In the early days of North Carolina golf, members and guests would often flee to the northeast in the hot late-summer months. To counter this trend, a group of wealthy families from Winston-Salem, along with Pinehurst scion Leonard Tufts, hired Donald Ross to build an 18-hole golf course in the cooler Blue Ridge Mountains. Initially, Tufts managed Roaring Gap himself and staffed it with Pinehurst employees. The club came to be known as “the Pinehurst of the Hills” even though Ross’s sporting design—which rambles up and down a mountainside, over large knolls, and to the edge of a cliff, all in barely more than 6,000 yards*—bears little obvious resemblance to his Sandhills work. Roaring Gap retained its old-world charm through the turn of the 21st century, but its historical bona fides received a boost in the early 2010s when North Carolina-based architect Kris Spence restored the dimensions of the Ross’s greens and bunkers. Now Roaring Gap is one of the most authentic Ross courses in the country. It offers true getaway golf: fun, relaxing, and rejuvenating.
* Originally Roaring Gap measured under 6,200 yards. As part of his restoration, Spence lengthened it to 6,455.
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Take note…
The notion of “Ross greens.” Before Kris Spence’s restoration, many of Roaring Gap’s greens had the crowned character often associated with Donald Ross’s design style. Through soil tests, Spence discovered that topdressing and turf growth had caused the greens to rise several inches more in the middle than they had on the edges. The “upside-down saucers” weren’t original; they were the product of time and maintenance practices. Spence deserves credit for encouraging the membership to restore the authentic contouring rather than adhere to popular misconceptions about Ross’s greens.
Dunlop Gump. Dunlop White III was the biggest advocate within Roaring Gap’s membership for restoring the course. He started communicating with Kris Spence in 2002 and ended up serving as restoration chairman. During the same period, White was also an influential force behind Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s restoration of Old Town Club in Winston-Salem, which we consider one of the best golf architecture projects of this century. White’s website is an excellent resource for anyone interested in classic golf course design and preservation.
The Graystone routing. The stately building near the fourth green and fifth tee at Roaring Gap is the Graystone Inn, which has served as the members’ hotel and clubhouse from the beginning. It was such a popular gathering spot that, for the first 15 years of the course’s life, Leonard Tufts allowed members to start on today’s downhill fifth hole and finish on the uphill fourth.
Roll yourself back. Got speed? If you hit it more than 250 yards in the air with your Stealth 2 and ProV1, try going vintage at Roaring Gap. The way Ross intended the topographical features to play will come into focus if a 220-yard carry is a challenge.
