Past USGA Championships
held at sister course
Pine Needles.

Generations of golfers have flocked to the Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club for its excellent golf, fine dining and comfortable lodgings. But perhaps most important of all is the warm, friendly atmosphere that prevails.

Golf in the 1910s was thriving in America, particularly in Pinehurst where more than 15,000 guests were being turned away during the busy months of February and March. The solution in the eyes of the Tufts family, the founders of Pinehurst village, resort, and hotel was to expand into an area between Southern Pines and Pinehurst known as Knollwood. Donald Ross, who had already designed four courses at Pinehurst Country Club, would design the original plan of thirty-six holes of golf (though only eighteen would be built). Ross had his choice of five thousand acres and chose a site just below a ridge of hills that provided protection from the wind. Mid Pines opened in 1921 and exists today much as it did then.

Ross was born in Dornoch on the northern tip of Scotland in 1872, played golf and worked at Royal Dornoch Golf Club and St. Andrews. Ross came to America at the age of 27 and five years later came to Pinehurst. By the time of his death in 1948, Ross had designed more than 400 courses nationwide including Seminole, Oak Hill, Oakland Hills, Inverness, and Scioto.

Mid Pines was acquired by Frank and Maisie Cosgrove in 1944 who began to get the resort and golf course back into shape after it had been occupied for several years by Army Air Force troops during World War II. The long hours the Cosgrove family put into resurrecting the resort for its new opening typified the spirit the family put into running the resort. The Cosgroves expanded the resort by building the "Golf-O-Tel, a 10-room lakeside villa, and by buying a half-dozen houses along Midland Road that border the 10th fairway. The Cosgroves had three daughters, one of whom would marry Julius Boros who became head pro at Mid Pines and developed his game to the point he would win two U.S. Opens and one PGA Championship.

The efforts of the Cosgroves have been continued and enhanced by the Bell family who purchased the property with other partners in 1994. A variety of improvements, including getting the course in its best condition in years, refurbishing the public rooms, and renovating the Inn’s 112 guest rooms have returned Mid Pines into the "jewel of the Sandhills" it once was. So much so that the USGA awarded Mid Pines the honor of hosting the 2002 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship.

The merging of Mid Pines and Pine Needles now provides some of the best golf Donald Ross has to offer. It is traditional golf at its best.