from the ’40s and Jack Nicklaus from the ’70s, they’ll bathe in natural light beneath a grand curved ceiling and dormer windows.

“It’s just lighter and brighter and brings a whole new look and feel to the hallway,” Burkley says. “Guests who’ve been coming here for 20 or 30 years walk through here and are just astounded. They love it. It’s such a majestic look.”

Burkley joined the Pinehurst staff in 2018 and is in charge of all construction that is “not green” i.e., those projects away from the golf courses and landscaping.

“We want to make sure this is the best place for people to come for a long time,” he says. “We want to make sure we protect the history of it; that it’s timeless, historic, relevant and forward thinking.”

The Ryder Cup Lounge was a mainstay of the lobby for years and paid tribute to Pinehurst having been the venue for the 1951 competition between the American side and the Great Britain and Ireland team. But since hosting the 1999 U.S. Open, with three more to follow over a quarter-century, Pinehurst has developed a close kinship with the USGA, rendering its interest and chance of hosting another PGA of America owned-and-operated Ryder Cup null and void.

The Carolina Vista Lounge resides where the Ryder Cup Lounge once sat and is built around an expansive, rectangular bar. Specialty cocktails salute the game of golf. “The November Nine” is fashioned after the nine points the Americans won in winning that 1951 Ryder Cup by fusing bourbon and Carolina pecans. “The Amateur” is made of mezcal, lime and pomegranate juices and chipotle syrup to salute the North & South Championship — an event open to amateur men, women and seniors that began in 1900 as a means to draw golfers to Pinehurst and publicity to the resort.

All the improvements aside, the rambling hotel has preserved one of its charms. The floors in places still squeak. And not every golf ball struck with a putter on a late-night putting session before lights-out rolls perfectly straight. May those things never change.