If you are like most red-blooded American males, you occasionally feel the urge to go out into a large, manicured field and hit a small, dimpled white ball until your lower back makes a sound like a dry branch snapping in a hurricane. This is called “practicing,” a term golfers use to describe the process of taking a perfectly functional swing and replacing it with a series of violent, unpredictable spasms.
The epicenter of this activity is the driving range.
A driving range is a magical place where, for the price of a movie ticket, you can purchase a plastic bucket filled with “range balls.” These are special balls that have been engineered by top scientists to have the aerodynamic properties of a wet cabbage. No matter how well you hit a range ball, its primary goal in life is to travel exactly forty yards out and then hang a sharp left turn into a pond, possibly out of spite. They come with a red or black stripe, to make them easy to identify for golfing thieves who want to play with 70 year old damaged balls.
The Arrival of the Gladiator
When you arrive at the city-type of ranges, your first task is to find a “stall.” In the world of golf, a stall is a small rectangular patch of green plastic that has the texture of a cheap welcome mat. You are expected to stand on this mat and perform a complex physical maneuver involving forty-seven different muscle groups, while the person in the stall next to you—who invariably looks like he was assembled from spare parts in a gym—launches balls into the stratosphere with the sound of a small cannon.
This is the First Law of the Range: The guy next to you is always better. He will be wearing a color-coordinated outfit that costs more than your first car, and he will be hitting “draws” and “fades,” which are technical golf terms for “balls that go where they are supposed to.” Meanwhile, you will be hitting “shanks,” which is a technical term for “lawsuit.”
Other courses have ranges on natural grass, if you consider a stretch of dirt divots and a 4 inch square patch of fescue to be natural grass.
The Bucket Ritual
You’ll then buy a bucket of balls from a ball dispenser that, for some reason, drops the ball with the volume of an F-14 taking off, only louder. You can get a bucket of small, medium or large, and like your McDonald’s drive-through value menu order, you’re usually better off going “small.”
The Anatomy of the Swing
According to what I read when I got my monthly golf magazine, my subscription is overdue.
They also gave tips for a proper swing, which they say involves:
- Keeping your head still.
- Keeping your left arm straight.
- Shifting your weight.
- Remembering to breathe.
- Questioning your life choices.
In reality, the average driving range swing looks less like Tiger Woods and more like a man trying to kill a hornet with a broom handle while falling off a ladder. You swing. There is a blur of motion. There is a dull thwack.
The ball does not go toward the 250-yard marker. Instead, it travels at a 45-degree angle, narrowly missing a bird, and strikes the side of the range tractor.
The Collector: The Ultimate Target
The range golf ball picker is a cart covered in a protective cage that makes it look like it belongs in Mad Max: Fury Road. Its job is to drive slowly around the range picking up balls while everyone—and I mean everyone—tries to hit it.
It is a scientific fact that a golfer who cannot hit a stationary green the size of a football field can, with 100% accuracy, nail a moving tractor from two hundred yards away if they aren’t trying. When the ball hits the cage—CLANG—a sense of primal satisfaction ripples through the stalls. For one brief moment, you are not a failure; you are a sniper. The driver, on the other hand, develops even more of a nervous tick.
Common Range Archetypes
You will encounter several distinct species of humans at the driving range:
| Type | Description |
| The Teacher | A man who offers unsolicited advice, in case you secretly wanted it but we’re afraid to walk around the range, asking for help. This is the guy who is divorced after playing one round with his wife, and spending 5 hours telling her everything that is wrong. |
| The Babe Ruth Wannabe | A person who only uses a driver. He intends to hit every ball as hard as humanly possible. A straight ball direction isn’t nearly as important as yardage. |
| The Divot King | By the time he is done, the range looks like it was recently visited by a vengeful archaeological team. |
The Mid-Bucket Crisis
About halfway through the bucket, something strange happens. You hit a good shot. It’s beautiful. It soars high and true, landing right next to the 150-yard flag.
“I’ve got it!” you whisper to yourself.
You immediately try to replicate this by swinging twice as hard. The resulting shot travels three feet. You then spend the final forty-five balls trying to rediscover the “feeling” of that one good shot, getting progressively more angry until you are basically just stabbing the ground with a 7-iron.
The Aftermath
Eventually, the bucket is empty. You are sweaty, your hands are vibrating from the impact of hitting the blub on the ground or mat, and you have developed a blister that is roughly the size of a Nilla Wafer. You pack your bags, look at the field of white balls you have scattered haphazardly across the landscape, and say the words every golfer says:
“I think I’m ready for the course.”
You are not. But that’s the beauty of it. You’ll be back next Tuesday to do it all over again, because hope, much like a range ball hit into the woods, is a very difficult thing to get rid of.