For the past few years, researchers and professors from N.C. State partnered with Bayer CropScience to restore Golf Course Two at Pinehurst Resort, the location for the 2014 U.S. Open.  

Danesha Seth Carley, coordinator for CALS Sustainability Programs, said N.C. State was asked to work with the United States Golf Association team as well as Bob Farren, who is in charge of all the golf courses at Pinehurst Resort. Farren and the USGA were preparing for the U.S. Open when they undertook the renovation of Golf Course Two.

N.C. State was asked to help manage the areas of the course where about 40 acres of Bermuda grass, or turf grass, was removed. Researchers helped plan what the new areas would look like coming into the U.S. Open.

Two factors motivated the push to restore the Pinehurst golf course. The first, Carley explained, is that Farren and lead designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw wanted to bring back the original and historical design.

Donald Ross first designed the course in 1907 in the style of the original golf courses in Scotland.

“It was a lot rougher than what the course had become through the ‘80s and ‘90s, as they put more and more turf grass in and the course had become more manicured,” Carley said. “They wanted to restore it back to its original form.”

N.C. State researchers were also working on redesigning the course to improve its sustainability, Carley said.

“Turf grass takes a lot of resources, mostly water but also chemicals and mowing and labor,” Carley said. “They wanted to help to reduce their ecological footprint, and they wanted to be a more sustainable golf course. By taking out 40 acres of Bermuda grass, and managing the natural areas with native vegetation, they were able to reduce their water use by over 50 percent.”

N.C. State professors also did outreach and educational work at Pinehurst. They did a thorough survey of the course and reported back to turf managers and superintendents about what vegetation was on the course and how to help manage the native vegetation, according to Carley.

Researchers did participate in formal research, but it was more ecological. They established formal research plots on 17 out of the 18 holes on the course, and did an ecological survey on the plots to see what type of vegetation they contained. They then compared the findings to the natural ecosystem that would be found in a forest setting in the Carolina Sandhills, Carley said.

“One of the publicly perceived negatives of golf courses is that they are seen as very biologically stagnant, and that there is no real diversity,” Carley said. “We wanted to test a hypothesis whether or not this new style of golf course is ecologically more stable. We discovered that it was indeed more diverse. We found over 75 different species and over 75 percent of those species were considered true natives.”

N.C. State’s involvement in Pinehurst resort’s restoration has brought a lot of press attention to the University, especially with Pinehurst’s influx of visitors and boosted media buzz brought because of the U.S. Open.  

“We as a University have gotten a lot of really positive press because of this project,” Carley said.

Carley said the reason Pinehurst asked her and her colleagues to do the work is because of how well-known N.C. State is and because of its reputation as one of the leading research universities in the country.

“They knew that we did good work and good quality work and they could be proud of the results when working with us,” Carley said.