About Siebel Varsity Golf Training Complex
The Siebel Varsity Golf Training Complex, a 30-acre practice center designed to provide Stanford's men's and women's teams a unique training experience at a facility that is unmatched in collegiate golf, opened in April of 2008. Stanford Athletics teamed with Robert Trent Jones II Golf Course Architects to create what is arguably the most innovative practice facility in all of golf.
The Siebel Varsity Golf Training Complex is crafted on 30 acres of previously undeveloped land adjacent to the Stanford Golf Course. The distinctive quality of the facility is its six green complexes, complete with bunkering, intrinsic grasses and sand textures. Each complex is inspired by a different design style that Stanford's men's and women's intercollegiate teams play on a regular basis.
Driving the design concept for what have been tabbed the "Road Game Greens" was the objective to provide practice conditions most realistic to those players encounter in competition. RTJII and the Stanford golf coaching staff together settled on adopting specific characteristics of six designers: Alister MacKenzie, Pete Dye, A.W. Tillinghast, Tom Fazio, Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Robert Trent Jones II.
Hitting areas and putting greens vary not only in style, but in their surface, as well. Players can get the feel of hitting and putting on bent grass, Bermuda grass and fescue. That philosophy applies to the various practice bunker areas that provide three completely different textures - coarse, desert waste-bunker sand; pure white, fluffy sand; and beige, medium-coarse sand.
Adjacent to the second fairway of the Stanford Golf Course, the Siebel Varsity Golf Training Complex is laid out in an L-shape, with two sections -200 yards wide by 400 yards long - that overlap at the turn. With the greens strategically placed around the perimeter of the property, all six complexes can be used at the same time that other players hit into adjacent landing areas. Also, players can hit to greens from an almost never-ending variety of spots.
- Editorial assistance from Gordon I. Ratliff