Auburn’s $15,000,000 Golf Facility | On Campus | Golf Digest

Auburn’s $15,000,000 Golf Facility | On Campus | Golf Digest

[Music] Last May, Auburn coach Nick Kleiner looked on as his player JM Butler beat the guy who was the number one ranked amateur in the world, Luke Clanton of Florida State to secure his program’s first ever national title and the first in Auburn’s 76-year history as a golf program. This was a crowning achievement in so many ways. And the question is, what are the ingredients that go into something like that? Great players, great coach, great recruiting, of course, but part of that brew has to be the practice facilities. This is where the magic is made. And everything that goes into winning the biggest tournament of all, the NCAA championship, starts right here. This is on campus at Auburn University. What you see here is the $14 million Jack Key practice facility, named after a former captain of the Auburn golf team, Georgia State amateur champion who, as a businessman in construction, among many other things, designed those unique roofs you see on Pizza Huts. He gave a lot of money to Auburn. They scouted a similar facility at the University of Oklahoma. And in 2008, they built what you see here, the Jackie Golf teaching facility. That was a year before Coach Kleiner came to Auburn. It’s 10,000 square feet. They’ve renovated it three times, most recently last fall when they redid the players lounge, the kitchen, and the trophy area you see here, featuring, of course, that 2024 National Championship. But by the way, don’t sleep on the women’s team. They have been in the quarterfinals or better four of the last 5 years, led by their coach, Melissa Llewellyn. You see some of their trophies here, too. They are knocking on the door. This building is the central hangout of both the men and the women’s team. Kleiner joked that he sometimes has to browbeat his players into actually leaving, and you can see why they’d want to stay. First off, it’s very close to where they live. In fact, Kleiner said that two of his players live literally 50 yards away and can just stumble out of bed and be there. And in terms of practice, they are spoiled for choice before they ever have to go outdoors. There are three hitting bays, four Trackmans, GC quad launch monitors. This is an entire putting studio with overhead down the line cameras and a SAM putting lab. All of which are massive for the visual elements of the players putting game. Over here you see a virtual green that they can change the slope on at will. Goes all the way up to a 4% grade. And their indoor putting is fast. Kleinard said it can roll up to 12 on the stint meter. Now you see the Auburn Tour Truck. That’s what it says on the rug. That’s what it’s called. You see the fancy rope lighting? They can do absolutely anything in here. Grind wedges, reshape, regrip, change the liloft on any club. And it was designed by a former assistant of Kleiner’s named Cory Maghard who now works for Titleist. You can see he really knew what he was doing. Over here we have the coach’s offices. This is a conference room where all the team meetings are held. Then you have the players lounge with the pool table with ping pong TVs, full kitchen. Grab a protein shake, a snack, and then we get to the locker rooms. I mean, look around. Even these seem like a very comfortable place to just exist. Kleiner calls this his team’s fraternity. Gives them a sense of ownership, a sense of home. And very often, like he said, they just don’t want to leave. But leave we must. We now go outside. This is a 30 acre outdoor practice facility. And I want to start with these greens. There are four of them, and they’re huge. Two of them are actually 8,000 square ft. But what’s neat about these is that they adopt different architectural styles. For instance, look at this screen. Notice the turtle back shape. Well, if you’ve ever played Pinehurst before or watched it on TV, you can see that this is their Donald Ross green screen. That helps a lot when it’s time to play the SEC Championship at Sea Island, which again has some similar structures. This is their Seth Rainer green, kind of raised like a plateau. This green is shaped like a kidney. These greens here have false fronts. You see the so-called chocolate drops around these greens. Everything’s different and it gives such a variety to the practice. You can thank the architect Bill Bergen for that bit of ingenuity. And you have to see this one. This green is the Jason Duffner green, aka the potato chip green. Duffner, an Auburn alum, designed it himself. It has a ton of movement on it. flat parts, wavy parts, platforms, and Duffner was adamant when he designed it about having these two bunkers off the green, one of which is shallow. So, you can see how the ball reacts when it lands, what kind of spin it has. And Duffner himself, by the way, makes use of this. When I spoke with Kleiner, Duffner had just been there the day before. And that’s not the only variety. Look at these bunkers. There’s four of them, but they’re all different depths. You have an Augusta style bunker with a flash face. There are grass-fed bunkers. Some of them are 2 ft deep. Some are 4 ft deep. This one almost looks like an openstyle pot bunker. No matter where an Auburn player travels and what kind of bunker he sees, they will likely have the skills to match their surroundings. Move out of the sand, look down, and notice even the grass in the approach areas is a little bit different. The grass on the greens is what they call TIFF Eagle, but when you’re hitting the approach, you can hit it off Tiff Grand. a super tight grass. You can hit all 419, Zoro Zoya, latitude 36, that’s a Bermuda grass. There are so many different looks even there, even among the grass. We move next to these wedge pods. There are 15 of them in total. Each is just 10 ft in diameter, built like bunkers, but these are meant as targets. Kind of gives you instant feedback on your wedge game. That part of the game where you score, where everything has to be so precise. And knowing these guys, you won’t be surprised. They make games out of this. Who can hit the most of these out of 50 tries from various distances? Things like that. With 30 acres, of course, you can also practice the long game as you see from these four different T boxes. They give you a look in any kind of wind. The range also has a good deal of elevation as you see here. When you think of most driving ranges, you think of flat areas of land, but that’s not the case in Auburn. Once again, they are recreating the different scenarios players may come up against in competition. Teams here can hit uphill, downhill, or even across slopes. Now, we move on to the Auburn University Club, and we don’t have to move far. It’s about 300 yd away from the Jack Key facilities. This was also designed by Bill Bergen in 1999 originally and renovated in 2022 to redo all the greens and lengthen it to 7,600 yards. This is a private club with about 400 members, and it is a serious championship course. Not only do the Auburn players practice and play there and host their matches there, but it’ll host the NCAA regionals this year in 2025. The team also has agreements with three other courses nearby. Moreill Golf Club, Saga Golf Club, and Grand National, one of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail courses, which used to host the PGA Tours Barbasol Championship. So, in short, the Auburn men’s and women’s team have it made. And it’s no surprise with world-class facilities like these that Auburn isn’t just turnurning out great players and all-ameans and future pros, but competing for and last year winning national championships. That trophy they feature inside the Jackie facility is the end product of success. But everything you see here, all around it, those are the ingredients.

Go inside the facility of the Auburn Tigers, the 2024 NCAA Division I Men’s National Champions. From putting studios, to a custom short game area, 15 wedge targets, four different types of bunkers and a green designed by Jason Dufner, the Jack Key Practice Facility has everything.

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