Course of the Week: The Pines to receive redesign from Coore & Crenshaw

New England’s 36-hole, private club, The International, announced the reimagined version of its Pines course in Bolton, Mass., plans to welcome limited member play this fall.

Founders of the firm Coore & Crenshaw, golf course design team Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, are wrapping up the project which began in 2022. On the new Pines course, Coore and Crenshaw take advantage of the land’s unique topography, landforms and vegetation by replacing all hole corridors and green sites from the prior version of The Pines, best known for decades as America’s longest golf course. Instead, Coore and Crenshaw include their signature preference for strategic, natural-appearing golf courses that can be enjoyed at all levels of play.

Photo: Escalante Golf

The Pines is believed to be the first new 18-hole course to open in Massachusetts in more than a decade. The Pines is the second course Coore & Crenshaw have designed and built in New England; the first is the Old Sandwich Golf Club in Plymouth, Mass., which opened in 2005.

“Bill, Ben, shapers Ryan Farrow and Zach Varty and the rest of the Coore & Crenshaw team have worked their magic, taking an exceptional site and crafting what we strongly believe will be considered one of the country’s best new golf courses,” Paul Celano, director of golf at The International, said. “Their deep admiration for courses built during the early 20th century, the so-called ‘Golden Age of Architecture,’ is an ideal match for our vision of a golf-first experience at The International that preserves and honors the club’s 120-year history.”

The Pines will feature fescue grass on tees, fairways and in the rough. Fescue grass courses are typically found in Scotland and Ireland, where the game of golf was originally played. The turf conditions combined with Coore & Crenshaw’s elevated course architecture will author greater shot diversity to foster an engaging golf experience on holes framed by sandy waste areas, wispy fescue and pitch pines.

Photo: Escalante Golf

In 2021, current owner Escalante Golf acquired The International, which originally opened in 1901. Since then, Escalante has made significant investments in the club’s Oaks and Pines Courses, allowing the club to evolve with the century.

In the coming months, sodding and grow-in of the fescue playing surfaces will continue as other final tasks are completed including, installing new bunker sand, edging perimeters of bunkers, trimming and clearing trees, establishing fairway/rough lines, seeding the practice putting green and initial mowing of tees, fairways and bent grass greens.

The original Pines course was designed by Geoffrey Cornish with the assistance of legendary amateur golf champion Francis Ouimet. The course opened in 1955, measuring 8,040 yards from the back tees and combining steeply pitched greens with challenging bunkers. Nearly two decades later, architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr., was hired to soften several greens and bunkers. Jones also lengthened the course to  8,325 yards.

Photo: Escalante Golf

“The Pines will check all of these important boxes,” Celano said. “With our recently renovated Oaks course, we now combine 36 holes of exceptional golf with a welcoming club environment and culture rooted in a deep respect for the game and its treasured traditions.”

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Is your course undergoing some renovations? Did your course recently host a major event or fundraiser? Send it to Digital Media Specialist Sydney Fischer at sfischer@northcoastmedia.net, and we’ll feature it in an upcoming Course of the Week.