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Golfing with Grandpa
Posted: Wednesday May 17, 2000 01:51 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old 8-handicapper when he suddenly lost his swing. Since December 1989 he has been looking for it -- a modern-day Odysseus adrift on the troubled waters of swing theory. As Garrity travels the world reporting on golf, he visits as many driving ranges as he can, avoiding the dreaded "mats only" ranges that prevent him from teeing it up. Thursday, May 11 CHICAGO -- I had some free time between the conclusion of my business at 2 p.m. and my scheduled flight from O'Hare at 10:05. I could have gone to an art gallery or a poetry reading or a movie. Instead, I hit balls at three Chicagoland driving ranges. The first was Sports Park in Skokie, a modern, double-tiered range with an automated ball-delivery system. At Sports Park you buy a debit card and feed the card into a console at your hitting station. A system of tubes then delivers balls, one at a time, to a leprechaun under your mat. The little fellow puts the ball on a rubber tee and yells, "Up scope!" The ball then pops up like one of those "Whack-a-Mole" puppets, ready to be pounded. Automated ranges are commonplace in Japan, where the land is so expensive that you can't afford to bend over. In America the motive is also economic: the faster you tee up, the more balls you hit per minute. By playing fast Muzak on the P.A. system, the operator of an automated range can turn a station over four times an hour -- five if he invests in a "dump mat" that tips you onto the sidewalk the instant you hit your last ball. Not today, though. The south-facing Sports Park range was battered by a muscular headwind, giving my station the feel of a destroyer bridge on the North Atlantic. I nursed a $5 card for about 30 minutes and then drove off. But I give Sports Park high marks for landscaping, cleanliness and parking. My next stop was the mats-only Oakton Golf Range in Park Ridge. The wind was no problem at this charming little facility; tall trees shelter the narrow hitting ground on all sides. Unfortunately, the mats are separated by plastic partitions that extend several feet, forcing you to hit out of a chute. My chute pointed left of the target flags, toward the back-left corner of the range. To hit at a center target I had to aim across the partition, which was unsettling. When I hit my three-wood, I couldn't fire my right side toward the target, and all of my shots hooked up against the left-corner netting. I settled for a workout with my pitching wedge, timing my swings to the soothing roar of the low-flying jumbo jets that pass directly overhead on their descent into O'Hare. Finally, I drove to nearby Des Plaines and camped out at the Harry H. Semrow Golf Range, a.k.a. the Golf Corner Driving Range. Situated at the intersection of Golf Road and Highway 12, the Semrow range is about as good as a mats-only range gets. It's immense -- 73 stations curved around a vast green field backed by dense woodland. The right-side tees face west and the left end of the range looks north, so the setting sun is no problem. The AstroTurf mats are either brand new or lovingly maintained; I couldn't tell which. I bought a large bucket, about 90 balls, for $7.50 and spent better than an hour fine-tuning my swing. Every now and then I stopped to look around, either at the sunset or at the uninhibited golfers around me. For people watching, a driving range is better than a crowded hotel lobby. All three ranges were busy. If I owned property in Chicago, I'd knock down whatever skyscraper or mall was cluttering up my land and put in a range. Saturday, May 13 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It was Megan's turn for a golf outing with Papa. Megan is 10 and not exactly obsessed with golf, but she's still young enough to think her grandfather is fun and silly, not embarrassing and senile. So at about 2 p.m., while her brother, Chris, played a roller-hockey game at one city park, Megan got her first golf lesson of the year in another. The lesson took place at the Blue River Golf Academy, formerly known as the Blue River Golf Course and before that as Swope No. 2. I bragged about Blue River in my book, America's Worst Golf Courses. ("It's not exactly Amen Corner," I wrote of holes 11 through 14. "It's more of an Oh My God Corner.") A few years ago the city decided to convert part of the property into a driving range/learning center/junior-golf academy. As a result, several undistinguished golf holes were bulldozed and replaced by a first-rate, north-facing, grass driving range. This is progress. My theory with kid golfers is keep it simple -- i.e., teach them one thing a year. In 1999 I taught Megan how to aim (feet parallel to the target line, ball somewhere between the feet). Today I showed her how to grip the club. To my surprise, she didn't resist the idea of the overlapping grip. She looked at her hands and smiled, as if she were the youngest inductee of a lodge with a secret handshake. She started off whiffing, of course, which made her huff in frustration and put her hands on her hips. Then she graduated to tops and shanks that traveled about 20 feet. Looking for a child-sized swing thought, I quietly suggested that she pretend the ball was a deadly spider that needed to be crushed against the ground. Megan immediately belted a couple over the edge of the tee, about 30 yards away. After the lesson (for which I didn't charge), Megan and I followed an asphalt path through the woods and up a steep bluff to Blue River's best-kept secret: a magnificent, three-hole junior-golf course designed by Kansas City's own Tom Watson. The holes up on the hill are designed for kids -- two par-4s and a par-3, the longest hole stretching 248 yards from the back tee -- but the execution is thoroughly grown up. The tees and fairways are covered with tournament-quality turf. The greens are a delight, too. If I were rich enough to build a backyard course (and if I had a 10-acre backyard), I'd copy the Blue River hill holes. As it is, I can play the junior course on any afternoon, as long as I am accompanied by a playing child. That's my dirty little secret: I use my grandchildren to gain access to those three pristine golf holes. For the bargain price of $8, Megan and I went around three times today. We were the only players on the hill, and the sun put that golden glow on everything and gave Megan a 10-foot shadow. We would have played until dark if I hadn't grown weary carrying my bag on my right shoulder and Megan under my left arm. Actually, she did very well. When we played the 2nd hole for the last time, she took a big swing with her five-iron and got the ball airborne with an honest-to-god draw. The shot carried about 50 yards and rolled another 10 or 15. Megan dropped her club and then dropped her jaw, as well. She was shocked and happy. "Fabulous shot!" I said. "How did you do that?" She made a funny face and said, "I pretended the ball was Chris." So now, when I coach Megan, I'll know to replace the deadly spider swing thought with the annoying-older-brother swing thought. It's good for 20 extra yards.
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences or suggest a driving range, click here.
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