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Boyd Golf Center
Much of Georgia Golf's success can be attributed to the program's Boyd Golf Center and adjacent practice area just yards from the UGA Golf Course's combined green for Nos. 9 and 18. The newly renovated Boyd Center features posh locker rooms, spacious coaches' offices, a trophy room with a dramatic panoramic view of the UGA Golf Course's 18th green, club storage and repair areas, multiple computer work stations and a kitchen. The practice area includes multiple tee boxes overlooking a range with numerous target greens, three putting greens, wedge play areas and three practice bunkers. In addition, tee boxes in the Frank Lumpkin Indoor Practice Facility provide not only a location to practice during inclement weather but also state-of-the-art video equipment for swing analysis. Georgia was among the first schools in the nation to christen its own home in 1999 and many other programs have utilized the Boyd Center as a model to construct their own such facilities.
UGA Golf Course
Campers get the unique opportunity to use the $1.4 million state-of-the-art practice complex that was built exclusively for the University of Georgia golf teams.
Championship golf courses and championship teams go hand in hand. The University of Georgia is fortunate to have the best of both worlds with access to some of the finest courses in the eastern United States. With an ideal combination of weather and climate, the layouts offer a cross section of most everything the Bulldogs encounter when playing on other top treks during tournaments.
The Bulldogs' home layout stretches over 7,300 yards and plays to a par of 71. Golf Digest has rated it as one of the top 50 public courses in the nation, and rightfully so. Despite its public status head pro Matt Peterson and his staff keep the course in championship condition.
The UGA Course is characterized by lush bermuda fairways best known for their length. Water guards four of the holes while strategically placed bunkers border quick, bent grass greens. In the past seven years, it has undergone large-scale renovations, making the greens larger and more undulating. Mounds and pot bunkers have also changed the look of the greens and enhanced the challenge of getting to the pins, as well.
Opened for play in 1968, the UGA Course was designed by famed architect Robert Trent Jones, a personal friend of Dr. O.C. Aderhold, UGA president from 1950 until 1967. Jones donated the plan to the University, and construction of the course was funded primarily by student-generated activities fees.
The layout at UGA requires a lot of carry-on approach shots; it's not a bump-and-run course. Many of the greens are elevated and hard to reach, and there aren't many places to run the ball up. The recently-added mounds, designed by architect John LaFoy, help keep the ball in play, improve drainage and provide visual definition of the holes.
Perhaps the best example of UGA's multitude of choices occurs at the 12th hole, a panoramic, par-5 whose third (or second) shot carries a small pond onto an island green. Many players have been just as awed by the beauty of this hole as they are confounded by its supreme challenge.
In addition to the championship course, the UGA facilities include a three-tiered driving range, a large bermuda chipping green, a bent grass putting green and three practice bunkers with a bermuda green. This practice and teaching area rank among the most extensive in the nation. Things only get better for Georgia golfers with a state-of-the-art practice center already at the team's disposal along the UGA Golf Course property.
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