Finley Golf Club
A year-long renovation and overhaul of UNC's Finley Golf Club ended on October 18, 2023 as Finley Golf Club opened their doors once again. The design changes were engineered by Love Golf Design and its founder, former Tar Heel Davis Love III (1982-86), company president Mark Love, also a Carolina graduate (1988) and former Tar Heel golfer, and lead architect Scot Sherman.
The greens have been redesigned and recontoured and are planted with Tif-Eagle Bermuda with a three-foot band around them of Tahoma 31 Bermuda. The tees, fairways and rough are 419 Bermuda and all areas have been sprigged with new turf. The bunkers have been lined with the state-of-the-art Bunker Solutions method that delighted course maintenance officials when 14.5 inches of rain fell in a short in late summer and left no bunker washouts. Trees and underbrush in some areas have been cleared out to improve air flow and sunlight.
The first thing golfers returning to Finley will notice is the nines have been reversed, the primary reason being the Loves believe the previous ninth hole, a par 4 with a water hazard to the right of the green, will be a better finishing hole, particularly when Phase II of the masterplan is completed with a new team building on adjacent ground. That means the previous 12th hole, a par 3, is now the starting hole.
It's rare for a course to begin with a one-shot hole, but Finley operations staff has accounted for the time it takes a foursome to putt out in spacing tee times out to 12 to 15-minute intervals. The Love brothers talk of their affection for having "quirks" on a golf course, and the new opening hole fits that theme. The course has five par 3s and three par 5s. The par for the course is 70 and that's split 34-36. The back tees will play 7,084 yards with five more sets ranging from 6,513 to 4,368 yards.
"They asked if we cared about length and if we cared about par," DiBitetto, head coach of the UNC men’s golf program, says. "I said no. I said, 'Give us the best 18 holes you can and give us variety.' We've got a great set of par 3s and a reachable par 4 and a handful of par 4s at nearly 500 yards."
Losing the two holes on the east side of Finley Golf Course Road necessitated finding and installing two new ones on the west side, the new front nine. Needless to say that was not an easy task with commercial development to the north, residences to the west and UNC athletic fields to the south. The new holes are the fourth, a short par 4, uphill at 320 yards, and the sixth, an uphill par 3 routed between the previous 15th and 17th greens.
The greens have some of those quirks the designers talk about with several 90-degree corners, some that flow seamlessly into the fairways and many greens with "green-within-a-green" compartments. The Loves borrowed on their affection for Winged Foot Golf Club, where Davis won the 1997 PGA Championship, and projects like their restoration of the A.W. Tillinghast-designed Belmont Golf Course in Richmond, Va., for inspiration for the putting surfaces and bunkers. "Chocolate drops," small mounds covered with thick rough, are scattered about the course. The traditional touches extend to the wooden bunker rakes and flagsticks.
"This design has to be modern, it has to have 500-yard par 4s to challenge these guys," says Sherman, who cut his teeth in design working for Pete Dye and has been on the Love team for 11 years. "But we blend that with an old-school look. We're inspired by Winged Foot and Oakmont and all those classic golf courses. Old-school in a modern context. I think you'll experience that here now."
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New UNC Practice Facility
Some 16 acres of ground previously occupied by the 10th and 11th holes have been converted into a practice area conceived by Carolina coaches Andrew DiBitetto and Aimee Neff, the Love team and consultant Darren May to offer the golf teams every conceivable lie, grass length, corridor and target imaginable. May's involvement brought an interesting piece of Carolina connection to the project as he is the golf coach and designer at Grove 23, Michael Jordan's private facility in Hobe Sound, Fla.
"This practice facility is absolutely insane," said Kayla Smith, a two-time All-ACC player. "You can practice every shot you could ever think of here, shots that not a lot of people can create and shots you'll see on the course all the time."
"For a kid chasing his dream, it starts with hard work," added Austin Greaser, a graduate student and three-time All-ACC player on the Tar Heels' No. 1-ranked men's team. "With this facility and this course, we have the opportunity to chase greatness like never before."
CHAPMAN GOLF CENTER
Carolina's golf teams also have an outstanding team facility, the Chapman Golf Center, which opened in November 2001 and underwent further renovations in the summer of 2010. The 4,500-square-foot facility houses offices for the men's and women's golf coaches, men's and women's locker rooms, a team meeting room and a reception area. There is also a climate controlled individual teaching area with two hitting bays and a state-of-the-art teaching system. At the far end of the range adjacent to the team facility is the Williamson Golf Team Practice Facility used exclusively by the men's and women's golf teams. In addition to a practice range, there are putting and chipping greens as well as bunkers so the teams can hone their short games. All of these superb facilities are located just minutes from Carolina's campus.
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