[Mike_Cirba]

...in theory and practice, how minimally-wide should the fairway of the hole be to mitigate problems, and how high should the mesh fence between the holes?  Minimally, how much "rough buffer" should exist between the edge of the driving range and the fairway?

Where have you seen this done really well, and where really poorly and why?

Thanks!

[Ally Mcintosh]

Depends how your driving range is set up.

If it's a range with bays placed right to the edge and those Bays are Perpendicular to the line of play (with no curvature to the middle), the right hand bay could be approximated as the centreline of a fairway. In which case, probably a minimum of 85 yards to the centreline of the nearest fairway (certainly around the turning point / landing zone of the drive)...

...Giving a fairway as 40 yards wide, you'd want a rough buffer zone of 60 odd yards...

Fairly Conservative but there's your theory... I'd like to hear about the Practice from different perspectives... Note I'm not including for a mesh fence...

[TX Golf]

I have always found that it doesn't really matter how the range is set up because no matter what you try and do..... shanks and big ass slices/hooks will always find a way on to the adjacent rough areas.

Two course that I play quite often, Dallas Country Club and the pre-restoration Cal Club had ranges adjacent to the first hole. It didn't bother me at all because at both courses the used yellow range balls, making it easier to find your ball if you pulled it or pushed off the first tee. Using white range balls when the range is next to the first tee is a crime.

[PCCraig]

Wilmette Golf Course outside Chicago first three holes play around an active driving range in a counter clockwise manner. The 1st hole has the driving range on the right, and only a 7ft chain link fence. The 3rd hole has a solid 40ft fence to block sliced shots into the fairway...which doesn't help much.

If nothing else, the huge # of balls on the fairways allows for a few extra shots of warmup before you really get into your round.

[Kalen Braley]

....will inevitably suck and should be avoided at all costs.

I've played courses where the range is offset at an angle, parallel to the hole, perpendicular, you name it.  And it doesn't matter how high you build the fence or otherwise, plenty of balls will still end up in that adjacent fairway.  Whether its thru holes in the fence, rolling under the fence, shanks, or even kids goofing off on the range intentionally hitting wedges over it, plenty of balls will always find thier way on the hole. Nothing is more frustrating than looking for you ball which landed in the correct fairway and having to waste 5 minutes sifting thru the other balls just to find yours.

That being said, if this can't be avoided, at least use yellow or pink range balls, so they are easily distinguishable from yours.  And as a courtesy I'll usually pull out my 3 iron and hit the balls back towards the range to at least get them out of the fairway so its easier for the next guy.

[Michael Blake]

...in theory and practice, how minimally-wide should the fairway of the hole be to mitigate problems, and how high should the mesh fence between the holes?  Minimally, how much "rough buffer" should exist between the edge of the driving range and the fairway?

I'm sure Jeff Brauer's covered this in one of his monthly Golf Course Industry columns.


...paging Jeff.

[Mike_Cirba]

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Let's do a hypothetical.

Let's say a range today is 100 yards wide at its narrowest point at the bays, and about 130 at it's widest, but generally 120 yards througout running just over 250 yards long.

Let's say one wanted to design a golf hole to run along that corridor, effectively reducing the width of the range by half.   In effect, the multi-level bays would occupy about 55 yards of width x 250+ yards of length, and the proposed adjoining fairway with rough strip would run alongside and be about 55-60 yards wide, as well, turning slightly where the range became narrowest.

I sense I wouldn't want any narrower than that, but considering that the proposed hole is a par five where the second shot would be played "towards" the bays, is there any way to make this work?

Thanks again.

[Dan_Callahan]

TPC River Highlands has the range to the left of the first hole. With OB on the right, it is hard not to play down the left side. Anything that is pulled slightly disappears in a sea of range balls.

[Michael Powers]

Mike,
It's not just the height of the netting, but also the height of the practice tee and which direction it is facing.  Lower the tee as much as you can, direct the tee as much away from the hole as possible, build the netting as high as you can, and hope no one takes one in the head.

[Tim Gavrich]

TPC River Highlands has the range to the left of the first hole. With OB on the right, it is hard not to play down the left side. Anything that is pulled slightly disappears in a sea of range balls.

With the new practice facility they've built out there, it looks like that will be less of a problem.  I'd forgotten about that little quirk at River Highlands.

[SL_Solow]

I'll have to dig into my files but when we had to build a fence at the back of our range, we hired a consultant who had worked with these problems and who coincidentally, installed fences.  He had a number of formulas to help determine the height of fencing needed.  Let me know if you would like the reference.

[Ian_L]

Works terribly at the Presidio in SF.  #10 doglegs around the driving range, and balls routinely roll under the fence into the trees guarding the dogleg.  Good luck finding your ball among dozens of white range balls...

[Kyle Harris]

Mike,

You should mention that the range is *VERY* uphill.

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike,

You should mention that the range is *VERY* uphill.

Not necessarily at the point where the fence is proposed, though Kyle...right?

[Brad Klein]

Mike,

from your description, it sounds at minimum that you'll need a dense mesh netting that runs 100 feet high, $2 million of liability coverage, and a multi-denominational prayer vigil.

[Kyle Harris]

Mike,

You should mention that the range is *VERY* uphill.

Not necessarily at the point where the fence is proposed, though Kyle...right?

Where is that range ever level? Maybe for 20-30 yards in front of the tee, but the real worry is about 210 yards down the driving range, which is probably what, 50 feet above the tee?

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike,
It's not just the height of the netting, but also the height of the practice tee and which direction it is facing.  Lower the tee as much as you can, direct the tee as much away from the hole as possible, build the netting as high as you can, and hope no one takes one in the head.

Powpow (love the name ),

Ideally, the range will be multi-level (probably 2) because it would theoretically be narrowed to about 55 yards wide, with approximately 32 stalls, half of them (bottom) covered.

As far as facing, it's not ideal, although I would think that the stalls could be turned away from the hole at a slight angle which would help.    

I've also seen some pretty high nets in the area.

The far end of the range would begin about where a good drive coming from the other direction would land on a par five around 540 yards, curving in a very soft C left to right and sweeping past the range.    The tricky part is that the stalls are only about 70 diagonal yards from the front of the green, so you have to "pass" the stalls to get to the green, although it's 60 yards from the stalls to the left edge of the fairway, almost 100 yards to the right edge, and the way the hole turns into a reverse camber slope, players will want to favor the right side, away from the range..
 
SL,

If things progress, I will certainly be interested in the name of the expert you mentioned.  Thanks!

[Kyle Harris]

Mike,

Post the topo, that uphill makes a huge difference and all these numbers are assuming a level range. Or are you talking about the "other" range?

[Mike_Cirba]

Kyle,

Yes...the other range.

[Mike_Cirba]

Brad,

That's not encouraging...although it is a pre-existing course/range border.

[archie_struthers]

 


Mike , if you do have a range that has to be next to the opening hole, for God's sake make sure it is on the right of #1.  The golf course at Adios (Palmer 1982) in Florida has a range to the immediate right of #1, and  although not perfect , it's not too obtrusive to the ambiance.


By being on the right , not left the amount of pellets coming into play are dramatically reduced as lefties are still a small minority and the aerodynamics of a hook tends to make them return to earth much faster.

[J_ Crisham]

  Pasatiempo has a range down the length of #1 that saw some action last year during KP. Fun opening hole with lots of length to combat par.
                                                  Jack

[Michael Whitaker]

Mike - A local course I play fairly regularly has a range between holes 1 and 10. 1 is a par 5 that runs down the right side of the range... 10 is a par 4 down the left side. There are occasionally a few range balls on the left edge of 1 and the right edge of 10, but not too many. There are no fences or nets and we've never thought of it being a problem. I guess the range is sufficiently wide to accommodate errant shots.

Here's a pix:

[Doug Siebert]

My home course has the driving range to the left of the 10th hole, here's a crappy map below (the driving range is bottom center, the 10th hole is the one that runs diagonally from the right side of the driving range to the top on this map.



There are some trees between the holes, but of course they don't provide 100% protection so occasionally a few balls will roll through to the fairway especially on a day with a strong SW wind, and more will be found in the rough.  The fact that the teeing area for the range forms a bit of a semicircle so those teeing off from the right edge are directed back to the center is the main thing that makes it work, along with the extreme width of the landing area of the range - it is probably 250 yards wide so its awfully hard to aim at the center and hit it out of play, even with a busy road to the left of the range.

Its actually more of a problem for playing the 10th hole than it is for the range itself.  That hole has a fairway with a pretty severe left to right slope, so the ideal drive either lands near the left edge where it is flatter or has a draw if you want it to stay in the fairway.  To the right of the fairway is an even steeper slope, trees and various other problems, so there is a strong inclination to favor the left, despite the trees over there.  If you hook it into the driving range (as I do several times a year) its not OB, and isn't too bad so long as you can find it, and you are long enough that you are out of most people's range on the range.  Based on the percentage of rightys versys leftys I definitely feel safer dashing out onto the right edge of the range than I would the left!

[Sean_A]

If you are looking to put up a huge fence I think the entire idea is flawed - there is just not enough space to treat the problem with respect.  Explore ways to avoid this result because there is no good way to create a fence border.  A no man's land has to be the answer (which I presume means a bowling alley style range - tee hee) with the golfers and range rats hitting in the same direction and starting from the roughly the same location so far as distance is concerned.  This works well at Grosse Ile with the range down the left of the 10th. 

Of course, the best use of a range is to do exactly what someone else said was a disaster.  The hole uses the range as part of teh strategy.  See Hoylake's 1st and better yet Wallasey's 8th.  A great hole legging right around the practice the range. 

Ciao   

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