Start of a movement

Iconic sporting venues fill North Carolina from the mountains to the coast.

Durham Athletic Park opened in 1926 and remains the country’s most famous minor league baseball stadium thanks to the 1988 movie Bull Durham. Longtime Duke basketball coach Eddie Cameron grabbed a napkin back in 1935 to sketch plans for the indoor stadium that eventually carried his name. Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh and Carmichael Arena in Chapel Hill both stir memories for Wolfpack and Tar Heels fans of a certain age. Concord and Rockingham and North Wilkesboro are home to speedways that hosted NASCAR races during that sport’s transition from bootlegging to bright lights.

A more recent addition to the list of the state’s top athletic attractions sits just off Beulah Hills Road at Pinehurst Resort, in full sight for everybody heading toward what is billed as the Home of American Golf.

The Cradle.

Nine holes.

789 yards.

More fun than you can imagine.

To hear John Jeffreys tell it, expectations for what The Cradle might become were relatively modest when Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner were laying out the short course in advance of its 2017 premiere. Situated near the clubhouse atop the old first holes of No. 3 and No. 5, Pinehurst Resort officials figured it could provide another entry to the game for new and young golfers and allow older golfers a graceful shift from more traditional lengths. It could also encourage resort guests to hang out after their rounds. And it could be fun. It would be fun. Just make it fun.

Then the course opened.

“It started selling out and demand exceeded what we could provide, and it was like, Whoa,” says Jeffreys, the longtime superintendent on No. 2 who was involved in The Cradle’s development and whose team added the short course to its maintenance schedule around Thanksgiving last year. Expectations soared like a wedge shot from 70 yards out and the most pressing question turned to: What have we got here?

Resort officials realized the compact layout, the loose atmosphere and the right price all contributed to buzz and satisfaction. Not every round needed to stretch across 7,000 yards and five hours. Music can play on speakers and golfers can hit the bar after the third and sixth holes. A daily green fee of $50 is more than enough — though the tee sheet is now so full that replays are no longer guaranteed.

Also, holes in one are fun: The first two were recorded within hours of each other that opening week — the first by an elementary schooler, the second by an octogenarian. “You can’t make this stuff up,” Jeffreys says. Nearly 2,000 more aces have followed over the last seven years, every one honored with a commemorative marker handed out at the starter’s hut.

“It becomes a focus of somebody’s visit,” Jeffreys says. “They book their round on 2 and then they book their round on The Cradle immediately following. And there’s real disappointment when The Cradle is out of commission for aerification or a project or a group has it rented out. People are genuinely disappointed when they don’t get to play it. It’s part of the bucket list rota: 2, 4 and The Cradle.”

Pinehurst veteran Curt Proctor tended to the course until last year, when he moved to superintendent for both No. 1 and No. 4. and Jeffreys and his team rolled it into their schedule. Jeffreys leads a team of 42, which includes more part-timers than full-timers, a quartet of recent graduates of the first USGA Greenkeeper Apprenticeship Program, and at least 10 people with a turf degree or another marker of continued turf education. Eight interns will start later this year, five of them returning from previous Pinehurst stints.

Jeffreys is quick to mention many people on his team, including assistant superintendents Eric Mabie, David Chrobak and Andrea Salzman — who spends about 80 percent of her time on The Cradle, the Thistle Dhu putting course and the croquet grounds —assistants-in-training Alex Almaraz and Hunter McLamb, a former intern-turned-new spray tech Jake Brazinski, and foreman Arlindo Lagunas, who started out on the Coore & Crenshaw construction team in 2010 and never left. “He’s an amazing shaper, builder, irrigation, drainage, jack of all trades. He’s an all-star. He can build a tee in a day,” Jeffreys says. “All of our team has talents like that. I’m lucky to be just a small part of the all-star team that we have.

“It makes things like hosting the U.S. Open more comfortable when you know you have that many talented people.”

About the U.S. Open: The Cradle did not exist when the tournament last came to Pinehurst No. 2 in 2014, and it will not technically exist during the months leading up to tournament week this summer. As soon as the last frost lifts some time around the middle of April, Jeffreys and his team will start converting the short course into the U.S. Open driving range.

“We have to figure out how do we pick balls off of The Cradle with the vast amounts of sand wiregrass areas and bunkers and putting surfaces and all that,” he says. “We have to convert some native areas to sod to allow the picker to have more room to run. We have to put some kind of fabric or liner in the bunker to keep the balls from plugging in the sand and allowing them to accumulate in the low area so we can pick them up quicker. And the use of some autonomous pickers for the putting surfaces in the field will make it more efficient.”

Naturally, all that work will be squeezed into as few days as possible: the course is too popular to shut down. The rush after the Open to return it to its normal state will be just as frenzied.

The Cradle wasn’t the first short course — and it wasn’t even the first in Moore County. Longleaf Golf & Family Club in neighboring Southern Pines opened its 6-hole, 448-yard Bottlebrush in 2016, a year before The Cradle opened. But The Cradle has provided a snapshot of what golf can offer. At least seven high-profile clubs have formally dispatched groups to The Cradle — owners, general managers, head professionals and superintendents — to tour the course and draw inspiration for how to grab some of the magic for their own properties.

There are still challenges. Some golfers complain about noise levels and party atmospheres. Trash is more likely to wind up on the turf there than at any other course at the resort. But the problems are minor considering how positive The Cradle has been for both the resort in particular and the game in general.

“There are very few sad faces when it comes leaving The Cradle,” Jeffreys says. “People are in a better mood when they come off The Cradle.

“It’s been a daggone home run.”

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.