Driving Range Safety Buffers

[Edwin Roald]

I am directing this to my fellow golf architects out there, but of course there may be others who can contribute.

Are you willing to share with me your most recent preference in terms of the minimum distance that you feel that needs to be kept between a boundary (in my most recent case, a road) and a driving range? Other issues are, of course, relevant, such as the arc of the practice tee, width of the landing area, protective screening etc.

Given an adequate width of landing area, I'd tend to draw the line at a minimum of 50 metres, i.e. from the boundary to the edge of the landing area. This includes arcing the tee to direct shots inside. This is a conclusion that I have reached by simply adopting the same principle as if there was a golf hole along the boundary. I have worked the centerlines at 70 metres from the boundary, so it is not uncommon for a fairway edge to be at 50 metres. Of course, the volume of shots hit is much greater on a popular driving range.

Any thoughts on this will be appreciated.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Edwin- I guess to some degree the road usuage will/ could have some bearing on the safety of the project. One problem at driving ranges is you do get inexperienced players that actually want to hit it over the fence... so its never easy to legislate that factor in. Some UK ranges are putting the end fences in at 300 metres now, 10 years ago many were at 220m.
I think a width of 200 metres would be a good zone to drive into, ie 100 each way. Somewhere there must be a formula for the arc of the tees.
I think 70 metres between centre lines for fairways works pretty good in golf course safety so Im kinda guessing that +50% should keep most out of trouble. I would be pretty much same as you if I was bordering a golf hole to a road, key point being the 70M is at the 200 metre point from the tee, but the tee itself could be within that 70 metre zone, even abutting the road.
In the UK the local goverment give us some guidelines (some counties adopt this others dont) to work to as saftey margins for roads and footpaths, and they are worked out roughly at these sort of figures, they expect greater margins when motorways/superhighways are adjacent.
Nets up to 18 metres are available posibbly even higher, theres not much else that does an instant job really, they are ugly.

[Edwin Roald]

Adrian,

Thank you for taking the time to share your view. Your comment on the width raised my eyebrows. 200 metres is very generous. I'm sure it works well if one has this amount of space available. However, I was thinking about a minimum width, in which case I find 100 metres comfortable, plus the buffer. I wonder if anyone finds that too narrow perhaps.

[Mark_Fine]

Edwin,
Check out Forrest Richardson's book "Routing a Golf Course".  He did some polls of architects and has some great information in there about dimensions, set backs, etc.  It includes ranges and you will find it very helpful.
Mark

[Adrian_Stiff]

Adrian,

Thank you for taking the time to share your view. Your comment on the width raised my eyebrows. 200 metres is very generous. I'm sure it works well if one has this amount of space available. However, I was thinking about a minimum width, in which case I find 100 metres comfortable, plus the buffer. I wonder if anyone finds that too narrow perhaps.

Ed- I was kinda meaning that the 200 metres was using 100 as the buffer.

[Edwin Roald]

A classic example where I opt to cite the language barrier. Thanks again, Adrian.