Mike Strantz built only nine golf courses before pancreatic cancer killed him at 50. All of them are weird and most of them are great, but Tobacco Road is the one people argue about. Built in 1998 on a reclaimed sand mine in Sanford — half an hour north of Pinehurst — it's a course of blind tee shots, fairways that vanish behind sand mounds, greens you can't see until you're standing on them. Strantz called it 'a roller coaster you walk through.' There's a coherent design idea underneath the theatrics: nearly every hole presents a risk-reward choice off the tee, often a hero line over waste area that shortens the approach by 50 yards if you commit. The course rewards a player willing to be wrong loudly. It punishes a player trying to grind out pars. People come from across the country to play it; people drive past it for years before they're brave enough.