Last resort: Pat Corso revived Pinehurst, then also ran its owner's other getaways until a shake-up shrank his domain.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Feature - Pinehurst Resort and Country Club

You owe us an apology," Pat Corso snarled at his billionaire boss. "I'm not apologizing to you," Robert Dedman shot back. "Fine," Corso replied, "this dinner's over for me."

Nine years ago, Corso, president of Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, and one of his deputies were laying out reasons why Dedman, chairman of Pinehurst's parent company, should pay for an eighth golf course there. Or they were trying to. Dedman, a lawyer by training, kept cutting in, cross-examining Corso like a prosecutor ripping into a defendant on the witness stand. "He was really nailing me. He said some pretty insulting things. Basically, he said be thought I was trying to bullshit him, giving him subjective stuff, not numbers."

Later that evening in a bar at the Virginia resort where the meeting had taken place, Corso sipped a glass of red wine and told his wife, "It's been a great ride for us at Pinehurst, but I think it's over." Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Can I see you a minute?" Dedman said.

"This is it," Corso thought. "Firing time." He followed his boss across time room. Dedman turned to him. "Partner, I want you to know I'm sorry, and we're going to build that golf course."

They weren't partners, but it took both to save Pinehurst. When Dedman's Dallas-based ClubCorp Inc. bought it in 1984, the resort was well on its way to becoming, as Corso puts it, a dowager--respected but not desired. Long past its prime, when the resort was a playground of the rich and famous, Pinehurst had fallen on hard times Its 220-room Carolina Hotel had shag carpet on the floors and termites in the walls. A chef had fallen through the kitchen floor. Its golf courses, including legendary No. 2, were in sorry shape.

Today, Pinehurst is an icon of American golf again, trumpeting its return to the game's top ranks when it hosted the U.S. Open in 1999. The tournament went so well that the United States Golf Association is bringing it back in 2005--the quickest return to any course, Corso likes to point out, in more than 50 years. Golf Magazine ranked Pinehurst No. 2 as the seventh-best course in the world. The 107-year-old Holly Inn, which a former owner used as a garage for golf carts, has been turned into a four-star hotel. The white-clapboard Carolina, which opened in 1901, has been restored to its original luster, too. An $11 million spa opened last year.

Much of the credit goes to Corso, a 53-year-old history buff who realized that the resort could build a brighter future on its storied past. "Pat was time guy who developed the vision of what Pinehurst could be," says Jim Hinckley, ClubCorp's former chief operating officer and now COO and partner at WMC Management, a Dallas resort-and real-estate-management company. "He saw its ability to host national championships."

But the Open was four years ago, and ClubCorp--the world's largest owner and operator of golf courses, private clubs and resorts--has...