With the popularity of destination golf skyrocketing over the past few years, it has become increasingly difficult to secure a round at a top course – let alone afford the greens fee.
A price tag of $250-$300 and more has become the norm at some of the best layouts, which is why the re-opening of the Pines Course at the Country Club of Whispering Pines outside of Pinehurst is an interesting study.
The original Ellis Maples design, part of a 36-hole location that includes the River Course, was opened in 1959 but had fallen on hard times. Membership had dropped to around 75 and few traveling to the golf-rich resort area were interested in playing the neglected layout – even at a low price point.
The club and its two courses were purchased in July 2025 by Rolling Pines LLC, owned in part by Kelly Miller, the president and CEO of Pine Needles, Mid Pines and Southern Pines courses, all designed by legendary architect Donald Ross and renovated by Kyle Franz.
Many likely rolled their eyes when Miller vowed to reform the Whispering Pines courses and roll out “affordable” golf.
He turned to a familiar face to try to accomplish his goal – Franz, who Miller befriended more than a decade ago and gave the upstart architect his first solo project at Mid Pines.
Recently, the stock of Franz has taken off, with high-profile projects at Broomsedge, Cabot Citrus Farms and Eastward Ho!, adding to an already impressive resume.
“I took Kyle out to Whispering Pines to show him the property and told him I was trying to keep this as affordable as possible,” says Miller. “I said, ‘You’re pretty much a hot shot now so I understand if you may not want to do this.’ To his credit he wanted to be a part of it.”
Franz explained that he grew up at the century-old The Golf Club of Oregon, and his job was often watering the financially strapped public course at 3 a.m. as he dreamed of re-designing holes there.
So, Miller’s concept at Whispering Pines piqued his interest.
“That has always been part of the allure from day one to me,” Franz says of the North Carolina project. “Public golf has always been a part of my DNA. I’ve been dreaming about doing cool public golf, of coming into a golf course that maybe is kind of struggling a little bit, that really needs a shot of energy but has some investment to help.”
Franz, who says his budget at Whispering Pines was “as low as possible,” set out to put together a skeleton team last winter to piece back together the Maples design, and extend it to 7,156 yards.
“It’s really part of the game,” says Franz of golf course architecture funding. “I structure my business and run projects for my clients as though it was my own money, knowing all the little ins-and-outs of the business. So we started out with a goal of knowing the success of this project was keeping it affordable. I came in with a very small group of elite laborers that have worked on all of our projects everywhere.”
Franz and his crew completed what is now a new addition to the high-end Pinehurst market at a fraction of the cost. However, it looks and plays like a $15 million course, which is a testament to the skill and expertise of Franz – and his love for the classic work of Ross and Maples.
“I’m a baseball guy so the analogy from the beginning with the golf crew was this project was going to be like the movie ‘Moneyball,’’’ says Franz. “It wasn’t about grand slams and home runs. We would take passed balls if necessary; or a bunch of walks and singles and hopefully still make the World Series. The team really crushed it.”
While there are some modern touches Franz added to the layout his main goal was re-discovering the architecture of Maples, who worked for the great Ross for more than two decades.
“We really just wanted to celebrate Ellis’ work with 100 percent determination,” says Franz. “I generally think that Ellis was the best architect operating in that very odd period of the 1950s to the ‘60s and ‘70s. Architecture just kind of scattered in a million different directions in those days but Ellis stuck to his guns. He finished Ross’ last project for him – Raleigh Country Club – and it rubbed off. I see little stylistic things in the aerials that Ellis did at Whispering Pines that modern golf course architects do today.”
One such design is elongated tee boxes. The bunkering and waste areas designed by Franz make the course “pop” while the green complexes are large, undulating and require skilled approach shots.
“The course has got great topography, wide corridors and the sandscapes Kyle put in are exciting,” says Miller. “As far as I’m concerned he hit a home run.”
Miller plans to charge $150 for in-season play and less than $100 in the shoulder months.
“I think it’s the best deal, best value in the Sandhills,” says Miller.
“I got to live out a pretty cool dream on this one,” adds Franz. “And it’s great to do it for the market here because it genuinely deserves it. Pinehurst has been built on stay-and-play resorts, so we wanted to do something that was cool yet affordable.”
Up next will be the flood-prone River Course, which offers a different set of challenges but a layout that both Franz and Miller have high hopes of rescuing.
“In today’s era that course wouldn’t be built,” says Miller. “It’s in a flood plain and there’s really no place to drain it. When it rains there, forget it, the bunkers just fill up with water.”
So Franz floated an unconventional design idea to Miller – a high-end, 18-hole course with zero bunkers. There are a few such layouts in England and Scotland, but Miller believes none exist in the United States.
“We’re going to have features around the greens that’ll make it challenging; it just won’t be a bunker,” says Miller.
No timetable has been announced yet for work on the River Course.
