OUR VIEW

One more step forward.

North Carolina this week plowed through a little more of the barrier to rank as a destination place for sports championships. The majority of us living here have never viewed ourselves as not worthy, but outside of a couple of long traditions that were not on the premier pro levels, the rest of the country generally saw us with typical hometown pride in our state.

We are much more than that, and the United States Golf Association’s decision further emboldens what this state has to offer.

Turn back the pages of time to 1970, and remember that our state’s population was just above 5 million. Our college basketball heritage was already stealth — only N.C. State among the Big Four teams didn’t share in representing us in the Final Four seven times in the just finished 1960s, and Carolina’s not one but two triple-overtime wins in the 1957 Final Four is unlikely to be equaled. NASCAR was ours, no question about that. Minor League Baseball was seemingly in just about every tobacco or textile town from Asheville to Wilmington.

But we didn’t have the NFL or Major League Baseball, and the Carolina Cougars of the ABA were in the midst of only a five-year run where they played in Raleigh’s Dorton Arena, the Greensboro Coliseum and the original Charlotte Coliseum on Independence Boulevard. Kind of like nomads. There was no NBA here, and soon no ABA anywhere.

Want to see some pros back then? Most of us drove up to see the Orioles or down to see the Braves, maybe hoped to get a Washington Redskins ticket, and didn’t even bother with the NBA.

Fast forward 50 years. We have more than 10 million residents and more than a quarter century of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. Our NBA team in Charlotte has had two births. We’re approaching 25 years with the Carolina Hurricanes and own a Stanley Cup. Charlotte FC joins Major League Soccer in 2022.

And for each three year announcement, the NCAA like clockwork puts the behemoth known as March Madness in Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh.

The U.S. Open not only tested and liked Pinehurst No. 2 in 1999, it returned for an unprecedented double with the Women’s Open in 2014. Now comes word part of the USGA year-round operation will relocate to Pinehurst from just outside of New York City, and the famed No. 2 is the first course to be called an anchor site.

That would be ahead of longtime notables Oakmont, Baltusrol, Southern Hills, Winged Foot, Pebble Beach, Olympic Club and Merion. We’re elite, friends.

Growth of our state’s economy, population and amenities is a driver in all of this. Varying parts of the equation mean more jobs and more commerce dollars that, through taxes and other means, spread to all of us.

The golf world here was understandably over the moon with the news. But every North Carolinian should have been as well.

We all took another step forward.