The Rawls Course Receives National Recognition
September 08, 2010 | Women's Golf
Sept. 8, 2010
Golfweek's Top Collegiate Courses 
LUBBOCK, Texas - Since its opening in 2003, The Rawls Course has been praised as one of the top collegiate golf courses in the nation. The sentiment could not have been proved truer on Wednesday as the Texas Tech facility was named the fourth-best campus course in the nation by Golfweek Magazine.
Developed by architect Tom Doak, The Rawls Course has been honored by multiple golf publications as one of the country's top collegiate courses since its beginning. Golfweek had previously ranked the course third in its 2007 rankings, while Turfnet Magazine and Golf Magazine have both previously included the course among its top-five college courses.
The Rawls Course ranks only behind The Course at Yale, Taconic Golf Club (Williams College), and the Palouse Ridge Golf Club (Washington State), which is the newest course on the list as it opened in 2008.
Home to both the men's and women's golf programs, The Rawls Course has been one of the foundations for both training and recruiting by head coaches Greg Sands and JoJo Robertson. The Red Raiders completed the 2009-10 season on a historic run where the team finished eighth nationally, the school's highest finish since 1959, after advancing to match play at the NCAA Championships. In only Robertson's first season, The Lady Raiders returned to the NCAA Regional round, falling a few strokes shy of qualifying for the national tournament.
The course is named after Texas Tech alum Jerry S. Rawls, who generously donated the majority of the funding needed to make the facility one of the top courses in the nation. Rawls is also the namesake for Texas Tech's Rawls College of Business.
"This is a tremendous honor for The Rawls Course and we are appreciative of Golfweek Magazine for ranking us No. 4 in the nation," said Texas Tech Director of Athletics Gerald Myers. "Jerry Rawls envisioned a beautiful and challenging course here on our campus and we certainly want to thank him for his financial support. We have a lot of great donors who have contributed to The Rawls Course and I would be remised if we did not publicly recognize their efforts. Our golf programs have benefitted greatly from this course and we will only continue to get better."
Kansas State and Oklahoma were the only other Big 12 schools among the top 30 courses. A course must be part of a school's recreational life in terms of preferential access for students, faculty, and alumni in order to qualify.