COURSE DOCTOR: Kris Spence's specialty is restoring the state's classic tracks.

• Author: Pace, Lee

Donald Ross; perhaps golf's most beloved designer, created some three dozen courses across North Carolina during the first half of the 20th century, from Highlands Country Club in a far western nook of the state to Cape Fear Country Club in Wilmington, Ross died in 1948, but today, Greensboro-based architect and restoration specialist Kris Spence is reviving his designs for a new generation of golfers.

Spence has developed a niche over nearly two decades by linking the old masters to the modern game, whether adding yardage to accommodate today's long ball, rebuilding greens with popular hybrid Bermuda grasses or returning Ross' original bunkers and greens to their former state.

"Kris is an artist," says Joe Dillon, a former club champion at Forsyth Country Club in Winston-Salem, which Spence restored in 2006. "I watched him sketch out holes on a piece of paper or even a napkin. Then you see it rise out of the ground and it's amazing."

Growing up in Missouri, Spence, 55, took an early interest in course architecture--as a kid, he roughed out a putting green in his* family's backyard--but most of his early play was on modern courses on relatively flat pieces of land. A golf scholarship took him to Arkansas State University, but he transferred to Lake City Community College, now Florida Gateway College, to study golf course' operations. After graduating in 1985, he took a job as the green superintendent at Forest Oaks Country Club in Greensboro. He had heard a lot about Pinehurst No. 2, the course Ross carved out from the sandy loam of the Sandhills that is considered one of the top dozen in the U.S.

So he made a point to drive to Pinehurst and see it himself.

"The greens" were the old 328 Bermuda (grass)--they were as firm as any I'd ever seen," says Spence, who was a scratch player, capable of shooting par or better whenever he played. "They impacted the way I played the game. You couldn't fly the ball at the flag--that caught my attention. And it became clear as you played the course that there was one angle of approach that gave you an advantage. That one round of golf set me off in a totally new direction."

Spence read books on classic designers and studied plans from Ross and other architects such as Seth Raynor, A.W. Tillinghast and William Flynn. He visited Ross courses in North Carolina, including Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro and Alamance Country Club in Burlington. In 1990, he landed a job as green superintendent at...