Pinehurst No. 11: A New Course on the Former Site of The Pit

Walk the back roads south of the Village toward Aberdeen and you will not see much of what is described in this week's golf press. From N.C. Highway 5, the acreage that will become Pinehurst No. 11 still reads as scrub, sand, and second-growth pine, the same quiet corner of Moore County it has been for over a decade. That quiet is about to end. Pinehurst Resort announced this week that its eleventh golf course, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, will open for play on March 29, 2027, and tee times are already bookable on the resort's site.

For a place that already counts more major championship rounds than anywhere else in the country, one more golf course might read as routine expansion. It is not. This particular patch of ground has already had a golf course on it. That course closed. Understanding the history of the first course, and how the new one is being designed differently, tells you more about what's happening at Pinehurst Sandmines than the opening date does.

A Second Attempt at the Same Ground

Before it was Sandmines, before Tom Doak's No. 10 opened there in 2024, this 900-acre tract was mined for sand from the 1930s through the 1950s. Long after the mining crews left, a Dan Maples design called The Pit Golf Links opened on the reclaimed ground in 1985. It ran for 25 years, developed a reputation as what golf writers have called a polarizing curiosity, and closed in 2010.

The land sat mostly quiet for over a decade after that. Pinehurst acquired the property in 2012, and rather than developing it immediately, the resort let it be, a decision Pinehurst President Tom Pashley has since said he's grateful for. That patience is what allowed Doak's No. 10 to take the site's dramatic elevation changes, some as steep as 75 feet, and turn them into wide, sweeping holes that Golfweek's Best now ranks as the second-best public-access course in North Carolina, behind only Pinehurst No. 2 itself.

No. 11 sits on the adjacent, physically touching portion of that same 900 acres, and it is being built to feel almost nothing like its neighbor.

Same Dirt, Opposite Instincts

Coore has said flatly that he has never worked two sites this close together that felt this different. Where No. 10 opens up into long views and dramatic drops, the ground earmarked for No. 11 is choppier, tighter, and shaped by leftover spoil piles from the old mining operation, the same rough terrain where The Pit Golf Links operated before closing in 2010.

The distinction matters because Coore and Crenshaw's approach to the old mining scars is the opposite of what usually happens when a course gets rebuilt on damaged ground. Most redesigns smooth things over. Coore has said the plan here is to leave the spoil piles and ridgelines alone and route the course through them, treating the site's rough history as the feature rather than the flaw. The Sandhills Sentinel reported that Coore called the result "weirdly wonderful," a description that reflects the contrast between the site's history and the new course's design.

The Course Is Arriving Ahead of Its Own Schedule

Here is the detail worth sitting with if you follow the Sandmines project closely. When Pinehurst first announced No. 11 back in April 2025, the resort's own language pointed to a fall 2027 opening. This week's announcement confirmed something tighter: March 29, 2027, a full season earlier than the original target.

That is not how golf construction usually goes, especially on a site this particular. Coore has described the ground as choppier and more idiosyncratic than No. 10's, the kind of terrain that calls for routing around preserved ridges and existing trees rather than reshaping open dirt. Slower, more careful building is usually what that kind of site demands. Instead, the timeline moved up. For a resident who has watched other local projects slip past their own deadlines, a golf course finishing early is the more unusual story here, not the opening date itself.

What's Already Open, and What's Still Coming

If you haven't been out to Sandmines recently, more of it is finished than the No. 11 headline suggests. The project has been arriving in pieces since 2024:

• No. 10, the Doak and Moser design, has been open and collecting rankings since 2024
• A 6,000-square-foot pro shop and locker room opened at the site in the summer of 2025
• Sandmines' restaurant and bar followed later that same summer, giving the property its first on-site dining
• No. 11 debuts March 29, 2027, with reservations open now
• Guest lodging at Sandmines is still in planning, with a target of being in place by the end of 2027, several months after No. 11 itself opens

That sequencing means the practical shift for anyone already living here isn't the eventual opening date so much as the fact that Sandmines has quietly become a functioning golf destination in its own right over the past year, not just a construction site with one course on it.

What This Means If You're Already Booking Golf This Year

One detail residents should know before they start planning: tee times for No. 11 are being sold exclusively to resort guests for now, the same access structure that applies to much of Pinehurst's course lineup for non-members. If you're not staying on property, booking a round on the new course will likely run through the same guest-reservation system as the rest of the resort's courses rather than a walk-up local rate.

The other planning note is the calendar itself. Tee times opened this week for a course that will not exist on the ground for another six and a half months. That gap is likely to fill with out-of-town golf trips well before locals think to reserve a spot for the debut season. If playing No. 11 in its first season matters to you, the smart move is booking now rather than waiting until closer to March 2027.

None of this changes daily life in the Village today. But it does mean the golf conversation in Pinehurst has a specific, dated thing to watch over the next two seasons: whether a course built on the same ground, using a different design philosophy from what came before it, will fare differently from The Pit. Coore and Crenshaw's bet is that leaving the land's damage visible, rather than erasing it, is what makes the difference this time.

If you're weighing what a home near Sandmines or anywhere else in Moore County actually means for daily life, from golf access to the pace of development nearby, Bill Sahadi has spent over two decades tracking exactly this kind of local detail. Let's Connect.