BY SUE SMITHSON: Special to The Pilot

Have memories of playing in a sandbox as a kid? Hours spent molding and contouring the sand to suit whimiscal imaginings?

With the same enthusiasm, adults in the giant sandbox known as the Sandhills play with those same backhoes and bulldozers to mold and contour courses for games of another sort, golf and equestrian sports.

The same terrain and natural resources that make Pinehurst ideal for golf make Southern Pines ideal for equestrian sports: well-drained, soft, sandy soil with hills and a moderate climate.

The area is home to more than 900 horse farms, training sites for every discipline. Fox hunters discovered the area more than a century ago, and the Walthour-Moss Foundation, now over 3,000 acres just north of Southern Pines, was initially chartered to preserve open land for conservation and equestrian use.

Every organized equestrian sport has representation here, from polo to Pony Club, driving to dressage, racing to reining. The Walthour-Moss Foundation, Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve, and surrounding areas known as “horse country” are the training grounds for national and international champions. Southern Pines is home to many Olympians, including Bobby Costello of the U.S. Sydney, Australia team.

For competitions, the Pinehurst Harness Track is home to trotters and pacers all winter, then hosts national and international shows in May and September.

The Five Points Horse Park, just south of Southern Pines in Hoke County, is an international sporting venue with a steeplechase course and horse trials courses designed by Captain Mark Phillips of Great Britain.

Phillips coaches the U.S. Equestrian Team, and his reputation and accomplishments as a horseman serve to elevate him to celebrity status even more than his former marriage to British Royal Princess Anne. As one of the world’s leading three-day event riders for more than two decades, Phillips has contributed to British team gold medals at the Olympics, World, and European Championships. He was also a member of two winning Nations Cup show jumping squads. After his 1988 Seoul Olympics silver medal, Phillips retired from international competition and became involved in training both the Spanish and British teams for Barcelona. He signed on with the U.S. Equestrian Team in 1994.

Phillips’ course designs at Five Points are revered worldwide, not unlike Donald Ross’ golf courses. “I think a good course offers fences that are, first and foremost, fair to the horses,” Phillips said in an earlier interview. “But fences that ask technical questions of the riders.”

World Championship course designer Arjan Brinks of the Netherlands is charged with designing the driving obstacles at Five Points, and Joe King of the National Steeplechase Association laid out the steeplechase course. King has designed tracks all over this hemisphere, as well as the Far East.

These designers tackle the same issues a golf course designer faces. From the initial land acquisition, site restrictions, permits, environmental impact studies, and economic issues are always in the forefront of their creation. When an Olympic year rolls around again, the spotlight will shine on the Sandhills to bring the human and equine athletes up to peak condition.

These Carolina courses are regarded as the best in the nation. Not only courses with a hole and flag at the end, but also courses with equestrian obstacles at the end of each fairway.