Bridgestone Golf Collegiate

The Bridgestone Golf Collegiate is in its seventh year in 2011 and is bigger and better than ever.

After serving as a spring tournament in 2005 and 2006, the tournament moved to October in 2007, serving for many teams as the final stop on their fall schedule. Each year, the tournament field seems to grow stronger. In 2010, the field featured five teams ranked in the top 50 by both Golfstat and Golfweek's Sagarin ratings. The year prior, Louisville, Mississippi State, Duke, Michigan State, Memphis, Michigan and Pepperdine played in the tournament - all of which advanced to the NCAA tournament in the spring of 2008.

The tournament will once again be played at the scenic Forest Oaks Country Club, past home of the PGA Tour's Wyndham Championship. The site of a PGA Tour event for 31 years beginning in 1977, Forest Oaks plays at more than 7,000 yards. Originally opened in 1962 and built by Ellis Maples, the course underwent a redesign by Davis Love III in 2002.

While the championship tees and fairways have been positioned to move the turns in the doglegs to a distance that can challenge the 300-plus yard drives of the touring professionals, the members’ tees have been positioned to make cutting those doglegs well within reach of the double-digit handicapper.

One thing professionals and members alike can both agree on is that the conditioning of the fairways and greens is superb. The fairways have been re-sprigged with Tift Sport Bermuda grass, a strain that handles the extremes of summer heat and winter wetness better than the old local strains. As a result, the fairways can be cut lower and smoother than ever before. The new greens have been planted with a mix of A4 and A1 bentgrass, which offers a faster and truer surface than the old Penn Links bentgrass.

Coddled and nurtured year-round under the supervision of Geoff Dail, Forest Oaks’ golf course superintendent, the fairways are so well groomed that some new members are reluctant to take divots. In addition, the greens are so smooth, they feel they ought to remove their shoes before walking on them. In fact, player satisfaction is so high that the readers of Golf World magazine give it a rating of 4.7 out of a possible 5.0.