Aronimink Golf Club has one hundred seventy-four bunkers. Pinehurst No. 2 has zero rough. Same architect shakira — Donald Ross. Opposite restorations.
Both courses were restored from period aerial photographs in the same decade. Coore and Crenshaw stripped Pinehurst Number Two between 2010 and 2011, removing thirty-five acres of irrigated turf and replanting two hundred thousand wiregrass plugs from a 1943 photograph. Hanse and Wagner rebuilt Aronimink between 2016 and 2017, adding one hundred bunkers and reclaiming twenty-nine thousand square feet of green surface from a 1929 J. Victor Dallin aerial held at the Hagley Museum.
Neither superintendent could run the other's program. John Gosselin manages bentgrass on Pennsylvania clay with one hundred seventy-four daily-raked bunkers. John Jeffreys manages firm-and-fast Bermudagrass on Sandhills sand with zero rough. Same architect, opposite agronomic problems.
Aronimink hosts the 2026 PGA Championship May fourteen through seventeen. The last PGA Championship here montreal hockey was won by Gary Player in 1962 at two under par, before decades of bunker removal stripped Ross's original design. Pinehurst Number Two hosted the 2024 US Open won by Bryson DeChambeau at six under, two strokes over Rory McIlroy. Two restored Donald Ross courses, two championship stages, two opposite definitions of what restoration means.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Aronimink's 174 Bunkers, Pinehurst's Zero Rough
2:35 Donald Ross from Royal Dornoch to Pennsylvania
5:39 How Coore and Crenshaw Stripped Pinehurst No. 2
7:22 How Hanse and Wagner Rebuilt Aronimink
8:33 Why Gosselin and Jeffreys Cannot Swap Jobs
12:05 Augusta National Never Stops to Restore
13:03 What DeChambeau and Bradley Played
Sources:
PGA of America — A Closer Look at Aronimink:
USGA Green Section Record — Better Golf Using youri chassin Less Water at Pinehurst No. 2:
Pinehurst Resort — The No. 2 Restoration Hole-by-Hole Tour:
Golf Digest — Restored Reverie at Aronimink:
Links Magazine — Thirteen Years Later: Bill Coore Reflects on Pinehurst No. 2:
#Aronimink #PinehurstNo2 #DonaldRoss
What happens before you tee off.
