BOLTON, Massachusetts – At 8,325 yards, the Pines Course at the International, was known for more than half a century as the world’s longest golf course. Three years ago, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw were hired to re-route the course to take better advantage of the topography, landforms and mature vegetation.
At 7,103 yards, the par-71 course is more than 1,200 yards shorter, but Coore and Crenshaw believe it’s more enjoyable to play.
Nevertheless, Coore is a bit concerned about what the late Geoffrey Cornish might think. Cornish designed the Pines as a 8,040-yard course which opened in 1955 with steeply pitched greens and challenging bunkers. It was built in part on the site of Runaway Brook CC, which opened in 1901 as a nine-hole public course.
Cornish died at age 97 in Amherst in 2012 after designing more than 200 golf courses, but Coore had dinner with him one night late in his life and enjoyed his company.
At a media day last weekend at the International, Coore admitted he wondered how Cornish would feel about the complete transformation of his original design and Coore said he “so reluctantly” came to the International for his first visit to decide how he and Crenshaw would change the course. He soon became convinced they could create a better course.
“This site, these landforms,” Coore said, “the soil conditions, the vegetation, everything is so conducive to what we would think of as really interesting golf, not just golf for the sake of length or difficulty. With all due respect to Mr. Cornish, I hope you’re OK with this.”
Crenshaw, a two-time Masters champion, also met Cornish and he thinks it may have been when he was 16 years old and he played in the U.S. Junior Amateur at The Country Club in Brookline in 1968. With cliffs and vast drops, TCC looked nothing like the flat courses Crenshaw played in his native Texas and its beauty ignited his love of golf course architecture.
In 1972, architect Robert Trent Jones, Sr. softened several greens and bunkers on the Pines, but he also lengthened the course to 8,325 yards. The par-5 fifth hole was 715 yards long and had a green that measured nearly 90 yards long.
Crenshaw said he heard that the Pines and Dub’s Dread Golf Club in Kansas City, Kansas, were both more than 8,100 yards, but he and Coore wondered, “Why would anyone want to play them?”
When Coore and Crenshaw first visited the Pines in 2022, he asked to have the flags removed because he didn’t want to know where the greens were when he envisioned the new layout. No corridor or green site remains from the previous version of the course.
“You touch on people’s skills,” Crenshaw said. “You don’t want to beat them up. You want to encourage good play, you want to reward them. It’s a very trite observation, but anybody can build a really difficult golf course and that’s not what you want. You want to welcome them and have each class of golfers have some thrills.”
The architects worked hard to create the best flow for the new layout.
“Bill is the best golf course router that I’ve ever seen,” Crenshaw said. “You can always go to a property and see some individual holes, but how you link them up and make them part of a chain and part of a rhythm and a balance is something that he’s always done the very best.”
A large quarry dug around the second, third and 13th holes provides beauty and requires strategic play. The original plan was to build a big bunker, but the sand proved to be so remarkable a quarry was dug instead. Crenshaw and Coore were inspired by working with the natural elements and elevation changes of the Pines.
“This is New England,” Coore said. “They’re a little more used to quirky. They drive on these roads all the time. They know how this works. There are some strange things happening and it was because of the landforms.”
Escalante Golf of Fort Worth, Texas, has invested more than $40 million since acquiring the International, the region’s only private 36-hole club, in 2021. Construction of a new clubhouse and member cottages is planned. Architect Tripp Davis renovated the Oaks Course, primarily improving tees and bunkers on the 2001 Tom Fazio design. LIV Golf played a 54-hole tournament here in August 2022.
Since the spring of 2022, Coore and Crenshaw have redesigned the Pines as a more natural, strategic and playable layout. The Pines is also one of the region’s few courses to feature fescue grass on tees, fairways and in the rough. These turf conditions, combined with the elevated course architecture, allow for greater shot diversity. Crenshaw and Coore returned to the International last weekend to ride around the Pines with Escalante officials.
The Pines opened for member play last Friday. It is believed to be the first new 18-hole course to open in Massachusetts in more than a decade.
“New England is known as a place where great golf has been and will always be and we’re happy to be a part of that,” Crenshaw said.
Crenshaw and Coore, a Pete Dye protege, formed Coore & Crenshaw, in 1985. They’ve designed and built such courses as Sand Hills (Nebraska), Friar’s Head (New York), Cabot Cliffs (Canada), Sand Valley (Wisconsin) and Lost Farm at Barnbougle Dunes (Australia). They also designed one other course in Massachusetts, Old Sandwich GC, which opened in Plymouth in 2004.
