By Lee Pace

Through the efforts of a group 1,400 strong, the preservation of classic golf course architecture has gained great favor.

It is 7 o'clock on a pleasant spring evening in Pinehurst, N.C., and the lilting strains of the bagpipes waft through the pine trees and the last golden rays of the sun stretch across the third fairway of the esteemed No. 2 course. The guests this evening at Dornoch Cottage, a two-story Colonial set well back in the pine forest, wander in twos and threes and fours around this tight little intersection of the third and fifth greens and fourth and sixth tees. Each in his own way revels in the atmosphere, perhaps traveling back in time to picture a Scotsman with a bushy mustache playing the course with hickory-shafted clubs.

It's the highlight of the year, this Friday-evening pilgrimage by the Donald Ross Society to the former home of the master course craftsman. "People in the society look on the 2 Course as hallowed ground," says Michael Fay, one of the group's founders. "In the church of golf, nothing compares to the 2 Course."

"It's like going through a shrine," adds Ken Ritchie, a member of Holston Hills Country Club, a Ross course in Knoxville, Tenn.

Barry Palm, another Ross Society founder, recalls meeting Wayne Ashby, the owner of Dornoch Cottage, 10 years ago when the society was founded. He borrowed four clubs from Ashby's garage and played holes four and five time after time in the twilight. "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven," says Palm.

Church. Shrine. Heaven.

If you're picking up on some reverential tones among these Ross devotees when the subjects of Ross and classic course design come up, you're not mistaken. To them, a well-maintained and original Ross design from the first half of the century is the Holy Grail, the mother lode of the golf experience.

"Today the fashion is a very penal style of design," says Philadelphia architect Ron Prichard, a Ross Society member and a specialist in the renovation of Ross courses. "The men and women who play golf as a hobby visit these modern courses and struggle through a round where their spirit is gradually broken. That is not the purpose of the Royal and Ancient game, and to experience the difference, one simply has to step on a course designed by Ross."

The genesis of the Donald Ross Society, which numbers some 1,400 members, was a round of golf Palm, Fay and golf buddies Steve Edwards and Bruce Taylor played at the Orchards Golf Club in South Hadley, Mass., the day after the completion of the 1987 U.S. Girls' Junior. Palm noticed a reference in Golf Journal to the Orchards being a "fine old Donald Ross course," and thought it would be worth a visit.

They reveled in the charm of the quaint New England village, the ivy-covered walls of Mount Holyoke College, the tall spire of the local church. The unpretentious club, Palm remembers, had "slamming screen doors and a great two-dollar hamburger." And also a wonderful old Ross course. By the second hole, a 350-yarder with a tiny green sloped severely from back to front, they knew they were traveling back in time. "We were blown away by what a great golf course it was," Palm says. "It was pretty much intact with the original design. We fell in love with it."

Adds Edwards, "It knocked us out it was so good. It was illuminating to see a Ross course that hadn't been screwed around with, versus one that had."

A sore point with each was the state of their own home course, Wampanoag Country Club in West Hartford, Conn. Over the years, they say, the 1924 Ross design had lost dozens of bunkers on the left side of fairways because a powerful and headstrong president, who was also chairman of the green committee, hooked the ball. Worse, an architect rebuilt four greens in the mid-1980s without following Ross's original plans.

As Palm walked off the 18th green at the Orchards that autumn afternoon in 1987, he hatched the idea for the Donald Ross International Touring Society. The name was later shortened, but the concept flourished and the society was chartered in 1989.

"We wondered if there might be kindred spirits out there," says Palm, executive director of the PGA Tour Tournaments Association in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

Indeed there are. They come from Ireland and Scotland and all over America and include touring professionals-turned-architects like Jack Nicklaus and Ben Crenshaw and career architects like Rees Jones, Tom Doak, Arthur Hills, Clyde Johnston, Ron Forse and Prichard.

The society's mission, above all: create an awareness among members of Ross courses that they are caretakers of classics; to proceed with caution before making changes; and to zealously protect what they have if their course is in its virgin state. It has given $35,000 in scholarships to students of golf course architecture and has $95,000 in future scholarship funds in the bank. "What the society is all about is the restoration and preservation of Donald Ross golf courses," says Fay, who says he has played 161 Ross courses around the nation.

A case in point is Wilmington (N.C.) Municipal Golf Course, a course Ross completed in 1926. Walker Taylor IV of Wilmington became acquainted with Fay and the Ross Society when they helped him locate copies of Ross's original plans for Taylor's home club, Cape Fear Country Club. They were on file in Pinehurst at the Tufts Archives, which serves as a clearinghouse for Ross plans, information and memorabilia. Fay later visited Wilmington and, while there, Taylor told him about the muni. Fay went out at 5:45 the next morning and toured the layout in about an hour.

"It was a great old Ross routing that had gone to seed, had been beaten to death, that the town had ignored," Fay says. "It was doing 77,000 rounds a year and giving it away. But I absolutely loved the golf course. The big thing I noticed was the bunkering had essentially fallen apart. It had migrated from the original forms."

Fay helped to arrange for a $7,000 grant to hire an intern in Prichard's design firm, Tom Devane, to visit Wilmington and propose a bunker restoration plan. That provided the impetus and the town soon gave $100,000 for the renovation, which was completed in 1998 under the direction of Johnston. Both Taylor and Fay hope a renovation of the greens can be undertaken in coming years.

"To me, that's what the Ross Society is," Taylor says. "It's the spirit of golf. That project would never have been done without the Ross Society, and that's the bottom line."

Not all members of the Ross Society are members of Ross courses, and in fact the attentions of the society aren't just for Ross courses but other classic designs by the likes of A.W. Tillinghast, C.B. Macdonald, Alister Mackenzie, H.S. Colt and others. Mark Studer, a member of Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club, and Fay have had lively conversations about the subject of tree removal as key parts of classic course restorations.

It's a delicate subject in this politically correct and environmentally sensitive era, but both steadfastly believe in the removal of trees that weren't part of the architect's strategic design and that today impede play or the health of the golf course. Studer points to the benefits gained by the removal of several hundred trees at Oakmont.

"Now we have a breeze blowing through the course. We have firmness in the approach areas," he says. "The greens will accept run-up shots, and the older members love that. There was opposition at first, but it's been like a 180-degree swing."

The society members convene each April in the Sandhills area of North Carolina, which was Ross's base for nearly 50 years. He personally built some 400 golf courses, seven in the Pinehurst area, and the Ross Society plays on alternating years at Pinehurst No. 2 and then Pine Needles and Mid Pines. On Friday each year, Wayne and Jo Ashby host the group in the house they bought in 1989, which was Ross's home from 1925 until his death in 1948.

The society members compare notes on Ross courses they've played in the last year. They tout successes or lament failures on the Ross courses they're playing that weekend. They tour Dornoch Cottage, and particularly Ashby's golf room, which has a remarkable collection of Pinehurst, Ross and assorted golf memorabilia. And they embrace one another in their devout interest in the history and preservation of the game.

"I remember playing St. Andrews one time," says Edwards, "and I'm in the 17th fairway and I think, 'Bobby Jones had this shot.' That's one of the few places in the world you know that hole hasn't been changed. And if it were changed, there'd be a riot."

It's that kind of reverence to the original Ross designs the society promotes. "I hope if we've accomplished anything, people will think before doing something to one of these old courses," Palm says.

Fay points to a 1924 offer sheet for the conception of Wampanoag. The pitch copy refers to the great Scottish golf course designer, Duncan Ross. "They didn't know what they had then," he says, "and a lot of people don't know what they have now."