Tom Doak said:
"Has anybody noticed yet that at five of the best courses you could name -- Pine Valley, Merion, Pebble Beach, Sand Hills, and Pacific Dunes -- the practice range is nowhere near the clubhouse?
Do you think that's a coincidence, or do you think it's a deliberate choice made in the routing process?"
TomD:
With the older courses you just mentioned I don't think it was either. Back in those early days practice ranges were generally not even considered (out of thought, out of mind, so to speak.
).
The reason is pretty obvious----eg back in that day the idea of club "practice balls" had basically never even been thought of.
At a club like mine (GMGC) up until the early 1960s if someone playing in the morning wanted to hit some practice shots they would send their caddie down into the 18th fairway and hit the balls in their bag at him.
My Dad was one of those guys who transitioned through those times. Even when Piping Rock got club practice balls he still used his own. He had a bunch of bags of his own practice balls that he'd taken out of play (it didn't hurt that he worked for Spalding though
).
My brother and I used to go out with him by car out to the far end of the practice range at Piping Rock which had been two polo fields and shag balls for him with first basemen's mitts. Sometimes we'd even try to catch his drives on the fly but you sure as shootin' had to catch it up in the netting----anything lower than that was a "Super Ouch" which would generally send us to the turf shaking our hand in pain.
Back in that early day probably only the good golfers did much dedicated practicing that way anyway. I'll also tell you it is really a lost experience now shagging practice balls for a good golfer. I realize those balls and clubs back then could "work" the ball way more than they do today but it was pretty amazing standing on the other end of golf shots of a good player like that and watching him curve the ball right to left and left to right at you and high and low too. Most of the time I didn't even have to take more than a single step or two. Pretty amazing to remember that now.