The Autumn 2009 issue of NC State magazine will be mailed next week, and we’ll be posting to redandwhiteforlife.com some of the content as well as blog-exclusive items. Look for:
A roundtable discussion about NC State’s culture with former UNC System president Bill Friday ’41, former Board of Trustees member Suzanne Gordon ’75, organizational leadership expert and management professor Art Padilla ’69, ’71 MS, former Alumni Association president Billy Maddalon ’90, former Faculty Senate chair Jim Martin and assistant news editor for The Washington Post Dwuan June ’90.
Photographs from freelance photographer David Evans ’84, whose work has appeared in National Geographic and who helped start the National Geographic Channel.
Q&As with an alumnus who helped design the Lonnie Poole Golf Course and another who spent a year in Afghanistan helping soldiers get a college education.
There will be much more, so make sure you check in throughout the week.
Editor’s note: Because of a coding problem, we moved the WRAL interviews off the front page. You can find them after the jump.
Last weekend’s Jimmy V Classic raised about $500,000 for cancer research and attracted more than 11,000 people to the Lonnie Poole Golf Course on Centennial Campus. The N&O has a small gallery of photos, and WRAL, which produced the Sidney Lowe ’83 and Terry Gannon ’85 videos after the jump, has a story and interviewed many of the participants, including Arnold Palmer, Rod Brind’Amour, Bucky Waters ’58, Erik Cole and Bob Valvano. An interview with is after the jump. You can read about the Jimmy V-NC State Cancer Therapeutics Training Program here. (more…)
News Services just sent us this short video from Friday’s grand opening of the Lonnie Poole Golf Course. Good stuff from Arnold Palmer, Lonnie Poole ’59 and Chancellor Jim Woodward.
The view from hole No. 3 at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course.
Golf legend Arnold Palmer will be among hundreds of donors and dignitaries attending the grand opening ceremony of NC State’s Lonnie Poole Golf Course today. Also in attendance will be Lonnie Poole ’59, who secured the naming rights for the newly opened public golf course.
Poole is well-pleased with what Palmer’s design company did with the pristine land in the southwest corner of Centennial Campus, which will serve as the home for the NC State varsity golf teams, its Professional Golf Management program and the its top-ranked turfgrass management program.
A large measure of the credit goes to a pair of NC State graduates who are architects for the Arnold Palmer Design Company, Erik Larsen and Brandon Johnson, who maintained a near-constant presence during the two-year construction process. Palmer, who joined Poole and PGA Tour pro Carl Pettersson in taking the first shots into the uncut forest two years ago, has visited the site on several occasions to oversee the process.
We’ll have photos from the day’s festivities later, but you can view some great shots of the course now on RaleighSkyline.com, which is maintained by photographer Matt Robinson ’01.
It’s a golf course that offers interesting topographical contrasts. The front nine is more wooded, the holes intermingled with small streams. The back nine has more dramatic elevation changes — and more scenery.
Stand on the 11th tee and the Raleigh skyline is more than visible — it’s close at hand, with the tee less than two miles from the city center. Visitors also can see the university’s Bell Tower in the distance.
“The thing I like best about this course is that you could put it anywhere and it would be a fantastic course, but when you put it with the views of the city and the proximity to downtown …” said Chip Watson of Carolinas Golf Group and the general manager of the golf course. “Arnold Palmer said it best: ‘We’ve never built a course anywhere close to a city like that.’”
Earlier this week, we posted links to a GoPack.com video tour of NC State’s new golf course and some great pictures from the course. Last night, WRAL posted this video of the course and an article in which they talked with head men’s golf coach Richard Sykes ’68 about what it will mean for the Wolfpack program.
“I know it’s going to help us in recruiting,” Sykes said. “It’s a wonderful place. And [Arnold] Palmer’s done a great job in designing it. ”
Sykes has been dreaming about this golf course for about as long as he can remember.
“N.C. State being a university that teaches people how to build golf courses,” Sykes noted, “I always hoped that we would have this one day.” But Sykes is quick to point out, “I wasn’t involved too much in the building of it – just the praying to get it built.”
The embed code for Inside Wolfpack Sports is available now, and you can find the video after the jump. (more…)
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