Country Club of North Carolina

CCNC offers two regulation eighteen hole courses, each featuring the talents of a different designer. Each course is challenging in its own way. The Dogwood Course has sand bunkers and water hazards coming into play on many holes. "Golf Digest" rated the Dogwood Course 78th best out of "America's 100 Greatest Courses" for 1995-96, and 86th best for 1997-98.

They also rated it as the 3rd "Best in State" course for the years 1995 through 1998. "GOLFWEEK" also gave it a ranking of 86th in its category of "America's 100 Best Modern Courses" for 1997, and 93rd for 1998. The Cardinal Course's old nine was designed by Willard Byrd, and its new nine was designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. Both courses have trees that can affect your shots, plus some dogleg fairways. Guests of members are given the opportunity to rent a home while visiting this course.

In the early 1900s a Pennsylvanian named John Watson began visiting Pinehurst for golf and later scouted for land that he might use to create a private recreational preserve. He built a 64-acre lake in the 1920s on thick, wooded land just two miles from the Village of Pinehurst. Watson's Lake today is the centerpiece of nine of the most dramatic holes in Moore County-the back nine of the Dogwood Course at CCNC.

The course was designed by Pinehurst's own Ellis Maples in 1963 and it opened in early 1964 as the key draw to an exclusive new private club. The Dogwood Course has been regarded as one of the top courses in North Carolina for four decades. It and its sister course, the Cardinal, have been renovated and modernized the last half decade by architect Arthur Hills and each have smooth and slick Penn A-1 bent greens.

The back nine of the Dogwood Course winds its way counterclockwise arond the lake, which is visible on every hole and comes into play on five of them-including the last four.

"That nine continually amazes people with how pretty it is, " says CCNC Director of Golf Jeff Dotson.

$ = under $50; $$ = $50 to $100; $$$ = $100 to $250; $$$$ = over $250