Amending my best-of list

Plus, users chime in with their highs and lows

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.

Tuesday, Jan. 1

KAPALUA RESORT, MAUI, Hawaii -- Other people celebrate at midnight with party hats and horns, but I welcomed the New Year yesterday afternoon by wearing myself out on the wonderful grass range at the Village Golf Course in Kapalua. I started by hitting a large bucket of well-scrubbed Pinnacle range balls. I then drank a cup or two of cool water and stared out at the ocean and the island of Molokai. Then I hit another bucket of balls. (They were free to those of us covering the Mercedes Championships, just up the road at the Plantation Course.)

That should have been enough, but the guy next to me had left behind a dozen balls. So I cleaned up for him. Then I spotted another eight balls behind me. Hit them. Way down at the other end of the range, 20 balls seemed to be languishing. I sauntered over with my sand wedge and practiced short pitches to a target green.

Fini. Weary and satisfied, I cleaned my irons with one of the provided wet towels and prepared to leave. But first I wanted to check out the grass tees that climb the hill in step fashion toward the Kapalua Golf Academy. I took my lob wedge as a walking stick, and when I got to the next tier of tees -- well, damn, there must have been a hundred golf balls up there and not a golfer in sight.

Sighing, I gripped my wedge and hit a couple dozen shots down the hill. And then I noticed that the sun had dropped out of the clouds behind me, casting a glorious beam of warm light all the way to the most distant target green, about as far as I can poke it with my driver. So I walked back down to my bag, got my driver, climbed the hill again, and hit a dozen drives, loving the arc each shot painted against the sky and the tropical landscape before falling to earth. My hands were tender and my muscles were screaming, but what can you do?

I finished up with another flurry of wedges, clocking out with a punch shot that flew low and skidded to a stop by the flagstick.

So ... I hereby click on the Mats Only Archive and amend my recent list of best driving ranges of 2001, inserting the Village Course at Kapalua in the No. 1 position.

I can do this. It's my column.

You will have your own view of things, of course, and I have been collecting e-mails from readers with strongly held opinions. "Yikes!" exclaims Reid Wegley of Boulder, Colo., who writes to blackball the less-than-perfect range at Flatirons Golf Course. "Sometimes they give you the pleasure of hitting off dirt as opposed to mats that were made in the '80s, but the stations are so close together that getting hit by your neighbor's flailing 5-iron is not out of the question. When I practice at this ugly spot, I just tee up the driver and try to hit the rocks/balls past the fence and out onto Arapahoe Road." In a similar vein, Bill Wallace of Charleston, S.C., grumbles about the swampy range at Charleston Municipal Golf Course. "They have the world market cornered for smooth balls. You regularly get at least five balls with absolutely no dimples at all."

R. Nath (rhymes with "wrath") says the worst range in the Western Hemisphere is Houston's South Main Golf Range. "Nine covered bays, a 30-foot length of artificial turf that looks like plastic grass mixed with sand and asphalt, and then 50 yards of real grass -- or actually, crabgrass. More precisely, starved and dehydrated crabgrass." Michael Krogmann of Los Angeles counters with the famously overused range at L.A.'s Rancho Park municipal course. "The turf isn't fixed to the ground, so it will move when you hit it," Krogmann writes, "and the stall wall is about six inches from the mat and extends five feet past the hitting zone. Get ready to think pull and hear people clunking the wall all day."

Is the urban range inevitably dreary? Not according to Timothy Kolk of Sunnyside, N.Y., who loves the Diversey range in Chicago's Lincoln Park. "There is no other place to be on the first warm day of spring," he says. Another glowing review comes from John Tirado of Washington Township, N.J. "The Closter Driving Range in Closter, N.J., is about as professional as a range can get," he writes. "In the winter they enclose each stall with tarps and provide overhead gas heaters so you can pull off the jacket and sweater." As a bonus, Tirado says, you get to watch all the Korean and Japanese men who flock to Closter "to hit jumbo bucket after jumbo bucket, their wives and kids sitting quietly behind them."

Paul Oliver of Houston (but not really of Houston, if you get my drift) writes to praise the range at the Experience of Koele golf course on the island of Lanai, Hawaii. "It is 2,000 feet above sea level and set amid lovely Cook pine trees," he purrs. "The temperature is comfortably cool, due to the altitude, and misty clouds lazily drift through the valley. The practice turf is lush, the balls are arranged in pyramids by persons unseen, and, best of all, the range almost always seems to be empty. This place is the Machu Picchu of practice ranges."

Back here on earth, many of us have to hit balls on ranges more redolent of diesel fumes and airborne dust than of papaya and night-blooming jasmine. Jeff Beck of Atlanta suggests that we avoid Jim Hearn Golf on the Buford Highway, northeast of town. "The mats are so hard that you get a stinger every time you hit a solid shot, and you can see where people have placed their feet by the half circles, shoulder-width apart."

Back in Houston again -- is Houston the Mecca of bad driving ranges? -- reader Jeff Bosh rants about the golf balls at a place called Mulligans and More. "These golf balls -- and I use that term generously -- appear to have been collected by a riding lawnmower. You'd be hard-pressed to find one ball that's clean and without a cut -- or even round, for that matter. It creates some interesting balls flights. I've seen figure eights, double S's, knuckleballs and wounded ducks. It's especially entertaining when the drunk redneck next to you thinks his ball is turning to the left because of his prowess at hitting a draw."

Bosh is just getting started. "Mulligans is conveniently located across the street from a cattle farm," he writes, attaching his unpublished Master's thesis on the stench variables of cow manure. He goes on to describe, in an unflattering manner, the beer-guzzling golfers who stagger to the mats with a bucket of balls in one hand and a bucket of beer in the other. "To top it all off, this place hasn't spent a dime on pesticide or grass seed in years. This winning combination has created the largest mosquito population and the most pathetic hardpan conditions in the city. At night, under the lights, the mosquitoes are so thick you can actually see blood on the golf balls." Bosh adds, "Now that I think of it, that blood might be coming from the ballboy's hands when he separates the range balls from the broken beer bottles."

Reading that, I feel enormously grateful to be on a Pacific island. I have many more range reports to share, but I can't possibly squeeze them all into one column. I'll return next week with more of your bests and worsts, including an e-mail headlined "BANGKOK DRIVING RANGE #18 -- YOUR WILDEST FANTASIES COME TRUE."

Sounds like something you might want to save to your hard drive.

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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