The Rawls Course
September 08, 2003 | Men's Golf
Sept. 8, 2003
By David Wiechmann, University Daily - After playing the waiting game this summer, the Jerry S. Rawls Red Raider Golf Course is ready for action, and the Texas Tech golf coaches are looking forward to their new facility.
"I think it's a great thing for the university, and I think it's a great thing for the city of Lubbock," said women's golf coach Stacey Totman. "It's going to obviously enhance our ability as coaches to work different shots than we were able to work with our practice facility before. We have the finest practice facility there is."
Men's coach Greg Sands said the course is a step in the right direction and a sign of commitment from the Athletics Department.
"With everything going on at Tech it's rewarding for the smaller sports because it's nice to see that commitment right across the board to have good programs whether it's golf or football," he said. "We don't have a ton of sports here at Tech, but what we're trying to do is have a good program in every sport we do."
Totman said she is glad to see the golf programs moving up in the world of golf to become more competitive and make a name for Texas Tech.
"For me it's doubly nice because I used to play here back in the early 90s," she said. "So it's just really great to see the movement of the program and the full programs we're going to be able to have with from where we've come when I was playing to where we are now with this facility. It's going to be awesome."
Athletic Director Gerald Myers said the commitment to building the golf course could not been done without the man whose name it bears.
"We dreamed about (this course)," he said. "We had plans and hopes of what would happen, but we didn't have any idea at one point that we had an alum out there willing to make a donation of $8.5 million to make this possible. Because I don't think we would have had the funds to build a golf course of this caliber in any other way than to have a gift from an alum."
What has impressed many is the design of the course. The Red Raider Golf Course was designed by the nation's No. 1 designer Tom Doak as a links style course from what was formerly a flat cotton field. Doak's design of Pacific Dunes in Bandon, Ore., was named best new golf course in 2001.
Links courses are traditionally open with few trees in play and a plethora of deep bunkers. Tech's course has more than 90 bunkers, many of them jutting into the fairways. Another characteristic of links courses is undulations. Finding a flat lie in a fairway may prove difficult on every hole. Managing Director Jack North said he finds it hard to believe how much Doak changed the landscape to build a championship golf course on a cotton field.
"I have been amazed at Tom Doak," he said. "I have been amazed, shocked and surprised in the amount of detail that went into this, painstaking. I think the finished product is well worth whatever went into it."
In a press release from Doak he said the Rawls Course has been his most challenging work yet.
"The design of the Red Raider course is probably the most complicated we've done to date," he said. "Starting with a flat cotton field, we had to create an entire landscape from scratch, and then build our golf holes around it."
Sands said he has a lot of respect for what Doak did with the design of the course because of the challenge it was.
"I can't imagine what he had to do to come up with a design like this," he said. "Some people would say, 'Oh, it's easy. You got nothing to start with. You can do whatever you want.' At the same time (at other places), if you've got the roll of the land you can picture a hole and how it's supposed to look. He had to just create every hole."
The course is going to benefit more than just the golf teams. North said there will be efforts to reach out to the Lubbock community through clinics, and students may have the opportunity to use the course for classes.
Free women's clinics will be conducted every Saturday, and North is calling Tuesday's "Tip Night" where teaching pro Leon Van Rensburg will give quick tips to participants on the driving range.
North also said four academic programs will benefit from the course along with the golf teams. The turf management program will be able to use the 268 acres for research or development to produce superintendents and landscape architects who know golf course management. The Rawls College of Business Administration is marketing the golf course. The restaurant hotel institutions management program will have labs at the course and help with catering events, and the sports science department will use the course for its golf classes.
North said it is a goal of his to do as much for the community as possible through the golf course.
"We need to figure out a way to give back in a lot of ways," he said.