Texas Tech Breaks Group On $3.7 Million Clubhouse

Texas Tech officials broke ground on a $3.7 million clubhouse and team facility Saturday at the 8-year-old, university-owned Rawls Course.

Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt said the facility improvements Tech has made for nearly every athletic program during the last three years allows the university to “stand shoulder to shoulder with anybody in the country.”

“We’re in a competitive business,” Hocutt said. “We have scoreboards in every venue that we own and operate. And we keep score. If we’re going to sponsor a program then we’re going to participate to win, and it’s our responsibility to provide our teams with the opportunity to be successful.”

The Rawls Course, despite its stature as one of the top collegiate golf courses in the country, has been a losing financial investment for Tech since it opened roughly a decade ago.

Bobby Gleason, Texas Tech’s deputy athletics director and chief financial officer, said the clubhouse will put the course in position to host more corporate outings, which would help cover its $1.8 million operating budget.

The Rawls Course lost roughly $900,000 in the past two years, the Avalanche-Journal reported in May, and the university plugs the hole with cash from its auxiliary budget.

“The clubhouse hopefully gives us another tool to use,” Gleason said. “We want to grow the number of rounds played, in large part through corporate outings.”

The new facility was made possible entirely through private donations.

Men’s golf coach Greg Sands and women’s golf coach JoJo Robertson hope the facility allows Tech to be competitive on the recruiting trail, too.

Robertson said she can think of at least one recruit that spurned Tech after touring another school’s facilities.

“She visited a place with a two-story building right after she visited us, and our players were putting their clubs in their car,” Robertson said. “But I can’t think of any place that has a better combination of golf course and team facility than what we’re going to have. And it’s going to allow us to bid for tournaments, host tournaments and do whatever we want to do.”

The new facility will offer a full-service pro shop, a grill and bar with flatscreen TVs, a fireplace and outdoor seating, along with an outdoor window for walk-up food and drink purchases.

The Texas Tech golf teams will have private facilities. Those will include an entryway courtyard, conference room, team locker rooms and coaches’ offices.

“It’s one thing to sell a dream, it’s another thing when you’ve got a building here,” Sands said. “We’re going to have a clubhouse here and be able to show it. All the Big 12 South programs have a team area and now we’re going to get up to speed on that and be on an even playing field.”

Gleason said Tech’s facilities were likely the most outdated when the school joined the Big 12 Conference. Construction of United Spirit Arena, he said, which opened in 1999, began in conjunction with the formation of the league.

Since then Gleason said Tech has raised in excess of $250 million in private donations toward facility construction and renovation, which is “as much as any other school in the Big 12.”

The Rawls Course groundbreaking took place just two weeks after the groundbreaking ceremony for Tech’s $5 million renovation at Dan Law Field.

“Mr. (Jerry) Rawls made a tremendous investment into our future with the construction of the course,” Hocutt said. “And that was step one. Step two is building a clubhouse and team facilities. It will enable our golf programs to take that next step to where on an annual basis we are competing for championships.”