The Duke University Golf Club has a different feel than most of today’s college golf courses.

It’s traditional. If you didn’t know the university owned and managed it, you’d think you were at a private country club. The layout has a club-style refinement — no over-the-top landscaping or ornamentation, just neatly maintained tees, lush fairways and greens.

OK, a Duke logo is on the round, log-like tee markers and the flags. But other than that, there’s no other highly visible symbols of the university. Plus, the separately managed Washington Duke Inn, which houses the pro shop, is a classic, full-serve hotel with only subtle university references.

The 7,154-yard layout rolls over hills and streams between tall, mature trees with not a house in sight. Designed by renowned architect Robert Trent Jones in 1957, the course was tweaked in 1993 by son Rees Jones, who opened up space on a few of the holes and made the greens complexes more exacting. A little over a decade ago, the putting surfaces were converted to Champion Bermuda.

“It’s a very classic design,” said longtime course GM Ed Ibarguen, a member of the PGA of America Hall of Fame, but perhaps best known for serving as Michael Jordan’s golf instructor. “There are no houses, the tees to greens are very close to each other.”

And, as it’s been since its founding, the Duke Golf Club is open to the public. The course is located just southwest of campus, south of Cameron Boulevard, only a few minutes south of Interstate 85 off U.S. 501.

“We try to give the public an opportunity to experience a high-level country club experience,” said Ibarguen.

Though public, Duke Golf Club is relatively expensive, ranging from $90 to $115 in-season for walkers and from $125 to $150 with cart, depending on the day of the week. In addition to discounts for students, faculty and alumni, seniors can play the course for $90, cart included, from Monday through Thursday.

Duke University Golf Club 9th Hole

Rees Jones tweaks include moving some bunkers and hazards closer to greens. But he also made the club more playable by opening some formerly blind tee shots.  Each of the five sets of tees — Rees eliminated his father’s trademark runway areas — offers an appropriate angle.

But getting on the right section of the greens is perhaps more important than merely reaching them in regulation. With the quick Champion surfaces, the undulating greens make positioning crucial. Saving par from off the “wrong” side of the green is extremely difficult.

“The shot values became more intense,” Ibarguen said. “They brought the hazards more into play.”

Yet, the layout remained much the same. Ibarguen often refers to a comment former Duke University athletic director Tom Butters – the course is under the control of the university’s athletic department — made while surveying the layout with Rees Jones more than 30 years ago.

“The tailor cut a good suit,” Butters said.

The rolling fairways typically lead to elevated greens guarded by deep, yawning sand-filled bunkers. Several shots require approaches over water. Balls hit off-target off sink into thick rough.

The course also offers two tee combinations, giving players six scorecard options ranging from 5,288 to 6,872 yards. From the 7,200-plus tips, it has a 75.2 rating and a 145 slope.

The practice area features separate areas for the public, private lessons and the Duke golf teams. A large practice green just outside the hotel and pro shop often includes hotel guests working on their putting.

Duke University Golf Club 18th Hole

Duke Golf Club plays is a regular host to U.S. Open qualifiers. Of the 84 players – many of them PGA Tour regulars — in the 2024 U.S. Open final qualifier at Duke, only 20 broke par.

A few of the most memorable holes include the 572-yard seventh. Going for the green in two on the mammoth par-5 requires a long cut over a hill and around trees to set up a long somewhat downhill approach over a creek fronting the green.

At No. 9, a short par-5 only 493 yards from the tips, the majestic Washington Duke Inn serves as a backdrop for a perched green sitting above gaping bunkers with a bank behind the green serving as a backboard to propel long approaches or blasts from the front bunkers down onto the putting surface.

The 12th green (pictured above) surrounded in front and on the sides by a pond, is atypical of Duke standards. Playing only 181 yards from the back tees and less 140 from three other sets of tees, the hole’s non-elevated green sits just across a pond that extends around the right side of the green with a bunker in the rear.

The course has a turn house with snacks. Post-round options include the comfortable Bull Durham Pub, the formal Fairview Dining Room, the more casual Vista Restaurant and Nineteen Grill, featuring outdoor seating overlooking the course.

Noting it’s been more than three decades since Rees Jones made tweaks, Ibarguen said changes are coming. A “major” renovation is in the planning stages that would renovate the greens complexes and add some new front tee boxes without “changing the feel” of the course.

Not many sites have been home to three golf course designs by the likes of George Cobb, Tom Fazio and Davis Love III.

But that’s the history of the University of North Carolina’s Finley Golf Club in Chapel Hill. Same property, same name, three different designs with different routing.

The third version opened last fall after revisions from a team headed by Love, his brother, Mark, and architect Scot Sherman. If you haven’t played Finley in the last nine months, you haven’t played the course.

UNC spent $13.5 million on the facility, taking land from the former 11th and 12th holes to build a new practice facility intended to rank among the best in college golf for the UNC men’s and women’s teams.

“The catalyst was to create the premier practice space for the UNC golf teams,” said Finley pro Rob Costa.

The clubhouse and pro shop received renovations. A vast, new, putting green, includes a putting course. Harvie’s, a new snack bar/restaurant, reopened in late July named for former UNC great Harvie Ward. The UNC golf teams’ indoor facilities will be built in the next few years.

Many of the greens have been reshaped with a variety of undulations and new tiers, making it more important for players to hit approaches to the right sections. Grassy mounds border many of the fairways.

The putting surfaces are also different. Tif-Eagle Bermuda has replaced the former bent grass greens, allowing them to be faster and easier to maintain during hot weather. A collar with a distinctive strain of Bermuda should prevent mowing patterns from reducing the greens’ size.

“From 60 yards in, the holes are vastly different,” said Costa.

The nines have been reversed, making the former No. 9, a challenging par-4 with water guarding the right side of the green (pictured above), the finishing hole. The new holes, a short par-4 and tough par-3 with a large elevated green, were incorporated into the layout as Nos. 4 and 6 on land near an apartment complex, the only buildings easily visible along the course.

One of the reasons for the changes, which included a few new tees, was to toughen it up for the best college golfers. This past spring, the course hosted an NCAA Regional.

UNC built two new holes, inserted as No. 4 and No. 6, to replace holes eliminated for use to build UNC’s planned new team facility.

As a result of new holes and rerouting, the former 12th hole, a relatively simple downhill par-3 guarded by bunkers, is the opening hole. Several trees were also cleared, improving some views and providing more options for shots from off the fairways. Though measuring 7,084 yards — modest by current pro standards — from the black tips, the reduction to par-70 makes the course plays longer. The tougher greens complexes will defend par for college players.

“The strategy was to make it harder for good players, but playable for everybody else,” Costa said.

The need for the new practice facility is easy to understand given the facilities arms race among college golf programs. The changes in the course are also understandable. Cobb designed a solid college layout in 1950. In 1999, Fazio was brought in with instructions to improve the layout but keep it playable for students and the public.

The Love brothers, UNC alums, needed to build new holes to replace the holes lost to the practice facility while making the greens and fairway target areas tough enough to challenge players averaging significantly more length off the tees than players in the 1990s.

Finley remains easily walkable. The course is filled with rolling terrain, but there are few steep climbs and only shorts distances between holes.

The course has six sets of tees and two combos with ratings and slopes. Gold tees measure 6,529 yards and the blue member tees are 6,011, with shorter tees at 5,453, 5,013 and 4,368 yards. The rating is 74.6 and the slope 141 from the back tees. The blues drop to a 69.6 rating and 130 slope. Measuring 6,254, the gold/blue combo is especially popular.

Public play at Finley takes some planning. Tee times are available no more than five days in advance with no same-day availability. Weekday prices are $95 to walk and $125 with cart in the mornings, and $70 and $100, respectively, in the afternoons. Range balls are included.

N.C. State’s Lonnie Poole Golf Course may be the toughest place to get a tee time in the Raleigh area. And there are at least three major reasons why.

First, there’s the layout, a signature product of the Arnold Palmer Design Co., which offers a broad-shouldered challenge, with pristine fairways winding over hills and through forest to large, undulating bent grass greens, often protected by huge bunkers and wild, native grasses.

Despite the course’s popularity, the tees, fairways, and greens are meticulously groomed, with the maintenance supervised by the university’s turfgrass management staff and students.

Second, there’s the overall facilities, which include a spacious, public practice areas, and a modern, multi-tier clubhouse with inside dining or outdoor seating with views of the downtown Raleigh skyline at The Terrace restaurant, a large pro shop and meeting rooms as well as a first-floor center for instruction and club fitting.

Third, there’s yes, location, location, location. The course is just a sand wedge off Interstate 40, only a few-minute drive from downtown Raleigh on N.C. State’s Centennial Campus.

In the capital city, Lonnie Poole is clearly the No. 1 public option. Interestingly, Lonnie Poole’s nearest rivals in the market’s elite public category are university courses at Duke and UNC.

“No doubt about it,” said Chip Watson, the PGA general manager. “There’s really not another golf course in that echelon.”

Watson said Lonnie Poole plays about 44,000 rounds per year, a figure it limits to prevent excess wear and tear. The course offers annual play packages, but no traditional memberships. Daily greens fees and cart for the public are $75 on Monday through Thursday and $100 on weekends. Walking is allowed, though a few long treks through woods connect some of the holes.

Stay-and-play packages are available through the university’s StateView Hotel, next to the Alumni Center, just across a street from the course.

The course is open seven days a week, though closed for maintenance on Tuesday until 11 a.m.

Most of the fairways are generously open — some deceptively wide — with manageable-length rough extending to the trees. Large white sand bunkers, sometimes framed by long native grasses, protect the fairways and greens, though bailout opportunities exist for most approaches.

Since the course’s opening in 2009, Watson said some original bunkering — including bunker islands with high grass— has been eliminated, and new forward tees were added to make the course more playable for beginners and high-handicappers.

“At first, the reputation was the course was way too hard,” Watson said. “The first 3-4 years, we worked really hard on that.”

Still the home of the Wolfpack golf teams has plenty of teeth, measuring 7,358 yards at par-72 from the back tees, with five other tee options ranging from 4,711 to 6,916 yards. A former host of NCAA Regionals, Lonnie Poole offers stout 74.6 rating and 142 slope from the tips that dips to 68.8 and 126 from the fourth set or Wolfpack tees that measure 6,127 yards.

If the five sets of tees aren’t enough, the scorecard supplies two tee combinations. Several holes require tee shots over ravines to uphill landing areas, reducing the roll of drives.

“We’d love to get some bigger events out here,” Watson said.

Lonnie Poole is the nation’s only university course designed by the Palmer’s company. The King visited a half-dozen times or so during design and construction. N.C. State graduates Erik Larsen and Brandon Johnson, working for Palmer, were the primary architects on site.

In addition to a new public practice area and putting green, scheduled to open in the fall, the course may continue to evolve. An I-40 exit, planned by NCDOT for the Centennial Campus when the course was built, has been scrapped. So, the 235-yard par-3 No. 2 hole, designed to fit with the exit, could be redesigned to improve the routing pattern sometime in the future, according to Watson.

From the plateau with the No. 10 green and 11^th tee, players are greeted with a view of the downtown skyline, including the capital building.

The back nine, which covers on somewhat higher ground, plays from 100 to 200 yards longer than the front, and regulars believe it’s as much as three strokes more difficult. In fact, Watson said the toughest holes on the course during N.C. State and Carolinas Golf Association tournaments have been No. 11, a 665-yard par-5; No. 12, a 472-yard par-4; and No. 15, a 549-yard par-5.

But for mid-handicappers, the biggest challenge may come at 18, a 441-yard (from the third set of 6,498-yard tees) par-4 featuring a lake on the right off the tee, then a long approach over waste, fescue and sand to a green with a severe drop-off to the right and only a small bailout to the left that leaves a perilous downhill pitch.

Lonnie Poole is built on N.C. State land, but the course has a long-term lease. Carolinas Golf Group of Raleigh, which manages the facility, also manages six other facilities, including High Point Country Club, Starmount Forest Country Club and Pennrose Park Country Club in the Triad. Oak Valley, Salem Glen, Asheboro Country Club and Sapona were part of CGG’s past development and management portfolios.