The following article originally appeared in The Pilot in January 1999.

The fairways are brown now, for the first time in years. The scene is quiet, except for the irregular thwack of a club against a ball.

The golf course is filled with foursomes, but each player is immersed in his own little world, going about his appointed round with limited conversation. The lady is in waiting and the gentlemen will be calling in only five months. Pinehurst No. 2 is resting, gathering her energies for those four days in June (17-20) when the best golfers in the world will attack her. She’s ready.

There is daily play on the course and will be until a couple of weeks prior to the United States Men’s Open Championship. Demand for tee times is heavy as everyone from scratch players to the duffers of the world want to test their games on this Donald Ross masterpiece that will host the 1999 U.S. Open.

The countdown phase is entering the frenetic stage now, measured in weeks and days instead of months. It’s 22 weeks from this Thursday. That’s only 154 days; 3,696 hours. If you get paid every two weeks, it’s only 11 paychecks away.

It’s doubtful that any other course in Open history has ever been more ready for the Open than is Pinehurst No. 2. No detail has been overlooked. No blade of grass has not been inspected. The greens are as perfect as a tailor’s fine piece of velvet. The greenside bunkers glisten white in the sunshine and offer a sparkling contrast to the emerald greens.

One of the more dramatic changes is the absence of trees between the greens of holes 3 and 5.With no trees for a backdrop, the approach to No. 3 is now a guessing game for the initiated.

"There were a couple of reasons for removing the trees," said Paul Jett, the course superintendent. "We took out six pines and two holly trees from behind the third green, and that will allow it to thaw out and get rid of the frost quicker. It also makes it tougher for the golfers to get depth perception."

The absence of the trees will also provide a great vantage point for spectators, who will be able to see play from the fairways and on the greens of both holes, plus tee shots on the par-5 4th hole and the par-3 6th. The fairways are brown, but that’s with purpose. Unlike the other seven courses of Pinehurst Country Club, No. 2 was not overseeded with rye in the fall. And the dormant Bermuda grass is holding up well under the barrage of shots being fired from them.

"This is the first time in I don’t know how many years that we haven’t overseeded," said director of course maintenance Brad Kocher. "Usually, we would have done the tees and the fairways. But we don’t want to be going through a transition during the Open and that’s normally the time when the Bermuda is starting to come on the strongest. During June, we normally have to do a lot of watering and fertilizing."

No way they’re going to water the fairways during the Open. The USGA wants both the fairways and greens hard and fast. They love to see tee shots trickle into deep rough and approach shots bounce and roll off the greens into one of Donald Ross’s "gathering places." So the Bermuda was left to itself, and the brown fairways only serve as another reminder that the Open is coming.

Jon Wagner doesn’t need a reminder. He’s been thinking nothing but U.S. Open for years. He spends long hours in his office, sometimes seven days a week. He has learned to do everything on the job except sleep.

"We’re involved in every area of the Open other than the setup of the golf course and the actual running of the competition," Wagner said. "Pinehurst is the first site in the history of the U.S. Open to have the opportunity to manage the championship from top to bottom."

From top to bottom encompasses a great deal of territory for an Open, but Pinehurst readily accepted the challenge. From the days when Pinehurst president Pat Corso and director of golf Don Padgett began ringing phones and knocking on doors and calling in favors more than a decade ago, the U.S. Open fever has been prevalent in Pinehurst.

All the corporate hospitality tents have long been sold, the volunteer ranks are filled and parking and shuttle transportation for 40,000 daily spectators has been arranged. The number of buses to be used for the 20-minute air-conditioned ride from the parking areas has been increased from 80 to 100. The parking areas are located on Highway 73 to the north and Highway 5 to the south. They won’t be hard to find as more than 500 directional signs have been placed in Moore County.

Reg Jones has been at Pinehurst since 1994, when he served as an intern for the U.S. Senior Men’s Open. In his capacity as director of operations for Pinehurst Resorts, Jones has been to every U.S. Open since, studying the process, adopting the good things and eliminating the bad.

"We compare each one with what we’re thinking about doing and we’re seeing different opportunities and problems as well," Jones said during his visit to San Francisco for the 1998 Open held at Olympic Club. "It’s intimidating, but we’re fortunate in that one thing we have is experience on site. We have a lot of good people who have had a lot of success with previous tournaments we’ve run." Steve Worthy, championship manager for the USGA, appreciates the Pinehurst effort.

"It’s nice letting them do the heavy lifting," he said during one of his frequent visits to the resort. "This will be one of the largest Opens we’ve held, but in terms of my direct responsibilities, the people here are actually doing those things. We’re more of a luxury."

Wagner is confident that all the pieces will be in place for this Open. His greatest concern is not that some detail has been overlooked, but that expectations are so high.

"The expectations are overwhelming," he said. "Pinehurst is such a special place and means so much to so many people. You hear people say it’s going to be an Open like no other Open that’s ever been. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know there is great anticipation and high expectations."