Noted golf landscape artist Linda Hartough views Pinehurst No. 2’s par-3 ninth hole in different light for series-ending painting
By Stuart Hall
The Golf Wire
Twice, the U.S. Golf Association had commissioned landscape artist Linda Hartough to commemorate the U.S. Open at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s Course No. 2. And twice, both in 1999 and 2005, she was intrigued yet frustrated by the par-3 ninth hole.
“I couldn’t quite get the feeling I wanted to get out of it,” said Hartough, who opted to showcase the fifth hole in 1999 and a combination painting of the 16th and 17th holes in 2005.
For this week’s U.S. Open – Pinehurst No. 2’s third in 15 years – Hartough was able to see the ninth in a new contextual light, thanks to the design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. In 2011, Coore and Crenshaw completed a restoration of Donald Ross’ No. 2 work that brought back many of the course’s original characteristics.
The ninth, for example, was transformed into a rugged 191-yard hole, which features a sandy area with gnarly natural vegetation that players must carry to reach a treacherous two-tier green.
“I had looked at that hole every other time I had been there and photographed it,” Hartough said. “When I saw it this time, I was just like ‘Oh, gosh.’ I just knew right then [No. 9 was the hole to paint]. And I just love the way it looks now with the waste areas coming in, and the natural vegetation. The composition of how you look at the hole is vastly more interesting.”
The painting, “9th Hole, Pinehurst No. 2,” is the last in a 25-year series of paintings commissioned by the USGA that have commemorated each U.S. Open since 1990 at Medinah Country Club. Today, the USGA will recognize Hartough’s contributions with the presentation of a special gift in a ceremony at the U.S. Open’s main merchandise pavilion.
“I think 25 is a good place to end the series,” Hartough said, “because I have painted almost all the classic courses in the rotation, and most are coming up again in the future U.S. Open schedule.”
Along the way, Hartough has captured the unique features of holes at Baltusrol, Congressional (twice), Oakmont (twice), The Olympic Club (twice), Shinnecock Hills (twice), Winged Foot, Merion and Oakland Hills.
“[The relationship with the USGA] speaks eloquent volumes about her quality and consistency,” said Joe Beditz, National Golf Foundation president and chief executive officer, who befriended and counseled Hartough about breaking into the golf industry in the late 1980s. “Her works are worthy of the finest galleries and the finest collectors.”
Hartough’s paintings hang in the personal collections of Hall of Fame golfers Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd, as well as in the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Ga.
In addition to her work for the USGA, Hartough has done numerous paintings and prints of Augusta National Golf Club’s iconic holes. She was commissioned by The Royal & Ancient Golf Club for a similar Open Championship series.
Hartough’s paintings represent a combination of labor and love.
The process begins with choosing the right hole, which Hartough says is determined by how memorable the hole has been, and whether the hole gives the viewer a sense of its location and its course’s character, along with the lighting and general composition.
She then meticulously photographs the hole from assorted angles and distances and in varied light from dawn to dusk. The actual painting can take three to four months – another reason Hartough is taking a break to paint other venues on her bucket list.
“Has her work evolved? I think it has subtly evolved, but again It’s the amazing consistency of her work that is so striking,” Beditz said. “She does what she does very well.”
Hartough, the middle child of three to Howard and Cornelia Hartough, knew early in life that art was her calling.
“By the time I was six, from what other people told me, I realized that’s what I was – an artist,” Hartough said. “So that was a great awareness to have because it really guided the rest of my life, and all my decisions were based off the fact that I was an artist and that’s what I did.”
Growing up, she lived in Louisville, Ky., for a while and gravitated to painting landscapes, portraits and horses. When she was 13, her father asked that she take golf lessons at their club, Big Spring Country Club, site of the 1952 PGA Championship, and then play nine holes.
“He said ‘If you don’t like it after that, you can quit.’ So I did. I played the nine holes and that was it,” she said.
But that experience did not dampen her appreciation for the game.
“It’s just a fascinating game,” she said. “It’s a discipline and I appreciate it on that level. When you see someone who has mastered the game, it’s amazing, just amazing. Some people are avid golfers. Well, I am an avid golf watcher.”
Hartough studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before embarking on her career. A fortuitous break came when Frank Christian Jr., the official Augusta National Golf Club photographer, saw her work in a showing at a Hilton Head Island, S.C., gallery. That set into motion her commission from Augusta National to paint the 13th hole and, later, her relationships with the USGA and The R&A.
“Linda, I believe, has taken landscape art, as opposed to golf illustration, and moved it into the fine art business,” Beditz said. “This isn’t to say there weren’t the great historic painters who did some amazing fine art back in the day and whose paintings hang in the hallowed halls of the R&A clubhouse and Augusta National and other places, but she was really the first contemporary artist to reinvent the category of golf as fine art.”
Hartough is also a founding trustee of the Academy of Golf Art, a society of artists established in 2004 to create an awareness and appreciation of golf art as a valuable segment of fine art.
Hartough says a trip to Scotland earlier in her career to visit the game’s classic courses had a profound influence on how she went about her craft.
“I want the person who looks at my painting to be drawn in and be there and remember what it was like to be immersed in that game or setting. I want you to see every bit of that detail. And that’s kind of what I have been doing.”
Doing it like few others of her time.
Contact:
