Walk into the new shop on Chinquapin Road on a weekday afternoon and you'll probably see someone lining up a putt before they've picked up a single shirt. There's a green built right into the floor plan, wedged between the clothing racks, and it gets used. Nobody's checking a scorecard. Nobody's dressed for a tee time. They're just here, testing a stroke on their way to the register.
That store is Malbon, and it opened in the Village of Pinehurst in late July as the brand's tenth brick-and-mortar location in the country. Golf meets streetwear at Malbon, the newest retail addition to the Village of Pinehurst, according to general manager Sara Bryant, who says it brings more personality to golf. The founders built the store around the idea that the green itself, not the game's rules or its dress code, is what people actually want access to.
That single fact says something about where Village retail is headed this year, and it's worth sitting with before you write it off as just another store opening.
A Putting Green Between the Racks
Malbon was founded in 2017 by Stephen and Erica Malbon, a couple from Los Angeles. Today, the brand is sold internationally, and the Pinehurst location marks its tenth brick-and-mortar store in the United States. Bryant put the arrival plainly.
"Pinehurst is the home of golf."
So, in her view, it was only a matter of time before Malbon showed up on Chinquapin Road.
Malbon's stated mission is to make the green the common ground, and to help drive that home, the founders included a putting green inside the store so customers can test out Malbon putters while the setup encourages conversation with other shoppers and employees. That's a deliberate retail bet. A traditional pro shop sells to people who already golf. Malbon is selling an invitation to people who might not.
A Different Kind of New Arrival, One Hill Over
Up on the Main Clubhouse campus, a different store opened last fall with a nearly opposite logic. The building perched atop Maniac Hill, formerly the Padgett Learning Center, was overhauled and renamed the Titleist Shop at Padgett Center, its revived look meant to resemble an Apple Store for the Titleist brand. There's no streetwear rack here and no invitation for the curious walk-in. The space lets visitors build personalized golf balls printed on site, with any Titleist ball and number customized right there in the shop.
A fitting area takes up roughly one third of the building, where Titleist-trained fitters use shot-tracking technology to match players to the right model of all fourteen clubs in the bag, and personalized balls, from play number to unique logos and messages, can be ordered and printed on site before a player tees off. This shop isn't chasing new customers. It's asking existing ones to spend more time and more money going deeper into a relationship they already have with the brand.
Put the two side by side and the pattern gets clearer. Malbon is casting a wide net toward people who've never swung a club. The Titleist Shop is narrowing in on people who already own four sets of them. Both storefronts are betting on golf as the Village's identity, just from opposite directions.
What Hasn't Moved
None of this displaces what's already there. Walk a few doors down from Malbon and the same names that have anchored the Village Center for years are still open:
- Purple Thistle, the sweet shop known for Bloody Mary fixings and kitchen gifts
- Lady Bedford's Tea Parlor
- The Corner Store, stocked with everything from wine to homemade ice cream
- COOLSWEATS, the West Coast-style boutique on Cherokee Road
- Gentlemen's Corner, the men's wear shop on Chinquapin Road
- The Village Fox Boutique Salon & Spa
- Given Tufts Book Shop, tucked into the Outpost building that once served as Pinehurst's post office
The new arrivals didn't replace anything. They filled in around a Village Center that was already dense with small, specific businesses, and that density is exactly why the two new bets make sense here. A store chasing curious non-golfers needs foot traffic that isn't already self-selected for golf. Pinehurst's Village Center, with its mix of boutiques and tea rooms and a bookshop, already had that traffic. Malbon just gave it a reason to stop.
The Village After Dark
If you want to see this play out in person without any particular reason to buy anything, the easiest window is Late 'Til 8. Pinehurst Business Partners runs the series on the fourth Thursday of each month through the summer, with participating businesses staying open until 8 p.m. and offering customers extra time to explore, shop, and sip complimentary wine while making their way through the Village. The July date landed on the same evening as the US Kids Golf Parade of Nations, which meant the Village was already full of families before the shops even extended their hours.
Given how the series is structured, the next one lands on August 27. That's a low-stakes evening to walk past Malbon's window, see who's actually testing that putting green, and compare it to the crowd two blocks over buying tea sandwiches at Lady Bedford's. It's the same sidewalk carrying two very different retail experiments at once, and Late 'Til 8 is built specifically so residents can see both without needing an excuse.
Beyond the summer series, the Village's retail calendar keeps its older rhythms too. Pinehurst Business Partners lists the Holly Arts & Crafts Festival for October 17, an event that has nothing to do with golf apparel or fitting stations and everything to do with the more than 200 hand-crafters who've made it a mid-October fixture for years. That festival isn't competing with Malbon or the Titleist Shop for the same customer. It's proof the Village Center has room for retail that has nothing to do with the sport at all, alongside two stores that are betting the sport is exactly the point, just for different people.
Why the Distinction Matters
It would be easy to write this off as two more golf shops in a town built on golf. But the two openings aren't chasing the same dollar. One is trying to widen who walks through the Village Center's doors at all. The other is trying to deepen what an existing golfer spends once they're already there. Watching which bet plays out over the next year, whether Malbon's crowd skews toward people who never buy a club or whether the Titleist Shop's personalization draws golfers who'd otherwise never set foot past the driving range, tells you something real about how this small stretch of storefronts is evolving. That's a more useful thing to notice on your next walk through the Village than just registering that something new opened.
If you're already living here, none of this changes your Thursday evening plans much. But it's worth knowing what you're actually looking at the next time you pass a putting green wedged between a rack of hoodies.
If you're thinking about what a home near this kind of neighborhood texture actually looks like day to day, Rose Ward at Fore Properties has spent years walking these same Village sidewalks and can talk through what different parts of Pinehurst offer beyond the storefronts. Let's Connect.
