And Now for Something
Completely and Obnoxiously Different
Pinehurst, N.C.
Date: August 24, 2019
I had a drink at the bar with the Walker Cup team. They left quickly.
It’s not what you think. And yet it is.
When the Pinehurst Brewing Company opened in late 2018, it instantly became the social epicenter of the resort — and, apparently, all of Moore County. It has as much to do with lack of competition as anything else: the Deuce, the terrific restaurant overlooking Pinehurst No. 2’s 18th green, closes at the preposterous hour of 8 p.m. After that, the resort’s best night spots are back at the Carolina Hotel or the Holly Inn, and there’s a certain finality to dinner and a beer in the same building where you lay your head. PBC promised a middle ground: food and drink easily within walking distance from anywhere on the resort’s grounds, but sufficiently set apart to feel like its own place. It would be a way to keep the fun going, without having to go to too much trouble. Plus, there would be barbecue.
It was enough reason to follow a browbeating round on Pinehurst No. 2 by eschewing the hotel in favor of the brewery. We arrived a few minutes before 8 p.m. to what should have been my first clue that something was decidedly off: an hour-long wait. Not everyone in Moore County had played No. 2 that afternoon (although you’d never have known it by the pace of play), but everyone in Moore County had showed up to the brewery. And although an hour-long wait on a Saturday night isn’t shocking in most parts of the world, it was out of character for Pinehurst Resort, where waiting for anything — food, a shuttle bus, anything but your next shot — is rarely demanded.
We wrestled momentarily with whether to stick it out or to roll the dice at another watering hole, but decided that on a summertime Saturday night, other venues were no guarantee of quick hospitality either. So we left our names with the hostess and wandered around back to stick out the wait in PBC’s beer garden (which really is less a beer garden and more just a covered patio with an outdoor bar and a TV — a Buffalo Wild Wings with fewer walls, honestly).
The beer was fine. There was a blueberry thing that was a Grimace-level of purple. The Hefemeyer wheat beer was good. I was disappointed to find that the Highland Brewing Company’s Pinehurst Pale Ale — in which the rest of the resort is awash — wasn’t available. The bartender eagerly shared his neanderthal view on LGBT rights with a couple to my right. But all of it was wet, and it was cold, and it was fermented. That’s still worth something.
Whether my new drinking partners at the bar were equally satisfied-but-not-impressed, I never got a chance to ask. Somewhere into my Hefemeyer, a navy quarter-zip caught the corner of my eye. That alone wasn’t noteworthy; it had been unseasonably cool all day, and polyester outer layers were out in force. But this quarter-zip had a familiar logo on its breast: the Walker Cup. Surrounding this quarter-zip were several faces familiar to anyone who had just finished watching the U.S. Amateur — most of the members of the U.S. Walker Cup team (still in town after the Am for team practice).
My first reaction was shock: how cool, I’m at the bar in Pinehurst with the Walker Cup team! My second reaction was dismay: I’m at the bar in Pinehurst that college kids go to?
For my part, there was a lot of that thing where you try to look without looking like you’re looking. For their part, there was a lot of that thing where college students wrestle with beer options, most of which they probably still don’t have the palate for but none of which they’re paying for. Andy Ogletree got carded. I wanted to tell the bartender, “I can vouch for him,” but even more, I wanted to avoid being that creepy middle-aged guy at the college bar. So I let Andy Ogletree get carded.
After a quick beer, the Walker Cuppers departed. By now, it was dark. Thirst had given way to hunger; curiosity with the beer garden had given way to being completely over this dumb loud patio.
Mercifully (I thought), our moment came. A table was ready. We were led to our seats for further merriment in a noisy, concrete-floored, slam-packed restaurant — directly in front of the evening’s cover band.
So again, just to recap:
College kids
Crowd packed elbows-to-elbows
Questionable patio area
Super-questionable bartender
Live music, loud as Hell in a restaurant with concrete floors
Walker Cup team has bolted
Our hostess seated us in a booth (would that it was a soundproof one). Our waitress arrived, smiled warmly from ear to ear, and shouted her name at the top of her lungs. I never heard it. Her mouth moved some more. I never heard what came out that time, either. Like a traveler unversed in the native language, I pointed at the Hefemeyer on the beer menu and hoped she would understand. Mercifully, she did. So I showed her the food menu, pointed at the beer cheese appetizer and the pulled pork dinner plate, confident for the first time that I would go to bed full but perhaps deaf. I raised my beer glass and threw my head back to the tune of the Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week,” played 10 feet away at the decibel level of a jet engine.
The beer cheese was fine. The pulled pork was OK — probably more than adequate for Yankee tourists who don’t know better, but uninspiring to anyone whose father-in-law spends his autumns obsessing over Alabama football and a Big Green Egg. Within a club length of my left ear, the cover band went into The Band’s version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City.” A man at the bar in a Bill Murray t-shirt cheered: “Springsteen, whoooo!” We paid the bill, tipped the waitress, moved our mouths the way a person does to say “thank you,” and respectfully fled.
I spent the rest of our four days in the Sand Hills playing mediocre golf and wondering how in the world something so unenjoyable could emanate from a formula that seemed so can’t-miss: a microbrewery that serves barbecue in Pinehurst. Setting aside nit-picky criticisms of the beer menu and personal preferences for smoked pork shoulder, what I’ve settled on is this: that Pinehurst Resort is, in this instance, a victim of its own success. The resort has successfully cultivated an easygoing, laid-back attitude that permeates everything it does — from its caddies’ friendly interactions with golfers, to the rocking chairs on the patio at the Deuce, to the folksy infomercials that play on its ever-present shuttle buses, everything at Pinehurst is engineered to create just the right vibe. PBC is a wild departure from that vibe. At a place carefully designed to be a simple, quiet retreat from the real, hectic world, PBC is a madhouse. Maybe that’s intentional. But it is totally different.
Maybe these are the prejudices of a middle-aged man going on too little sleep and following too below-average a round of golf — but middle-aged men playing below-average golf are the resort’s core audience. I didn’t get a chance to ask the Walker Cup team’s whippersnappers what they thought, but I’ve never seen a group of college kids visit a bar for one drink and then leave, so draw your own conclusions.
In the end, the reason I enjoy not just playing golf at Pinehurst but being at Pinehurst is that it’s a place that stays in your thoughts. It’s more than just a place to chase a white ball around in the grass for an afternoon; it’s a place that makes you want to revisit your rounds and talk about them and imagine the ones to come. It’s difficult to imagine any day at Pinehurst ending appropriately without a quiet table and a cold drink. Purposefully or not, PBC only delivers half of that.
. . .
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