Lee Pace is a Chapel Hill-based author, editor, publisher and broadcaster who has spent the last thirty years writing about golf in the Carolinas and beyond.
He has written four books about the golf heritage of Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, most recently the 2012 volume The Golden Age of Pinehurst—The Rebirth of No. 2, which chronicles the evolution of architect Donald Ross’s tour de force and the restoration program of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw from 2010-11. He has also produced club histories for the sister clubs, Pine Needles and Mid Pines, as well as Forsyth Country Club, Secession Golf Club, the Country Club of Charleston, Biltmore Forest Country Club and Forest Creek Golf Club. He is currently working with architect Tom Fazio on a second edition of Fazio’s 2000 book Golf Course Designs.
Pace celebrated his 65th birthday in June 2012 with a 6.5 run around the entire perimeter of New York’s Central Park, and though by no means a gifted athlete or marathon runner, is committed through middle age (advancing age?) to a regimen of fitness and nutrition (except when he’s not, i.e., when a fried seafood platter should magically appear).
He believes like many that golf is best experienced via foot, the old-fashioned way—walking with a light-weight and simple carry bag slung over the shoulder. Toward that end, Pace has authored a book on the joys of walking golf that was published in 2021 by the University of North Carolina Press. Good Walks—Recapturing the Soul of Golf at Eighteen Top Carolinas Courses is available through UNC Press and Amazon.
And who knows what else he might discover along the way—from equipment to instruction to style and beyond. Strap on a pair of comfortable shoes and come along for the stroll.
Pace is a 1979 graduate of the University of North Carolina, and when not trying to break eighty on the golf course writes about the Tar Heel football team through his Extra Points feature that appears regularly on Goheels.com. He has also been the sideline reporter since 2004 for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Pace and wife Sue, a talented graphic designer, teamed to produce and publish a coffee-table book on Kenan Stadium in 2016 entitled Football in a Forest—The Life and Times of Kenan Stadium.
Write him at leepace7@gmail.com.