Pinehurst (No.8)

Tom Fazio has divided opinion among golf course architecture aficionados for years but several of his courses have unified both sides of the aisle. Pinehurst No. 8 is one of them. The architect was brought in during 1996 to create the resort's eighth course as a celebration of its centennial anniversary.

Although players will not necessarily find a Donald Ross tribute, they will find a 7,100-yard route that blends carefully into the established expectations, framed most prominently by the resort’s marquee attraction, the No. 2 course. Fazio adopts swathes of waste to separate fairways at various points, or to line the inside of the long dogleg left that is the par four No. 4. At other points, such as No. 2 (the hole, not the course), Fazio punctuates the hole with smaller bunkers. And, occasionally, somewhere in-between the two styles serves best, such as No. 12, which features two very large sand installations for those who choose not to lay up.

This portion of the Pinehurst property also allows Fazio to work with water hazards as he might at some of his more “modern” courses. No. 14 is a full-on Cape-style tee shot, daring players to bite off as much of the wetland as they feel comfortable with.