This article originally appeared in The Pilot in early May.

Rees Jones has done this before, so he’s used to both the accolades and the criticism. It comes with the territory.

It seems Jones has become the man the United States Golf Association likes to go to when it finds an Open site needing a face lift. He was in Pinehurst recently to take a look at his U.S. Open preparations on the No. 2 Course and answer some of those pesky questions that pesky reporters like to ask at such times.

"This is the fifth Open course I’ve worked on," Jones said as he stood just off the 18th green of No. 2. "The others were The Country Club in Brookline, Hazeltine National, Baltusrol Lower and Congressional Blue."

In the case of No. 2, Jones wasn’t commissioned so much to make changes as he was to restore. Pinehurst and USGA officials wanted the course brought back to the design that the late Donald Ross had intended.

Armed with old maps, photographs and plans, Jones set about his task with diligence.

During the recent Open Media Day visit he heard the complaints that no one was going to be able to keep an approach shot on those humped greens; that golfers were going to be putting balls completely off the greens; that getting up and down after missing a green was going to be tougher than spending eight seconds on a mad Brahma bull.

"I’m not the one to judge how it turned out," Jones said with a wry smile. "But people who have seen it think that it has been brought back more to what Ross envisioned.

"A lot of changes had been made over the years for the speed of play and in the turf grass. The use of riding mowers instead of push mowers had allowed the greens to become rounded off and smaller."

The greens were rebuilt to USGA specifications, using a new bent grass called Penn G-2 for the putting surface.

"We added some length to some holes, such as 25 yards to No. 12," Jones said. "And all the bunkers were refurbished. Paul Jett (No. 2 course superintendent) and I went to each bunker and, using old photographs, discussed what to do with them. Sometimes we made them to look the way they did in the 1940s. The sand was almost three feet deep in some of them, and we took all that out and brought the depth back to where Ross had it originally.

"The greens are the same size they were for the 1962 U.S. amateur, and basically it was an entire restoration. The love grass is gone and some of the wiregrass has been put back in. I think if Donald Ross is looking down from above, he should be very happy."

And that means a lot to Rees Jones. The son of famed architect Robert Trent Jones is a Ross admirer. The last thing he would ever do is desecrate a Ross work. To him, that would be akin to adding a few brushstrokes to a piece of Michelangelo’s work.

"I love this place," Jones said. "I love Pinehurst, and I love the No. 2 Course. The golfers are going to find that No. 2 is one of the ultimate tests for them. If it’s hard and firm — if it doesn’t rain too much — it’s going to be very tough, because that shrinks the size of the targets on the greens.

"If it rains, they’ll have a little more latitude coming into the greens and won’t have to worry so much about the ball rolling off the sides.

"But to score well, they have to come here with a great recovery game. They don’t want to miss on the near side of the pin, because they’ll be pitching uphill. And if they miss it on the far side, getting it up and over those crowns is a very hard shot. And they’re not going to want to be over the back on a lot of these greens, because if they’re putting towards the front of the greens they’re really going to end up below the hole.

"The players are going to have to hit their long drives so they can have shorter approach shots. These greens are really intricate and they’re going to be a very, very difficult test for the best players in the game."

A new look for No. 2 during the Open June 17-20 is the Bermuda grass rough. Plans are to allow the rough to grow to about four inches, hopefully a very thick four inches.

"The rough depends on how much they fertilize it," Jones said. "I don’t think it’s going to be real thick, but the ball does go down to the ground in Bermuda rough, so they’ll have to hack it out. But the entrance to the greens is open, so they can let the ball release to the front of the green and roll on.

"The thing they don’t want to have happen is have the ball go over to the opposite side. The chipping area from the far side can be much more difficult than from the near side."

With the added length, No. 2 will play to 7,175 yards for the Open, despite having par reduced from 72 for member play to 70 for the pros. Holes 8 and 16 are playing as 480-yard-plus par 4s.

"That’s long," Jones said, "but I just came back from the Masters at Augusta and when the players hit a driver, they hit it a long way. Still, with the U.S. Open rough, they’ll face choices as to whether they can afford to miss it in the rough. The rough is a penalty, but the fairway bunkers aren’t very prominent. I think that’s why the USGA decided to go to the four-inch rough.

"It will be very helpful to the players to be on the short grass here."