World-renowned golf landscape artist Linda Hartough has introduced her new painting – the 9th hole at Pinehurst No. 2 – commemorating the 2014 U.S. Open Championships. For the first time in history, the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens will be held at the same venue a week apart. The 114th U.S. Open will be contested June 12-15, 2014, followed by the 69th U.S. Women’s Open on June 19-22. Both events will be held at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club in the Village of Pinehurst, N.C. This is Hartough’s 25th painting in her U.S. Open series, which has been commissioned by the United States Golf Association. It will be her last painting in the series.
The legendary Pinehurst No. 2 opened in 1907. Designed by Donald Ross, it recently underwent a restoration by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Pinehurst No. 2 is best known for its crowned, undulating greens, some of the most complex and widely hailed in the world.
Hartough visited Pinehurst last April to see, first-hand, the renovated course for the first time. She had been there many other times to do five paintings over the years, as well as drawings for the 1999 and 2005 U.S. Open championships. The renovation restored the course’s natural look, and everywhere the holes came alive,” Hartough said. “By that I mean the holes are now visually interesting with the natural contours of the land coming through and more use of natural vegetation. The course now looks as though it has always been there, and I am sure it was intended to look that way. When we came to the 9th hole, I fell in love and chose it immediately for my 2014 U.S. Open painting.”
The 9th Hole, Pinehurst No. 2 is offered in a Limited Edition of 850 prints and an additional 85 artist proofs. Each piece in the 25th Anniversary Edition is signed and numbered by the artist, and each will be embossed with the 25th Anniversary Edition logo.
Hartough painted the first of her U.S. Open series in 1990, when Hale Irwin won at Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Ill. Known for extraordinary attention to detail in her recreation of some of golf’s most beautiful holes, Hartough imbues her paintings with admiration for the scenery’s natural beauty and respect for the game’s history and tradition, elements which seem to emerge from the canvas. Hartough’s paintings and prints grace the collections of golf-art lovers the world over. For more information, visit www.hartough.com.
Rick Stedman is an avid golfer, RVer, and writer who lives in Olympia, Washington. Rick writes a golf column, “The RV Golfer,” which is published every month in rvlife.com. He can be reached at rstedman@gmail.com.
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