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Professor explores Scotland’s connection to golf at 3D Journeys lecture LaGrange College Associate Sports Management Professor Dr. Clay Bolton shared a bucket list experience with some of his students last July. He led a study away experience to Scotland that included attending the British Open championship at Royal Troon and touring St. Andrews, the legendary birthplace of golf.

“I have the coolest job in the world,” said Dr. Bolton, who will share some of that experience, plus a whole lot more, in the closing lecture of this year’s 3D Journeys travel and lecture series. The series has focused on Scotland and his talk is entitled “Scotland: Home of Golf and the Highland Games.” Free and open to the community, the lecture is on Monday, March 24, at 10 a.m. in the Dickson Assembly Room of Turner
Hall.

“You don’t need to love golf or understand how to throw a caber to attend the lecture,” he emphasized.
Golf and the Highland Games are central to Scottish history, culture and identity, according to Dr. Bolton.

“You can’t really separate them.”

Scotland and Georgia are also connected, he points out. Dr. Bolton said he can explain the close connection in two words: Bobby Jones.

An Atlanta native, champion golfer and a founder of both Augusta National Golf Club and The Masters Tournament, Jones is forever linked to Scotland, especially St. Andrews.

Dr. Bolton plans to share how Jones’ incredible life story “encapsulates the bond between Georgia and St. Andrews.”

The professor’s own life story is incredible as well. A native of Aiken, South Carolina, he grew up in a sports-loving family, attending his first Masters golf tournament at age 7 and developing strong, dual loyalties to South Carolina and University of Georgia athletics.

“From age 10, I had a love affair with college sports,” he said, adding that he loved it all – the competition, the bands, the pageantry, the tailgates.

In time, he recognized the cultural and business impact that sports events, like the Masters, have on a community, like Augusta. He set his sights on a career in sports management and, after earning an undergraduate degree at Augusta University, moved on to Georgia Southern.

“I am proud to say I was one of the first members of the master’s in sports management cohort at GSU,” he said. A mentor told him, “You want to work in sports management more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Work he did.

His sports management career has taken him to UGA, where his boss was his childhood idol, Vince Dooley, the University of South Carolina and Mississippi State, where, at 26, he was the university’s youngest assistant director of athletics and where he earned his Ed.D.

Over his 30-year career, he has spent time in college athletics (NCAA Compliance), student affairs (multiple positions) and for the past 10 years has been a full-time faculty member. He built solid undergraduate programs in Sport and Recreation Management at Southern Wesleyan University and East Texas A&M University before coming to LaGrange College in 2022.

The call to teach, Dr. Bolton said, grew out of his passion for sharing his experiences and guiding young people interested in the sports management field. He relishes mentoring students and assisting them in gaining access to volunteer, internship and entry-level opportunities in the sports management field.
Toward that end, Dr. Bolton has taken LC students to work at the TPC Sawgrass PGA event in Florida, the SEC softball tournament at Auburn and the Super Bowl in New Orleans, where they helped staff the Fan Experience venue. Before heading to Scotland last summer, the study away group also visited Wimbledon in London.

The students raised money for the Scotland/England trip by practicing a bit of sports management. Dr. Bolton and the Sports Management Club were asked to take over responsibility for the annual Tom Duckett Memorial Golf Tournament held during Homecoming Week.

“They planned, executed and evaluated the event,” he said. It’s the kind of hands-on
learning, he believes, that prepares them for successful careers.

“The joy I get,” he said, “is when I can show students ‘You can do it!’ We help give them
a blueprint.”

It’s the reason Dr. Bolton believes he has the “coolest job” in the world. And how he
views the roles of the college and its faculty.

“All we do is change lives,” he said.