Rees Jones affects the outcome of one of the greatest sporting events on earth — as well as the mood and memories of every competitor, commentator, and fan. He’s the "Open Doctor," the golf course architect who tweaks an already fierce golf course into one frightening enough to host the U.S. Open Championship.

He learned at the knee of the master. As aficionados know, Rees is the son of Robert Trent Jones Sr., who pioneered modern golf course design generally and Open doctoring specifically. Not everyone enjoyed Daddy’s work. "I hate these golf architects," golf legend Sam Snead once growled, looking directly in Robert Trent Jones’ direction. "They can’t play golf, so they make it so no one else can, either." Snead, it should be noted, never won the U.S. Open.

Now, for the second time in six years, the U.S. Open returns (June 13-19) to Pinehurst No. 2, the Donald Ross masterpiece in the sand and pine country of Pinehurst in the Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina. Rees Jones needed a scalpel to return No. 2 to its former glory before the 1999 Open; this time, he used a comb ... which led to the first question during a recent conversation for Private Clubs.

What kind of a doctor are you — plastic surgeon, orthopedist, proctologist?
Hmmm. Psychiatrist, I think. I try to get into the minds of the old architects whose work I’m restoring. At No. 2, of course, that’s Donald Ross. I’m also trying to get into the heads of players — to make them work for their scores.

Do you hate being called the "Open Doctor"? With all the courses you’ve designed, you obviously have other claims to fame.
No. It’s fun. I love this aspect of following in my father’s footsteps. It’s the big time, like going to Broadway. Of course, you also expose yourself to criticism.

But the reaction to your restorations — particularly at Pinehurst No. 2 — has been overwhelmingly positive, not like the firestorms your father’s re-dos often caused. Why’s that?
I try to penalize a bad shot to the degree it was missed … I know the players liked Pinehurst because it was not the typical U.S. Open setup. The fairways don’t narrow at the greens into high rough; there’s room to chip and pitch. And, of course, they were intrigued by the crowned greens. It may be the only course in America where all the greens are high in the middle, although the fourth isn’t crowned much.

What I do is not the way my father’s work was perceived. He made the golf course much more difficult. At Oakland Hills in 1951, he started the trend of making every Open course a real championship. They always say that Oakland Hills was designed by Donald Ross, but really, it’s not. When my father got through with it, that was a Robert Trent Jones course.

I suspect that you don’t make a lot of money from doctoring the Open. …
Yes, that’s right. Usually it’s a little job, sort of a labor of love. Not the money-generating aspect of my business. Yes, I’m proud of it. And I’m glad that what I do is so diversified.

Who hires you? The U.S. Golf Association?
Every one is different. At Bethpage, we worked by USGA edict, but usually the club initiates the contact. That’s the way it was at Brookline, Hazeltine, Baltusrol, Congressional … but it’s not always to make an already selected course ready; at Torrey Pines, we did work to get it selected for the U.S. Open in 2008.

Did the USGA hire you for the restoration at Pinehurst? Did they tell you to respond to the improved technology of the club and the ball, in other words, to make it longer?
No, Pinehurst contacted us. The USGA didn’t think the course needed more yards, but Pinehurst thought it would make a better test, and the USGA agreed. But we were not really responding to technology. The essence of Pinehurst No. 2 always has been its greens, and now that the ball goes so far, greens are the only way to protect par. At No. 2, subsurface air units pull out excess water, so that even after a rain, they’re still treacherous. And they’re a pure strain of bent grass, so they don’t wilt like greens filled with annual bluegrass.

So you focused on returning the greens to their original shapes and condition?
A lot of it was simple maintenance. They’d stopped mowing the slopes around the greens as Ross had done. So we moved the rough back, expanded the low-mowed areas, and pulled two or three feet of sand out of the bunkers. By piling more and more sand in there over the years, they’d become too shallow, not what Ross intended at all.

For this Open, we did a lot of work on tees. There are new tees on two, four, 11, and 14. The tee on seven was expanded, and, on eight, it was rebuilt. The tee on 12 was one we took from the fourth hole. The net result was we added about 90 yards — No. 2 played at 7,169 yards in ’99 and will play at between 7,250 and 7,300 this year.

Pinehurst No. 2 kicked my butt the last time I played it. …
One of the secrets of playing it well is that it’s relatively easy to recover from the short side. In other words, if the flagstick is on the left side of the green and you miss to the left, you’ll be chipping or pitching or even putting uphill, because of the crown in the green. But if the pin is right and your ball is left, look out.

You obviously know what you’re talking about, in terms of actually playing the game. What’s your handicap?
At my best, back in the Army, it was three, four, five. Now it’s eight or nine.

You once said that a golf course should be "a nature walk to play on." Does Pinehurst No. 2 fill the bill?
Yes. It blends so much with the sand hills and pines around it. It’s a historic design. I love Pinehurst No. 2 … Ross moved a little dirt to make it, but not too much.

There’s that name again.
As you know, Ross intended No. 2 to be his masterwork, and in retirement he lived in a house by the third fairway.

Do you know why Ross tried so hard on No. 2? It’s because he was competing, in a way, with Augusta National. In the early ’30s, Bobby Jones was looking for an architect for his new course, and he chose Alistair McKenzie instead of Ross. So Ross tried to prove the mistake of that decision by making his course great. The irony is that Augusta National is changed constantly and No. 2 isn’t.

I have the feeling you haven’t done your last bit of Open doctoring.
I guess I keep getting asked to do these because I’ve done good jobs. And because I’m willing to get inside the other architects’ heads.

Author and writer Curt Sampson’s newest book is The Lost Masters, a re-creation of the scorecard scandal at Augusta in 1968 (Simon and Schuster, February 2005).