Ben Crenshaw, recognized as one of golf’s top players and a defender of the game’s tradition, and course design partner Bill Coore have begun a restoration project of Pinehurst’s famed No. 2 Course.

An agreement has been reached with Coore and Crenshaw Inc., to return both natural and strategic character to the championship No. 2 course, a release from Pinehurst and the design firm announced today. The course has already hosted two U.S. Open Championships and will make history in 2014 when it is the site of both the U.S. Open and Women’s Opens in back-to-back weeks.

Work will be conducted gradually in 2010, without any closure to the course or to individual holes until mid-November.

The project’s philosophy is to restore the course’s natural aesthetic characteristics and to bring back strategic play originally crafted by Donald Ross that may have been lost over time, the resort said. The changes include returning sandy waste areas, native wiregrass and natural bunker edges; widening the fairways to play as they did in the era from 1935 to 1960; and reducing the amount of manicured rough.

The project began last week, when the design team of Coore and Crenshaw conducted its first planning meeting with Pinehurst executives and golf course management leadership.

“We feel confident that Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are the right people to bring back key Ross features to the course,” said Bob Dedman Jr., Pinehurst CEO and owner, in the release. “Their body of work speaks for itself. They share a level of respect for the history and tradition of the game, and for Pinehurst.

“We’re undertaking this project to perpetuate Ross’ vision, knowing his design elements were meant to stand the test of time.”

Coore and Crenshaw researched historic photographs last week at the Tufts Archives, along with documents and drawings of the course’s irrigation plan that mapped the course’s progression from soft fairway lines to the manicured, wall-to-wall grass look synonymous with the modern era. The new project will return a natural aesthetic to No. 2 that is indicative of its native soil and topography.

For more on this story, see Sunday's print edition of The Pilot.