By Brock Pfrommer, volunteer writer
Great progress has been made on the new on-campus golf practice facility at Mary Hardin-Baylor. The facility, which was officially named the Jane and Mac Hickerson Crusader Golf Club, looks to provide an on-campus space for both the men's and women's golf teams to practice their golfing skills. Originally announced last fall, the practice facility is being completed at a blistering pace, with the expectation that athletes will be able to begin practicing on the greens next semester, with a clubhouse and additional buildings coming in the future. The speed at which the facility is being completed has been a major talking point amongst the men’s team.
“Whenever I first came here the golf facility was on [UMHB’s] to-do list, but I never thought it would be here so soon,” said Banner Scarborough, a sophomore entrepreneurship and small business major who plays on the men’s team.
Some of the features of the golf facility include four main greens, a special area of grass on the golf course that surrounds each hole, which will incorporate multiple tee pads to add variety and technicality to the otherwise limited space. In addition, the facility will include a dedicated putting and chipping green with lights to allow athletes to practice at night. With the campus now having a practice facility within its borders, athletes will be able to practice more conveniently, as currently they must practice at one of three golf courses: Wildflower Country Club, Sammons Park Golf Course or Stonetree Golf Course, none of which are within a convenient distance of campus.
“I’m definitely most excited for the lit-up putting green, that’s going to be good for some late-night practice,” Banner added. “I’ll get to fine-tune, we really need a facility for what we are working with, this is going to be really good [for the team].”
“It will improve the team,” said sophomore accounting major Luke Lohman, who won the UMHB Golf Team Rookie of the Year award last season. “The illuminated chipping green will be fun,” He added.
The practice facility greens are being designed by renowned golf course architect Ben Crenshaw of Coore & Crenshaw Architectural Firm, which has been behind many esteemed courses across North America. Crenshaw’s expertise will help provide the UMHB golf teams a competitive edge by allowing them to practice on world-class greens. Each green will have multiple positions to tee off from, essentially turning a four-hole practice green into a full 18-hole course. The facilities’ accompanying clubhouse also has a renowned veteran as its architect, Earl Santee, whose architectural firm Populus has worked on several other prominent sports venues such as Yankee Stadium in New York, Minute Maid Park in Houston and UMHB’s very own Crusader Stadium.
The practice facility gets its name from former UMHB men’s golf coach Mac Hickerson, whose tenure as head coach from 1980 to 1999 is the longest by any head golf coach in UMHB history. The practice course will be dubbed with Hickerson’s nickname, officially being called “The Mac” Golf Practice Course. The clubhouse, which does not yet have a window for completion, will be named the Connor Golf Performance Center after donors Mary Kay and Jerry Connor from Sugar Land, TX.
The addition of the Jane and Mac Hickerson Golf Club hopes to boost the already esteemed men's and women’s golf teams, with the men having won 8 American Southwest Conference titles between 2008 and 2022 and the women having won the 2015 NCAA Division III Women’s Individual title as well as the 2013 NCAA Division III Women’s Golf National Championship.
