The first time redshirt senior Chad Day hit a golf shot at N.C . State, the closest driving range was 10 minutes away on Capital Blvd., tee time availability was at the mercy of how busy other golf courses were and practicing at a location other than the University Club’s short game area or a local range was a virtually nonexistent possibility.
So forgive Day for being a little nostalgic when he looks back on his freshman year, which was all of five years ago. He is, after all, the elder statesmen of a team that mostly doesn’t realize how difficult it is to play collegiate golf without a home course.
“All those younger guys don’t know how good they have it,” Day, whose younger brother Wilson is also on the team, said. “A lot has changed. We even have a team van now. I remember we used to have our van with the bench seats, and we would cram all of our clubs in the back. A lot has changed, and the program is going in a good direction.”
For the final time as a collegiate competitor, Day will head out to Lonnie Poole Golf Course on Centennial Campus this weekend with the rest of his teammates. It’s the same course where he shot a 3-under 69 in the fall of 2010, playing as an individual, during State’s victory at the Wolfpack Intercollegiate. And it is also the same course Day has seen mature exponentially since its recent inception.
“I was talking about it with Coach (Richard Sykes), and the greens are as good as I have seen them since coming here. They are healthy. It’s not just the speed of them, but they don’t have the dead spots in them. That might be helped by the weather we have had this Spring, but the course has matured. The grass has grown in more and it looks like the course has more shape to it.”
Generally regarded as one of the most difficult courses in the area, Lonnie Poole offers plenty of opportunities to use local knowledge to your advantage. Day, a Raleigh native himself, said it is a particularly key factor on the approach shot.
“This course more than others has a lot of that local knowledge,” Day said. “It’s not as much about the breaks of the greens when you are putting on them, but more about where you are playing your shots off the tee. Like on No. 2, we all know that it is a long par-3 but if the pin is up front, you can take it off of the slope to the left.”
And even if you play collegiate golf in the area, Lonnie Poole is so different from others that experience around the Triangle isn’t necessarily going to help.
“On No. 3, we all know you have to add a club and a half for the third shot up the hill,” Day said. “Teams don’t realize that. We were watching UNC practice out here the other day right behind us, and I saw four of their players come up short and spin it all the way back down the hill.”
Of course, Day isn’t the only senior on the team – good friend and Smithfield native Mark McMillen also remembers what program conditions were like during his early days at State.
“It was just so much more convenient,” McMillen said. “Instead of having to drive 30 minutes to play golf, you could get out of the class and make it to the golf course in five minutes.”
Luckily for McMillen and his teammates, the campus course isn’t just an average track they can practice on; the continued maturation and difficulty level of Lonnie Poole continues to be talked about within the Raleigh golf community.
“The golf course is in the best shape I have seen it since I’ve been here,” McMillen , co-champion of this fall’s Bank of Tennessee Intercollegiate, said. “And I think the wind plays a big factor [in the course’s difficulty], because the wind tends to blow harder with the course being elevated. It’s one of the longer golf courses I have played, but if the wind is blowing, that’s when it makes the course ten times harder.”
McMillen , Day, and State will be battling Lonnie Poole this weekend along with the likes of East Carolina, Lamar, Louisville, UConn and many others. The team finished seventh in its host tournament this past fall and placed fourth at the Wolfpack Spring Open one year ago.
