Carlton Marshall Golf Design and shaper Mark White to create par-three layout at famed club
By Richard Humphreys |
Tobacco Road in Sanford, North Carolina, will open a new 12-hole short course, The Matchbox, by Carlton Marshall Golf Design, in August 2026.
The par-three layout is being built through a treed landscape near holes twelve and thirteen of the club’s Mike Strantz course.
The Matchbox is a collaboration between architects Justin Carlton and Lee Marshall and Mark White, one of the original Tobacco Road shapers. The course will feature synthetic turf on tees and greens to deliver consistent playing conditions in the shade of the existing tree canopy.
“This is a special piece of property as it contains spoils shaped during construction nearly 30 years ago,” said Mark Stewart, whose family opened Tobacco Road in November 1998. “The more I’ve walked around this corner of the property through the decades, the more obvious it became that a unique golf experience could be revealed – and we’re excited to share it with Sandhills travellers.”
Marshall said: “Mike Strantz was a master of scale. Having Mark White on the project provides an experienced knowledge of Strantz’s vision that we’re incorporating into our design.”
Multiple holes will play alongside a pond that few visitors to Tobacco Road even know existed. “In the design process for Tobacco Road, we talked about Mike building a par three over that pond, but it didn’t make the final routing,” said Stewart. “Now we have the opportunity to bring that bit of drama back into play in a different way.”
Among the twelve holes, the third will require a blind, 60-yard tee shot to the green, the seventh is 40 yards over a cove, and the ninth, inspired by Tobacco Road’s opening hole, plays between two large mounds.
“The overall concept is to keep it fun with bold features and heroic shot values but also provide a short-game challenge for those who really want to test their wedge game,” said Marshall. “While the longest yardage was dictated for some to play with only one club and a putter, we are creating an amenity unrestricted by that thought process alone. The contours on the greens will focus more on shot selection depending on the type of shot the player decides to execute – high shot with spin at the pin or low shot to feed the ball toward the hole. This will provide a different experience each time the course is played, even without moving the pins to alternate locations.”