SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — The crowning moment of Michelle Wie West’s career came at Pinehurst in 2014 as U.S. Women’s Open champion, the full realization of the talent that launched her into international prominence as a teen. One of the lowest points of those precocious early years happened seven years earlier and five miles away, here at Pine Needles, where the 17-year-old, wounded physically and mentally, withdrew from the Women’s Open in mid-round.
She says her almost-goodbyes to professional golf this week, stepping away from the LPGA Tour after this edition of the Women’s Open while intending to play next summer’s event at Pebble Beach, and the arc of her nearly concluded career encapsulates how the changing dynamics of women’s golf resonate in the Sandhills.
She was the champion women’s golf needed at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club’s No. 2 course eight years ago, her stardom easily eclipsing that of Martin Kaymer, who had romped to the men’s title in the week prior. And there’s are beginnings and endings for her at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club as well.
“It’s just, there’s so much history around this place,” Wie West said this week. “Just to be walking here and playing, it’s a huge honor.”
A lot has changed since 2007, when even as the women’s game was starting to gather momentum and grow, the Women’s Open was still going to courses that, while very nice, would never have been in contention to host a men’s major — Pine Needles certainly among them.
But the banners outside the clubhouse this week herald future destinations, some of the most famous names in golf, some of which the women will play for the first time: Pebble Beach, Merion, Oakmont, Oakland Hills, Riviera … and Pinehurst, right after the men again, a mere seven years away in 2029.
These elegant venues and the new $10 million purse that goes with them are both long overdue, a welcome if belated recognition of the development of the sport and its unrealized potential. The experience of the dual opens at Pinehurst in 2014, a transcendent moment for the game of golf, only hastened that process along.
But the distance between Pinehurst and Pine Needles, a mere five miles, in some ways represents the two diverging directions of women’s golf — the gap between the game’s origins and its shiny new future. Pinehurst is pushing forward, partnering with the USGA on a new research facility, the first of now three anchor sites for the U.S. Open.
Pine Needles, on the other hand, is rooted in the past, deliberately and intentionally, sheathed in wood paneling and speckled brick. It’s an excellent golf course, some of Donald Ross’ finest work, even if it doesn’t have the same international renown as its nearby neighbor.
The spirit of the late Peggy Kirk Bell still animates the place, to the point where you can turn a corner in the clubhouse and almost expect to see her holding court at a lunch table in the lounge. She nurtured Pine Needles as a shrine to the game, for all genders to be sure, but for women in particular — and at a time when not everywhere or everyone was as encouraging or welcoming as the Bell family and Pine Needles, to say the least.
It’s why, even as this event grows and grows, it still feels at home here. It is nothing less than a pilgrimage — for fans and players alike, from Annika Sorenstam, the 1996 champion at Pine Needles making a sentimental return at age 51 as Senior Women’s champion, to Lexi Thompson, who made her Women’s Open debut here as a 12-year-old in 2007.
“Teeing it up here when I was 12 is the reason where I am today,” Thompson said this week, “because I realized then that this is what I wanted to do.”
It takes generations to put down roots that deep in players’ lives. That should never be taken lightly. And, to date, it has not. The USGA is here, again, for the record fourth time.
“It’s more than just a championship for us here,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s director of championships. “The players can speak to it. They love this golf course. We’re hearing that. Great golf courses produce great champions. How do you argue what’s come about here? Yes, we think there’s absolutely a place for Pine Needles in the future. I think a lot of that, most of that will be up to what Pine Needles sees in their future.”
But as the Women’s Open continues to elevate its profile — and it will — there is always that risk that places like Pine Needles could be left behind in favor of places with more space, more prestige and more cachet with the kind of sponsors who can drive a purse into eight digits.
There’s already precedent for that. After 51 years, the LPGA played its last Dinah Shore at Mission Hills this spring, the longtime home of the season-opening major, famous for winners’ leaps into the lake next to the 18th green, a clip that shows up in every career retrospective of every legend of the game.
Next season, it’ll move from Palm Springs to Houston at the behest of Chevron, one of the megacorporations newly interested in women’s golf. That was the emotional price to be paid to elevate the LPGA’s fifth major into the financial neighborhood now occupied by the Women’s Open, Women’s British Open and others.
“As an athlete and as a female athlete, to be able to play for this kind of money, I think it’s not even just for my generation, but for the future generations,” Lydia Ko said. “And when you see like what our founders played for, yes, the cost of living might have been cheaper than now, but still. I think we should be very grateful, but at the same time I think there’s still a ways to go, and I’m excited where women’s golf and golf is trending.”
Bell was one of those founders, as a competitor and a teacher, and there’s unquestionably a balance to be struck here, between going to the courses that elevate the game and courses like Pine Needles that helped build it.
The Women’s Open may, physically, outgrow Pine Needles someday, on its current trajectory. It will never outgrow Pine Needles emotionally. There are bigger, flashier places to take this tournament, but none better.
