Donald Ross of Dornoch, Scotland, and Pinehurst, N.C.

Purportedly, this is Donald Ross playing "The Witch," the former 17th hole at Royal Dornoch.

Here's a short celebration of Donald Ross, the quiet Scotsman who changed the game of golf and the Sandhills of North Carolina forever with his thriving design industry based in Pinehurst, his adopted hometown. Ross is a member of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

This story appeared in the Greensboro, N.C., News and Record in 2000 when the paper identified North Carolina's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Landmark Communications, 2000

BY TIM PEELER

In Dornoch, the tiny seaside village in northeastern Scotland where Donald Ross was born in 1878, there are few markers that show America’s greatest golf course architect began his career there.

Ross is far more revered in his adopted country than his native land. But Scots aren’t really into hero worship. 

And neither was Ross.

Throughout his life, he rarely talked about the courses that he built all over the country, from Florida to California, from the Country Club of Hanvana in Cuba to the 50 some courses he built in North Carolina, including four at Pinehurst, and Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro.

“My work speaks better for me than anything I could say,” Ross once told Pinehurst president Richard Tufts. 

Tufts, who as the young grandson of Pinehurst founder James Walker Tufts, recognized the Scottish architect’s brilliance early on. He watched as Ross painstakingly fine-turned Pinehurst No. 2 course for more than three decades, while constantly traveling to build new courses and returning home to run the Pine Crest Inn, which he owned. At the height of his popularity, Ross employed some 3,000 people.

“I do not think this country has ever seen a golf course architect that was his equal," Tufts said. "He was a gentleman with the very highest standards, he knew the game of golf well, loved it and served it to the best of his ability.” 

We know more about Ross today, since his writings about the game and his philosophy of architecture, “Golf Has Never Failed Me,” were published in 1996. But there was something romantic about our lack of knowledge about the man, who trained as a clubmaker under Old Tom Morris at St. Andrews and turned himself into a thriving industry in the Sandhills.

What we still don’t know is how many courses he actually designed in nearly four decades of work because many of them were renovations of existing courses or designs based on topographical maps without ever setting foot on the property. Some estimate the number at more than 600, but realistically it is more like 380. Which is still a lot of travel by train. 

Ross -- who grew into something of an old coot in his later years, using a 5-iron as both a cane and dispute settler -- never counted his courses. He just wanted to make best use of whatever piece of property he was working with, even though many of his best efforts included a mule and a drag pan.

Most of those courses have held up exceedingly well over the years, as the world’s best golfers proved last year, when only a handful broke par at No. 2. It was the 19^th time that a Ross course has hosted the Open. 

“My grandfather felt it was quality, not quantity, that mattered,” Ross’ granddaughter, Elizabeth Shapiro, said in 1996, when she was in Raleigh for his induction into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. “He didn’t think a course had to be longer than 7,000 yards to offer a challenge for championship golf. I think that his courses have been enduring because of that.

“People are challenged by the competitive aspect of the course, but moved by the beauty. I think there will always be a place for that.”

And there will always be an eagerness to play a course that with Ross’ name attached to it.