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Perseverance pays off Posted: Monday January 27, 2003 1:45 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. Sunday, Jan. 19 HONOLULU -- It's a 45-minute drive from Waikiki to the booming bedroom community of Ewa Beach, out beyond Pearl Harbor. It took me another 10 minutes this morning to find the Coral Creek Golf Club. When I got there, I took one look at the range, shook my head, and drove back to my hotel. Before I parse this strange behavior, I should explain what I was doing at Coral Creek in the first place. I received an e-mail recently from Brad Hoban of Kapolei, Hawaii, who was startled to see Honolulu's raggedy, shopworn Ala Wai Driving Range on my year-end list of favorite practice facilities. "You are way off base with the Ala Wai range," he wrote. "The best range on Oahu is the one at Coral Creek. The range is grass and has two putting greens and a separate chipping green complete with a practice bunker. If you happen to be out on the range at sunset, you can't help but stop and admire the beauty of Hawaii." Hoban is not the first reader to question my fondness for Ala Wai. Even I, on a visit a couple of mornings ago, had to concede that the Ala Wai mats are getting as thin as prison blankets, and the balls, like aging ingenues, are losing their dimples. The target field at Ala Wai is little more than a fenced work yard with maybe five blades of grass per square foot. And those, as comedian Don Adams used to say in his trial lawyer routine, are Ala Wai's good points. But I'm always open to new experiences. When I arrived at Coral Creek this morning, I was certainly impressed. The range was as Hoban described it -- a vale of rich green turf with a few simple target flags lined up like airport beacons. To my left, on a grassy ridge, were two small, beautifully maintained practice greens. The teeing ground was also first-rate: The brown earth was firm and the grass closely mown. Two things spoiled this picture of bliss. The first was a 30-mile-per-hour headwind that had the handful of golfers on the range leaning like Kansas wheat in a spring storm. The second was the tee line itself, which was broken up with knee-high, aluminum-framed, canvas partitions. I can't stand driving-range partitions. They probably serve some safety purpose, but they are an alignment nightmare. You tend to swing parallel to the partitions, even if your target is on a different heading. I sighed like a ham actor and walked back to my car. As much as I wanted to hit balls, I knew that practicing into a near-gale from a compromised setup would soon have me shanking and yanking to the point of tears. On the drive back to Honolulu I listened to the new Wayne Shorter CD, which I bought yesterday on the strength of a couple of good reviews. After listening to the first two or three cuts, which were meandering, free-form bursts of saxophone throat-clearing and percussive piano licks, I found myself fast-forwarding, looking for something with a little more structure. Maybe I'm just hard to please today. Monday, Jan. 20 HONOLULU -- My flight back to the mainland wasn't leaving until evening, so I hopped in the car this morning and drove back out to the Coral Creek Golf Club. The weather forecast called for more wind, but from a different direction. Walking onto the range, where only a couple of golfers were practicing, I wet and raised a finger. West to northwest at 9 mph with gusts of 15 mph. Satisfied, I went back to the clubhouse and purchased a large bucket of balls. So now I can report that Brad Hoban was right. The Coral Creek practice range is a delight. The grass tees were near-perfect, the range balls scrubbed and dimpled. And since the turf was so good, I found that I could creep to the forward end of those damnable partitions and counter their misalign effect by putting a couple of alignment clubs on the ground. I struck the ball beautifully. After hitting about half the balls, I walked up the hill to the short-game greens and hit a bunch of chips and short pitches. This, too, was an absolute treat. You could hit from short grass or dense bermuda rough. You could hit from above the greens or below the greens. You could hit from uphill, downhill or sidehill lies. Glorious. Collecting the remaining balls, I went back down to the tee line and hit wedges to the nearest target flag. Every shot felt pure, and every divot looked as if it had been cut from the same rectangular template. It's too early to predict, but Coral Creek could wind up on my top-10 list for 2003, replacing Ala Wai. Or "Ala Why?", as Hoban would have it. Thursday, Jan. 23 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The temperature outside is 9 below zero and a voice on the morning news says that one of our Missouri River bridges buckled yesterday, "probably due to the cold." I am reminded of Tom Watson, who used to hit balls into the snow from the open doorway of the maintenance barn at Kansas City Country Club. Crazy bastard. 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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