... is the official name for what I've previous called the Red Raider Golf Course at Texas Tech. It's been named for the donor, Jerry Rawls, no relation to Betsy.
I had the honor of playing the inaugural round on Friday with Jim Urbina, superintendent Eric Johnson (not the same EJ who occasionally posts here), head pro Leon van Rensburg, and men's golf coach Greg Sands. It was a weird day with almost no wind at all ... the only calm day I've ever seen in Lubbock ... and with 2 inches of rain the day before the greens were soft and forgiving, so it wasn't the kind of master's test on using the wind which it is designed to be.
None of that takes away from Greg's five-birdie round of 68, which was a thing of beauty to watch, and a score which will probably stand up for a while after the course officially opens in September.
The course is still pretty rough around the edges and needs the rest of the summer to grow in. It's still not exactly photogenic, but I will try to post a few pictures here once I get back home.
What did I think of it? I wish the wind had blown more so I could have a better feel for it. The fairways are huge and the greens are a bit more tame than what we have built on other courses lately ... but you have to respect the fairway bunkers, and you have to hit good approach shots throughout. There are several good birdie opportunities, and a few holes where you're thrilled to walk away with par. I think it will be playable for the university community, and I think it will make a good tournament venue someday, although it certainly won't produce the kind of scores they did at Karsten Creek last month, or at Prairie Dunes where the Big 12 often wraps up the year. (It isn't even as hard as Colbert Hills, because there aren't many forced carries, and we didn't want to use grasses in the outlying areas which would cause lost balls for the masses.)
We did not manage to transform a cotton field into something as exciting as Pacific Dunes or Cape Kidnappers, or Shadow Creek either ... but the course is a tribute to the creativity and talent of Jim Urbina and Brian and Eric and the rest of my crew, because I will vouch for the fact that few of the coolest things they did were actually on my original grading plan. (That's what devoting 300 days of shaping to a project does for you.)
I have learned some valuable lessons if we ever try to do another project like this one, and I hope our work will give other architects a few new ideas, too. But for now I'm excited to head back to Cape Kidnappers and Barnbougle in two weeks and work with land where God has given us much more to work with, instead of trying to play God ourselves.