Chapman Golf Center
Finley Golf Club, Re-Imagined
Carolina's golf teams have an outstanding team facility in the Chapman Golf Center. The 4,500-square-foot facility houses offices for the men's and women's golf coaches, men's and women's locker rooms, a team meeting room and a reception area. There is also a climate-controlled individual teaching area with two hitting bays and a state-of-the-art teaching system. The facility opened in November 2001, underwent further renovations in the summer of 2010 and added a top-notch practice complex in 2023.
The Tar Heel men’s and women’s golf teams benefit from a 16-acre practice facility opened in October 2023, designed in the image of Grove 23 that Michael Jordan has in Hobe Sound, Fla. Darren May, the golf coach at Grove 23 and designer of the facilities, drew on statistical data and consultations with PGA Tour players to recreate the toughest shots on tour and used many of the same ideas at Carolina.
Ground previously occupied by the 10th and 11th holes of the old Finley Golf Course were converted into the practice area, conceived by Carolina coaches Andrew DiBitetto and Aimee Neff, the Love team and May to offer the golf teams every conceivable lie, grass length, corridor and target imaginable.
The practice facility and the redesigned course at the Finley Golf Club, which includes six lengthened holes, were designed with player development in mind. The Tar Heel men’s and women’s golf teams now have practice facilities to rival any team in the nation, facilities that allow players to simulate any type of shot of every length.
As Lee Pace has written of the course itself, “The Love Golf Design firm, with former Tar Heels and brothers Davis and Mark Love and chief designer Scot Sherman taking the Tom Fazio-designed course from 1999, giving it a complete agronomic overhaul, adding two new holes to make room for the practice facility, recontouring greens and fairways and adding and deleting bunkers at various junctures. They also added new tees in a handful of locations to provide the Tar Heels playing from the tips seven par-4s playing 465 yards or longer.”
