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One range's dramatic rebirth
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old eight 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. Tuesday, Feb. 13 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- I slipped across the state line today to have lunch at Hallbrook Country Club with a man who wants to tinker with my swing and implant metronome clicks in my brain. His name is John Novosel, and he is the inventor of the XLR8R -- pronounced "accelerator" -- a swing-training aid endorsed by a handful of PGA and LPGA tour pros and a couple of Golf Magazine's top 100 golf teachers. John didn't try to sell me the gadget, which is a club with a spherical head and a stand-up target that teaches you how to square the club face at impact. Instead, he told me about his recent studies of tempo, that ineffable swing quality that Ernie Els and Fred Couples have and the rest of us lack. "We know how to teach it," John said, making it sound as if his research were an unexpected tributary of the Human Genome Project. "It makes you unbelievably smooth." That's what I want to be -- unbelievably smooth. So I agreed to be a lab rat to Novosel's mad scientist when I get back from Dubai in a few weeks. In the meantime, I'll work on my tempo the old-fashioned way -- by listening to Gato Barbieri CDs on my headphones. Wednesday, Feb. 14 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A TV commercial made me do a double take a few days ago. Over pictures of golf merchandise and golfers, a cheerful voice touted the splendors of a local driving range: naugahyde mats, plutonium flag sticks, carbo-hydraulic compressed range balls with wind-resistant paint -- I'm making this up, because I wasn't really paying attention. The city was frozen! A storm on Friday had encased trees, cars and slow-moving animals in a coat of gleaming ice. Anyway, I remembered the range in the commercial as a barren rectangle on the city's southern border, hardly worth a visit even on a bird-chirpy spring day. "There's a waste of money," I told my wife. "They might want to reconsider their ad budget." But this afternoon, burning with cabin fever, I decided to pay the place a visit. The temperature was hovering around 32 degrees and it was drizzling when I got to the range, at 135th and Holmes Road, but to my amazement there were a half-dozen cars in the parking lot. To my greater amazement, the ugly old range had been totally renovated by somebody with a weakness for wall-to-wall carpet. The field was covered in natural-looking artificial grass. The target greens, sand bunkers and water features were delineated in contrasting hues of green, white and blue. The natural-grass tees were a dormant brown and not in use, but the east-facing tee line was now sheltered by a long shed with overhead heaters, built-in bag stands and flawless new mats with yellow alignment crosses. Four men and a woman were slapping balls out into the freezing drizzle, happy as frozen clams. In the golf shop I learned that the range changed ownership last spring and is now the Robin Nigro Golf Academy and Practice Center. I also learned that I was looking at 360,000 square feet of all-weather shag carpet -- the most expansive use of textiles in Kansas City since the artist Cristo wrapped the walkways of Loose Park in gold fabric back in the '80s. "Nothing shuts us down," said the man behind the counter. "We can stay open in any conditions." I bought a large bucket of like-new balls for $7 and walked out to the sheltered tee line. The overhead heater took a while to glow red, and I never really got toasty. My breath spread in clouds, and a northeast wind came in the open side of the shelter, chilling my hands. But, hey, it was warm enough. And I was dry. Then came the real surprise. I hate artificial-turf ranges because the balls usually bounce as if dropped on pavement from a skyscraper. Not at Nigro's! I don't know what kind of underlayment they used, but the target greens held like real grass. What's more, the greens are built up, giving the appearance of a natural green complex. Even the flags are classy -- tri-color pennants representing, I think, the nations of Moldovia, Ruritania and Freedonia. Best of all, I could see where every shot landed. The golf balls stood out beautifully against the bright carpet colors, and the faux hazards helped my depth perception. I almost expected to see a splash when one of my shots landed on the blue moat fronting the nearest green. I hit balls happily for an hour, and when I left I told the folks in the golf shop, "I shall return." Nigro's is now my bad-weather range. And that's no small thing, because in Kansas City we have a range of bad weather.
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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